Adoption question?

Parentberries
1

My SO and I have talked about adopting a child but are still 10 years away so I know the process will change. But I’m repeatedly hearing not to change the preexisting birth order of your family.
Does having 2 kids and adopting a 3rd that is in the middle changing the birth order or not? Your oldest is still the oldest and the youngest the youngest.
I have a feeling that will be the situation we find ourselves in but I don’t want to go against what is currently popular/valid/advice.

Thanks

2

I’ve never heard of that, I would assume birthorder would be: if you have a five year old and a 3 year old, don’t adopt a four or six year old. adopt someone younger than your youngest. but you don’t always know the age of the child you get do you?

3

I’ve also heard that you should not change the birth order if you adopt once the kids are old enough to know what the original or natural, however you want to phrase it, age order was. I have a four year old and a one year old. There is no way I would adopt a child older than my four year old-she knows she is the BIG sister. I would not take that from her. My one year old on the other hand wouldn’t really understand what was going on anyway-she’d just know she got a new playmate.

4

If you adopt a waiting child (one that is on a list of children) you can generally specify an age range but the agency might not stay strictly within that limit. [name]Say[/name] I specified a range of 2-5, they might suggest a 6 year old that meets all of the other requirements.
If everything works out in a perfect world I’d have 3 kids across a 5 year age range. So if I had a 5 year old and 3 year old I would say from age 3 and down maybe age 4. Depending on the birth order question.

5

I haven’t adopted nor have children, but have looked up the info myself since we might adopt someday. What I get is that it’s already hard for a child to adjust to a new baby brother/sister and then when you adopt and older child/out of birth order, it just makes it more stressful/hard to adjust.

Here is a good article about how to do it though:
http://www.adoptivefamilies.com/articles.php?aid=814

and here’s a blog about a family that adopted out of birth order:

So it can be done, but it might take a lot more work.

6

Thanks jersey_grey and catloverd.
I’ll have to read that blog in depth a bit more. Although I (the bad future parent) never thought that maybe the oldest wouldn’t want to be the oldest or the youngest want to be the youngest. I guess that’s something that we’ll have to consider.