If you have younger children in your home, bringing in an instant big sister can present some interesting challenges. Especially when you consider that, the teenager is going to be a role model for your younger children, and they will probably look up to her. Teenagers who are in the foster care system are at high risk for being sexually active and for having unprotected sex. The numbers I found for sexually active teenagers in foster care were between 40... more

If you have decided on transracial adoption, should you adopt more than one child of the race you are considering? Many years ago, when we first considered adoption, I felt very strongly about transracially adopted children having at least one sibling that they could identify with racially and culturally. I felt it was somehow unfair to the transracially adopted child to be the only one in the family that looked different. Now our family has completed a transracial adoption.

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Two of our children are 10 months apart in age, so for a little over two months every year brother and sister are the same age. It so happens that their first names are very similar as well. Not a planned thing, actually one was adopted at the age of six. The both have blue eyes and they are both quite thin. As you might imagine, this occasionally leads people who are not very familiar with our family and don’t know that one is adopted to assume that brother and sister are twins.

This assumption absolutely drives Lane... more

You’ve decided on an infant adoption and you would like to help your older children accept the new baby into the family. Why not let the older children look through baby names with you and help you choose. If you already have baby names picked out, then have the older children help choose the spelling of the names. Infant adoption can be stressful on the whole family.

However, including the older siblings in on choosing some of the details can help them to accept and love their new baby. Older siblings can sometimes... more

Many states have policies about siblings remaining together for adoption, even if they haven’t been in a foster care placement together. Should that policy also govern placement when one of the siblings being considered for adoption is severely mentally disabled? What if that disabled sibling is preventing the other sibling from being adopted?

This situation does actually occur; I’ve seen these siblings on the various state websites that list available children for adoption. It also happened to the older sisters of one of my adopted... more

You have decided to move ahead with your adoption plans to bring a sibling group into your family. Most of the children in the sibling group have appropriate names, but for one reason or another, one of them will require a name change at the time of the adoption. How will the other children react to that name change?

There are several reasons you might need or want to change the name of one of your children when you complete the adoption process. Some families see choosing a child’s name as a right of passage (sort of) into... more

With all of our teenagers off to summer camps and mission’s trips, Dani, our nine year old has been suddenly thrust into the position of big sister. That esteemed position of the eldest child, the sister whom all the little children look up to as a role model, a leader, and a comforter.

Apparently, she is taking her new role quite seriously. She is doing extra jobs around the house, without being asked to do them. She is doing the jobs that belonged to the teenagers who are currently at camp, and doing them correctly.

She... more

My friend has two adopted daughters at home that happen also to be birth siblings. The girls don’t look much alike but both are quite striking and less than two years apart in age. They suffered many years of chaos before coming into foster care a few years ago. Ever since being placed in my friend’s home they have lived a switching game, and it continues now that they are adopted.

They seem to take turns being the “good” child and the “bad” child. Both are never good at the same time, nor are they both bad at the same... more

My oldest daughter hates it when I write about her, she’s a private person and wants to put the past behind her. Therefore, I apologize “J,” but I feel compelled to write about our concerns for your little sister, she is my daughter, too. Little sister “R” is 18, almost 19, and is making some really bad choices. It has to do with that teenage brain thing; you know they don’t use the same part of their brain as an adult.

“R’s” first bad choice was moving out the month of her eighteenth birthday. She did move in with her older sister, “J”... more

Many people who are involved in adoption feel that the pecking order should never be changed by bringing in an older child or children. Our family has violated this status quo many times over the past 14 years of our adoption journey. Since we are licensed foster parents, we have frequently been asked to foster teenagers, which temporarily disrupted the pecking order.

The first children we adopted were two girls. The oldest girl, a 15 year old, was 22 days older than our oldest child was. The second girl was 9, and nearly... more