Tips for Adopting out of Birth Order

Adopting out of birth order used to be frowned upon by adoption professionals. However, in more recent years, there’s been a shift away from the mentality of “avoid it if possible” and a move toward “here’s how to do it well.”

We offer these tips from conversations with experienced parents and adoption professionals. If you are pursuing an adoption that disrupts the birth order in your home, you should consider how to form relationships with others who have gone before you in this path. You’ll find that some of these ideas will sound like good old-fashioned common sense and some will be new things to consider for your family. We think all of them will help set your family up for successful adoption.

10 Tips For Adopting Out of Birth Order

1. Focus on the uniqueness of each child regardless of their position in the family. Indeed, this is good parenting advice in general. But if you are disrupting the order of the kids in the family, it should be an extra focus for your parenting. Encourage each child to develop her own areas of strength and individuality.
2. Talk with your existing children before you decide to change the birth order. Solicit their opinion and listen to their desires, suggestions, and concerns.
3. Role-play with your child/children through some of the everyday situations that may happen with this family change. For example, if the eldest child in your family has always been allowed to sit in the front seat of the car, what are some ways to change that “rule” to reflect that a new child will now be the eldest?
4. Plan for one parent to stay home for as long as possible to help all the kids adjust to the new family constellation.
5. Get extra help with the chores around the house to free you up to focus on the kids for at least the first few months.
6. Assign privileges within your family life based on ability rather than age. Downplay age-based rights. In the above example, rather than stating that the eldest child gets to sit in the front seat, perhaps the new rule could be that the children who are 12 and older will take turns, rotating by the week, sitting in the front seat. Children younger than 12 are not physically big enough to sit there safely.
7. Avoid comparing your children. Yes, the child that was raised in your family may well be able to do much more than the new child who is older, but these comparisons serve neither child. Talk with other key people in your family’s life, such as grandparents and school personnel, in advance to encourage them to avoid comparisons.
8. Be prepared for the new “oldest” child to be less mature than the children who are already in the family. Prepare yourself and your existing children in advance for this. For example, if in the past, you left your eldest at home alone when you went grocery shopping with the younger kids, anticipate that it may not be safe to leave your newly adopted eldest child at home. Use some criteria other than age as the reason some kids get to stay at home and others do not.
9. Educate yourself in advance about some for the potential issues that commonly come along with adopting an older child. It is not true that older kids are “damaged goods”; however, it is likely true that they have had difficult life experiences that make parenting them more challenging. Families that are prepared for this reality will fare better together.
10. Line up a support system before your new child comes home. Families that are open to getting help, and who get it as soon as they need it, will find their groove better. You are more likely to get the support early if you know where to go.

Our partners at Creating a Family have some excellent resources with which to prepare yourself for adopting an older child or for adopting more than one child at a time, both of which are common when adopting out of birth order.