Foster-to-Adopt an older child, sibling for our 4YO?

I can only share our own experience, which may or may not be typical. We foster-adopted a 9-year-old child, two years younger than my bio daughter. I am so, so grateful that my bio daughter was the older child and has been able to mentor and support the younger girl. While the agency told us that she had "no psychological issues" and was even a "brilliant" student, we found this was far from true. She floundered in class and continues to need a lot of support in math and English. She also demonstrates many of the traits typical of older children who have been chronically neglected. She approaches adults with the mentality of what can she get out of them and what can she get away with. She fibs and she manipulates. It has been and is exhausting at times. The one saving grace has been my bio child. The two girls formed an immediate bond and my adopted child has learned from example.

Had the adoptive child been the older child, I would have been concerned about the influence she would have had over my younger child. I would also have been concerned that the younger child may have difficulties in accepting the authority of an older child.
 

Hi Grace, 

I applaud you. I hope other parents who have foster-adopted respond. I adopted my daughter when she was about 6 months old. I flew to Vietnam by myself to pick her up. Being a single mom at 50 and working as a kindergarten teacher I have had "challenges" like any parent. I highly recommend it. Email me anytime.  cathycurry99 [at] gmail.com

This is a huge and open ended question. In brief, my husband and I, who were briefly childless tried fostering two girls, ages 4 and 7. We were inexperienced parents, but well trained and very resourceful. We found that the older of the two was more than we could handle and although we went into it with the intention of adopting them, we couldn't stick it out.

My advice is

-really scrutinize your agency and the experience and turnover of their social workers, as well as the specific kind of support that they offer. I think a number of factors led to us to be dissatisfied, our social worker was inexperienced and didn't stay at the agency long. We were mislead about the severity of problems with the kids wewere matched with. the kids were from Sacramento, which we thought would be okay, but visits to their birth parents ended up being traumatic for all of us (of course, most of all them). Hours of time in the car travelling to and from mandated visits with kids that were out of control was not the worst part of our experience, but added to the stress of the situation. We ended up switching agencies and going directly through Alameda County and fostering a baby that has led to an adoption. It was a rocky process, which is it's own story.

-Parenting a 7 year old foster kid is nothing like parenting a *normal* child. These kids have inevitably been through major trauma which affects the way their brain has developed. It will likely take many years to feel like your house is stable and they will likely have special needs that remain throughout their life. This is not to be taken lightly...it will change everything about your families dynamic and it is probably going to feel different than having a bio kid with special needs.

-Understand that your 4 year old *may* benefit from having a sibling, but they may end up feeling obligated to provide their special needs sibling with a lot of support and most likely it will make his life very trying in the short term. We have had foster kids in our home since we adopted my daughter and it has not been a bad experience for her, we were able to shelter her from most of the burden. It was very trying on us, her parents, though. And the ways that it did enrich her life are not the ways I would imagine a typical sibling would.

-Be very thorough in your reading about the behaviors and problems that you can expect from children that have been abused, neglected, exposed to violence or experienced multiple moves. Really know what you are getting into and be realistic about whether your family can handle it, a 7 year old is tougher than it sounds, that is a lot of years to not have a safe or stable home.

Research-research-research.  Ask questions about what this little girl's life has been like to this point.  Kids don't end up in the foster care system without having gone through a lot of trauma which has significant impact  on children.  Read all you can about adoption, attachment, foster care, child trauma. Go on line to pactadopt.org, or give them a call and meet with one of their staff.  Another good organization is fairfamilies.org.  Be open to the ways in which your family will change by one of your children being adopted, including the dynamics of your birth-child's response to having an older sibling and your potential-adopted-child's response to having a sibling who "belongs" to the family by birth.  Your child will come to you with their own history and you need to be ready to accept and deal with that.  I'm an adoptive parent and I wouldn't trade it for the world; it's also more complex than I could have imagined.