Out of Birth Order Adoption Stories

[just_lily]

I am interested in hearing from parents who have adopted out of birth order. I would love to hear your stories, and any advice you may have for future adoptive parents.

How has this experience gone for you?

Did you know before-hand that adopting out of birth order goes against the collective wisdom and chose to proceed anyway, or had you not heard that before?

How has it effected your biological child(ren)? Your adopted child(ren)?

What are the positives? The negatives?

And most importantly.... would you do it again?



We are pursuing domestic public adoption from foster care so the out-of-birth-order thing has been weighing on my mind a lot. There is a lot of "don't do it!" out there, so I really want to hear from BTDT parents.

Thanks so kindly!!

[onyxravnos]

subbing - we may be getting a 12, 11, and 9 year old this fall to add to our 6yr 3yr and new babe

[Smithie]

I'm also paying attention to this one. We are hoping for a boy about 6 y.o. to join our tribe of DS6, DD4 and DD1. I'm very sure that this is the age and gender that I want to take on, but also very scared.

[pumpkingirl71]

We adopted out of birth order. My bio son was eighteen month olds and my adopted daughter was 23 months. It was a kindship adoption, so it just sort of fell in our laps. To be brutally honest, it has been really hard for everyone. I feel that dd deserved to be the youngest and my bio son had that stolen from him as well as being the target of dd's aggression.

Because it was a kinship adoption, I don't thingk the question of "would we do it again" really applies to us. But I do really question the idea of adopting out of birth order on purpose.

[queenjane]

I'm adopting out of birth order soon, i'll let you know how it goes.

I have a 13 yo old bio son, a 2 yr old adopted son, a foster son who is 2 weeks younger than my 2 yr old who i will also be adopted, and i'm in the process of being approved to adopt his (the FS) bio sister who just turned 8. So, not only will it be out of birth order, but i'm also doing the "artificial twinning" thing that is so incredibly frowned upon.

I suspect that even though "conventional wisdom" suggests one thing, that it can work if you take alot of care in making sure its the right fit. I have to say, though, that with the artificial twinning i didnt understand why it was such a huge deal until i was placed with a foster child a couple months younger than my son, and it was a pretty awful experience. My poor son was very unhappy. He's done much better with dfs (in part i think because they are actually CLOSER in age than the little girl was, and therefore more developmentally in the same place)...but its still hard at times. Sometimes i'm sad to see how he's been "robbed" of the life he could have had (all that 1:1 time with me...i fantasize us going to story time and cooking together in the kitchen and snuggling up for hours reading books....things that just seem overwhelming with "twins") but then i see him and his brother thick as thieves laughing their heads off or playing with toys and in those moments i feel i've given him this wonderful gift of a brother who will always be there with him.

So....that wasnt really on topic....but i guess my advice is listen to the experts but also listen to your gut.

[EFmom]

I haven't done it personally, but a very good friend has. She had two teenaged bio boys. Then she adopted two younger children (one at a time, about two years apart). Those adoptions went pretty smoothly for all involved. She thought she was done, when due to some unusual circumstances, they ended up adopting a child who was between the two older boys and the two younger children.

It has been a whole lot harder than she thought, for all the family members. The two younger girls were extraordinarily unhappy, which my friend expected on some level. What she didn't expect was how hard it was on the older boys as well. The girl in the middle is still struggling to find her place in the family, and it has been a couple of years now.

I think you need to be prepared for the possibility of it being a very long and difficult transition, not to say it shouldn't be done.

[annethcz]

I agree with preparing for a long and difficult transition. We adopted out of birth order, and ended up with an artificial twinning situation. We're 4.5 years post-adoption, and things are just fine now.

At the time of the adoption, our bio kids were 5 (boy), 3(girl), and 1(girl), and our adopted DS was nearly 5.

To be honest, I'm not sure how much of our transition difficulties I can attribute to adopting out of birth order. Other factors that made the transition hard were the fact that DS2 was an older child (not a baby or toddler) at the time of adoption and that we didn't speak the same language.

In some ways, adopting out of birth order wasn't *that* big of a deal and actually worked well. It was nice that DS2 had instant playmates in his siblings. He was comfortable with and attached to his siblings more quickly than he accepted us (me and DH) as his parents. He latched onto DS1 very quickly, which was a little difficult for DS1. Although DS1 enjoyed playing with DS2, he did get sick of having to entertain DS2 ALL THE TIME. DS1 was already used to being an older brother, but it was a shock to him that DS2 wanted to tag along and do literally everything that DS1 was doing. I worked very hard to find separate activities for the boys and scheduled lots of playdates for just DS1 so that he wouldn't feel so overwhelmed.

The artificial twinning that we were concerned about has been a non-issue. DS1 is 7 months older than DS2. Regardless, they've always had a very firm older brother/younger brother type of relationship. DS1 is much more of a leader than DS2, and the two of them don't usually compete. They are in different grades at school, and their academic levels are quite different. HOWEVER, there have been some rivalries between DS2 and DD1, who are 14 months apart in age. DS2 is a bit small for his age, and his academic achievements are average for his grade level. DD1 is average size, which means that she's about the same size as DS2. And DD1 is quite academically advanced and has skipped a grade, which means that she's in the same grade/class as DS2 in school. I think that DS2 has been bothered by some of this (and it doesn't help that DD1 likes to be a show-off sometimes). We don't compare the kids or encourage rivalries, but we talk a lot about how different people are good at different things and that we all have strengths and weaknesses. Although there are occasional issues, for the most part it works out.