I've been thinking a lot about birth order lately.
Lily and Oli are only 14.5 months apart, so the chances of us adopting a child (or children) between our two biological kids is slim to nil. Unless we "twinned" a kid, which I don't think we would. More on that later.
Some say interrupting the birth order of your biological children when adopting additional children is a no-no.
Your first born should be your first born, they say.
But that hardly solves the problem of the youngest.
What about the second/last born?
Their birth order is thrown out the window when you adopt children younger than your existing children, and that's supposed to be the solution to the "birth order predicament"?
Did I miss something or is that the exact same scenario, just with a different biological child?
When the time comes for us to adopt, we know a couple of things for certain.
We don't want to adopt a newborn baby.
We don't want or need to parent a child from birth for them to be part of our family and very much ours.
We are open and almost excited about the idea of adopting siblings.
The ideal age range would be between 18 months and 5 years.
But we aren't sure of birth order. If we adopted siblings, would we wait until both of those children were younger than our youngest? That could take a very long time since Oli is only 3 months old. Not that we want to adopt tomorrow, but we also don't want to wait 6 years.
Would we adopt siblings who were both older than Lily and Oli? That might make things harder to integrate.
Would we adopt siblings, one who is older than Lily, and the other younger than Oli?
What do you think?
Would you adopt a child or children older than your bio kids?
Or younger? Or do you even care? Or would you "twin" a kid (adopt one the same age as one of your bio kids)?
Lily and Oli are only 14.5 months apart, so the chances of us adopting a child (or children) between our two biological kids is slim to nil. Unless we "twinned" a kid, which I don't think we would. More on that later.
Some say interrupting the birth order of your biological children when adopting additional children is a no-no.
Your first born should be your first born, they say.
But that hardly solves the problem of the youngest.
What about the second/last born?
Their birth order is thrown out the window when you adopt children younger than your existing children, and that's supposed to be the solution to the "birth order predicament"?
Did I miss something or is that the exact same scenario, just with a different biological child?
When the time comes for us to adopt, we know a couple of things for certain.
We don't want to adopt a newborn baby.
We don't want or need to parent a child from birth for them to be part of our family and very much ours.
We are open and almost excited about the idea of adopting siblings.
The ideal age range would be between 18 months and 5 years.
But we aren't sure of birth order. If we adopted siblings, would we wait until both of those children were younger than our youngest? That could take a very long time since Oli is only 3 months old. Not that we want to adopt tomorrow, but we also don't want to wait 6 years.
Would we adopt siblings who were both older than Lily and Oli? That might make things harder to integrate.
Would we adopt siblings, one who is older than Lily, and the other younger than Oli?
What do you think?
Would you adopt a child or children older than your bio kids?
Or younger? Or do you even care? Or would you "twin" a kid (adopt one the same age as one of your bio kids)?
This is a really interesting conundrum! I do think it's hard for older kids to be de-throned (so to speak) but I think it also will do them some good in the long run. After all, we all have to realize eventually that the world doesn't revolve around us. Kids learn great social skills by navigating family dynamics. The most important thing of all is, of course, that they always know they are loved no matter where they come int he birth order.
ReplyDeletethanks for your comment Katrin, I really appreciate your thoughts and that's a great reminder. I'm the youngest in my family, but eventually I had to grow up, get married, and become a mom and not do these things by depending on my big sister :)
ReplyDeleteHey emily..that is very interesting. What about adopting one older than Oli and one younger? Seems like with ages you're looking at that this would work out..but I also like the comment that Katrin left and agree.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was 7 I was integrated into a family (that later disintegrated). However, I went from only child to youngest child. I LOVED having a big sister (I slept in her bed all the time and really looked up to her). My brother was only 7-months older but most thought of us as twins, because of this we had a very "twin-like" relationship, even though we met at age 6. "twinning" might be a really good idea (like India and Kembe from Rage Against the Minivan!)
My first instinct was definitely adopt younger children, but now I'm second guessing. The thing is that adopting is both a beautiful special thing, but also can be a very difficult thing. I think the key is how the family deals with it all. How you explain to your kids, how you explain it to the kids you adopt so it's not an us vs them family, but a family no matter what! So knowing you guys, I have full confidence that you guys will do an amazing job to help your kids each know how special they are to you. And waiting 6 years just to have that age order is a long time. So maybe closer in age is the way to go. I think that in time as you guys continue to explore everything and possibilities come up you will know the right kids to adopt and their ages will fit perfectly into your family! (For me personally if we adopt I either way a baby so we wouldnt wait long, or have a bunch of our own and then after they are older to understand than we can add to the family, but who knows!)
ReplyDeleteI don't know too much about birth order, but how would adopting younger siblings throw off the birth order of a second child differently than having younger biological siblings? Isn't every middle child the youngest for a time?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I just wanted to encourage you that kids can be very resilient as long as these kind of things are dealt with well. My dad re-married when I was 11 and I went from being the oldest to the being the third child (but only at his house, for about 3 days a week). My younger brother and I came to love our older step-siblings and consider them to be our real brother and sister. Granted, that probably didn't affect birth order stuff because we were a bit older, but it still shows that kids CAN adapt to new, non-biological siblings at an older age.
(BTW, I think we may have met once before, but I was a friend of Brad's from the Ottawa C4C gang and I saw some of your postings on Tara & Darren's blog. Just in case it seems like I'm some creepy stranger posting on here....)