Fostering and having other kids (bio or adopted)?

Question

Some people have critisized our desire to adopt a teenaged sib group after we finalize our relative placement. We've talked it out and decided that our son was in a foster home with three teenagers and we had a foreign exchange daughter when he arrived, so he's been around teenagers. We'd worry more about the birth order thing if we were thinking about adopting preschoolers.

Anyway, when people with kids do foster care, they don't automatically fall into perfect birth order with their kids. Is anyone concerned with this? Or is it just an issue when it involves permenence?

Answer 1

Good question this was a concern of mine when dd was younger and we were considering another adoption.

Now I have my cousins child living with us age 8 whom we just got temporary custody of. My daughter's biological sister is living with us who is 14. We also just had a placement of a newborn with down syndrome and I am pregnant. Not quite the way we planned things but oh well. The other two girls are family and we have made room for them and hope they stay as long as they need too. Who knows what will happen.

I guess what will work for your family may not work right for mine. Your wonderful for taking in these older kids!!!

Answer 2

There are some concerns I think, not just when its a permanent situation.

The first is the whole birth order/family relationship thing. Like if your kids are used to being the only child, or oldest child or something and that changes suddenly some kids have a very hard time adjusting to it. Since your son is so young that probably won't be much of a concern for you for a few years at least.

The other issue is basically safety and happiness of the younger children. I was in foster care for 5 years (from 13-18) and I can tell you for a fact that most of the kids in foster care, especially teenagers, are pretty messed up. The longer they're bounced from home to home the worse their problems get. So you need to be really careful about bringing in an older child- its far easier and more common for an older kid to abuse or mistreat a younger one than the other way around.

I personally had some really traumatic experiences with older foster kids being placed in the same house as me. They had issues that were NOT told to my foster parents or were just totally minimised and bad things happened to me because of it. You could wind up having kids with behavioral issues, anger problems, sexual abuse trauma, etc living in your home with smaller children.

So if you do decide to have older foster kids, make sure you at least know as much about them as you possibly can before you decide to bring them into your home.