9/30: Adopting “Out of Order”
I’m talking about birth order again, btw! **As an aside, we are NOT planning to add children to our family at this juncture, I’m only answering this as a hypothetical adoption question!** Christina asked if I would ever adopt a child out of birth order. For those of you who aren’t familiar with adoption talk, an example would be if we adopted a child older than Jack, Shane, or Finley so that all of the sudden their relative “order” in the family was disrupted.
I wanted to write about this since I just posted about how important I think birth order, temperament, and sibling relationships are in the development of our self-esteems, identities, roles, and personalities. My answer is that I would most definitely NOT consider adopting out of birth order. I can’t imagine anything more confusing for a child being deposed of his “place” in the family, whether it’s going from being an only child to a 2nd child, or a 3rd to a 4th. It’s not that I think it would be impossible for healthy, well-adjusted, normal kids to come out of a situation like that, I just think it creates a LOT of additional challenges.
Adding more children to a family can be really stressful for kids in a “traditional” family, and the mom guilt can be horrendous. Compound that with the likelihood that if you’re adopting out of order, that pretty much implies you’re adopting an “older child.” [I guess the only exception would be if you have an infant and you are adopting a child only slightly older in age. I’d consider that more of “virtual twinning,” which would have been our case if Shane’s adoption had been delayed and we’d delivered Finley before bringing him home. Still a challenge, but not the same as having a child out of the infant range and then adopting an older sibling for him/her.] So by adopting out of birth order, you would 1) be throwing off the relationships and identities built based on age/birth order, and 2) have the added hurdles of helping an older adopted child adjust, which is H-A-R-D on its own.
As a hypothetical example, if we had adopted an older sibling for Jack, he would have still gone through the stress of no longer being our only child, and I would experience all the mom guilt that goes with that, but instead of having a smaller, less capable baby for him to help with and from whom he could perhaps derive a modicum of positive self-esteem, there’d be an older child in the home who would bring with him (assume it’d be a brother for simplicity) all the exposures he had in the orphanage. The good, bad, ugly. And orphanages are often pretty tough places for a little kid to spend his early years – lots of bullying, sometimes abuse, and survival strategies. At a very minimum, that child has not been raised with our values or teachings. We have done our best to protect Jack from bullying so that he can have a fresh start at a strong, healthy, developed, positive self-image. So on the one hand, I’d be fretting about my newest child who has experienced extra time living in an institution and trying to figure out how to ease his adjustment, and on the other, I’d be worrying like hell about my baby boy who might end up suffering from 2nd hand abuse AND the normal neglect that happens when you add another child of any age into your family.
Phew, I got tense and stressed out just thinking about that hypothetical!
That’s just my 2 cents. Take it for what it’s worth. I’ve seen some pretty effed up situations result from jacking up the birth order, but there are some families that turn out fine too. It’s not right for my family, but a lot of people would say the same thing about adding 2 kids, almost simultaneously, 12-14 months after adopting your first child…which is what we did. To each his own, but to answer Christina’s question with regards to our family, that would be a no. Thoughts and comments are welcome here. If your family was built “out of order,” please don’t be afraid to share your experience. I always come off as far more opinionated than I actually am…or maybe sometimes I am really that opinionated, but lately I’m finding myself feeling less and less like I know enough to be strongly opinionated about anything. Motherhood is humbling like that;)
Subscribe to Posts
10 comments
It would seem to me that the child most affected by adopting out of birth order would be the oldest child. The youngest child doesn’t necessarily stay the youngest-like Shane. I think it would really depend on the temperment of the child(ren) involved. I actually don’t know personally of any families where adopting out of order has been a problem-but I do some several successes.
I assume if I ever had another child-I would probably adopt out of foster care-and an older child is definitely a possibility. But I would take my daughter’s wishes very seriously before doing that.
I’m pregnant with #3 - asked my oldest if she’d like a baby brother or sister - to which she replied she wanted “a BIGGER brother or sister NOT A BABY.” I think she’s craving a true playmate and her 1 year old sister is just not cutting it yet. Oh well!
My situation is slightly different because I had three boys in 5 years back in the early 90’s (they are now 19, 16 and 15) and then 9 years later (much my our surprise!) had a daughter.
It has really changed the dynamics because for 9 years, my youngest son thought he was the youngest and most certainly is the baby of our family. Now … he has this 5 year old sister who has claimed his spot.
What’s even stranger is that my daughter acts like an only/oldest child most of the time. She definitely has the oldest child traits like my firstborn.
Family dynamics are so amazing!
thanks for the discussion, that actually brings up a lot of hypotheticals i have never thought of. adopting out of order has always been something i would consider (not saying i wouldn’t now, but i just have another point of view to consider).
I was 9 years younger than my sister and we still joke that she is actually the youngest and I am the oldest or only.
We also took in foster children of whom some were older than I. I was still the oldest in those situations, so I imagine it was more difficult on them than on me since I was also probably treated as the oldest.
I always thought adopting out of order was a bad idea but I have friends that have done just that & it has worked beautifully. They have adopted through foster care & their very first placement was 2 brothers, M was 8 months older than their oldest N, & G was 3 weeks older than their youngest (& only girl) A. There was something about M that challenged N to come out of his shell. N was a super shy, introverted, cautious little guy but having M really changed him. Now my friends have 5 boys & 1 girl, all between the ages of 7 & 4. It’s quite a household but for them it works. N has now been ‘dethroned’ twice & it never seems to throw him. I think dethroning A as the youngest or only girl would be a bigger problem.
We did adopt out of order. We adopted an almost-11-year-old boy from Russia who is now 14. He has younger siblings who are 14, 12, 8, 8 (adopted from Guatemala before him), 7 and 2 year old (adopted after him from Vietnam). Am I glad we adopted him? Sure. Would I adopt another older child out of order? No. It is difficult, and it is very hard on the kids already in the family. Even though our other 14 year old wasn’t the oldest in the family since we also have a crew of adult children, in a way he was the oldest because we have a large gap between him and the 18-26 year olds. So, he went from oldest of our second family, to being a younger brother. Coupled with him being passive and easily influenced, with our adoptive son being forceful and bringing in the baggage of living in an orphanage for seven years (bullying, survival techniques, plus exposure to things we’ve sheltered our children from), it was stressful for our bio son and stressful on us all. Overall all the children have been exposed to a world I don’t think they were ready to see. We are adopting again — and this will be our fifth child by adoption, but this time we insisted that he or she would be younger than our two year old. I can’t say we’ll never adopt another older child, but if we do, it will not be out of order. I guess if that happens, we’d just be geriatric parents!
Thanks Laurie for answering my question! It’s something that I have thought about periodically and it doesn’t seem to come up very often in discussions about adoption. In fact we have some acquaintances who just recently adopted a daughter from Ethiopia who is older than their bio son and they never even mentioned the birth order issue (granted I am not close to them- but it never came up in their blog, emails, etc). They had requested an infant, but as in so many cases, there were many more older children available and so they decided to go ahead with adopting an older child. If we do decide to adopt then we too would request a child who is younger than our youngest biological child, but this means that we would have to adopt an infant/toddler, unless we wait several years- and then we’ll be closer to being geriatric parents as Stacey says!
I have 2 adopted children from DRC (Congo) and both are “out of order”. I have a bio 13 year old son and a bio 5 year old daughter. My adopted children are 6 (boy) and 8 (girl) and came home only 6 months ago. They lived in an orphanage for 2 years and have both seen and experienced much trauma and loss. I am a bit sad to hear that so many families are opposed to adopting out of birth order, only because it often limits adoption to only young children. Older children need families so badly and in our experience, they really can heal quite well given the right environment. My two children have adjusted amazingly well to our family, a new language, new everything in their lives and in the meantime, they have impacted our bio children in amazing ways. My oldest has always been a great kid, but now I find him really taking his little brother under his wings and teaching him, being an example, etc. My youngest was always “connected to my hip” and quite shy and now I find her being almost fearless and surprisingly brave. She is still the “baby” as she was before, but we make a point of stressing how much she has taught her new siblings. The boys share a room and the girls share a room, which was a big change for the bio children since they were used to their own territory. Each child gets a date night alone with mom or dad once a month and that has helped all four immensely. It’s been a growing experience for us all, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I appreciate you broaching the topic, and I just wanted to chime in my two cents! Thanks!
We are in the process of adopting a toddler…meaning we are adopting out of birth order. I don’t think it is the ideal situation, and indeed it will be challenging. However, given the fact that most orphans in the world are not young, healthy infants, we cannot bring ourselves to do anything but pursue a toddler/older child /special needs adoption. I have to agree that this topic doesn’t come up much, but I think it should. It’s a complicated area but one worth exploring.
Since toddlers/special needs toddlers and older children are often overlooked when it comes to adoption, it is disheartening to hear that not many people are even willing to consider it. Again, I don’t think it is a good choice in all situations of for all families, but I do believe (and have witnessed many times) that it can work. I also understand (and have seen) where it can go terribly wrong.
I hope it becomes a topic that is given more emphasis in the online adoption community. I for one would love to read more about other experiences in this area!
Leave a Comment