Older Child Adoption

Many people express surprise and indeed much concern over the issue of adopting "out of order," or, adopting kids older than the ones you already have. Conventional wisdom warns against doing this, as instant competition from an older child creates a threatening environment.

However, because Christian and Galyna are 8 years apart (and Anastasia 11), we feel this will be less of an issue, versus a situation where the children were much closer in years. In most cases, they won't be competing for the same things and their interests are much different.

Both girls were very attentive to Christian during their trips to Virginia, and for the most part, they got along well. But, by the end of last summer, Christian was walking around the house announcing, "I want those girls back to Ukraine!!!"

His heart has changed though, and now he's psyched about the trip and seeing "the girls" again.

The biggest adjustment will no doubt be for Mommy and Daddy! After we adopted Christian we knew we wanted to adopt more children. We travelled twice to Russia to get him nearly five years ago, and have had a heart for that part of the world ever since.

But why older kids? When most of us think of adoption, the first thing that comes to mind is a beautiful baby (interestingly, 80% of international adoptions are for girls), or perhaps a toddler.

But now that we're in our mid-forties, it would be perfectly natural for us to have teenage kids.
If we adopted another one year old, we would be close to 60 when they were starting high school.

Because we were late starting our family, it just makes sense for us to give older kids a chance. The sad fact is that kids over the age of 5 have only a 20% chance of being adopted. I don't know what the stats are for teenagers, but it's got to be much worse.

Most of us have heard some bad stories about families who've taken the risk to adopt an older child, and experienced great hardship. But, the good news is that many, many other families have gone before us, and excellent resources are available to those who are curious.
It is a risk, but there are many more positive outcomes than bad ones. And think about this. Even if they do have a tough time over here, what would their lives be like over there?

Stay tuned. We'll post more later on that and how you can help spread the word about older child adoption. The countdown is on. Christian has his Montessori school graduation Friday, and we head out Sunday morning!