May 16 2013

Had a WONDERFUL talk with Sarina, the adoption coordinator from another region yesterday.  She shared her story of her own family with me, as well as a lot of information about the adoption process in general.  We talked for over an hour and half, and I came away feeling energized, understood, and uplifted.

I've talked to our Social Worker a few times now, and every time I mention the research we're doing she mentions that we should really find someone to talk to about adopting outside the birth order (Because our son is only 2 it is very likely that he will no longer be the oldest after we adopt).  I finally went looking for some information this morning and found this article/blog post http://eggplantissues.blogspot.ca/2012/01/birth-order-excuse.html It totally explains a concept that pops into my head every time the SW talks about birth order - WHAT ABOUT THE ADOPTED CHILDS BIRTH ORDER?! Sure, my child may loose his "eldest child" position, but if we adopted a baby we'd be disrupting that baby's position.  How is it fair to only take our "biological" children into account? Why can't we just treat the children as we would any child of their physical and emotional age?

Another post that backs me up is http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=814.
I really didn't go looking for articles that backed up my opinion - these really are just the first two I've read.  I will actively look for opposing opinions, to try to understand the reasoning behind the advice to not adopt out of family birth order. So far the only information that makes any sense to me is talked about in the second article referenced above "Some social workers suggest that parents do best when they grow into parenting, that is, meeting and learning about each developmental stage as it presents itself. Thus, childless parents adopt infants, and parents of a child adopted as an infant now in kindergarten adopt a child younger than age 6. Under any circumstances, some argue, parents who have raised their child only to first-grade age shouldn’t attempt suddenly to raise a teenager."
We have already thought of this, and believe we could handle a child up to 13. We'll see what the social worker thinks when we do the homestudy I guess.