I realize that I’ve already over-covered the Holidays Are Hell Syndrome in the adoption of older children. Now I’m coming at it from an advanced perspective. Eventually this syndrome can fade from memory.

Now after many, many years, with the successful navigation of family dinners and other holiday expectations exceeded, my grown children are happy participants, paving the way for the younger children to finally follow suit.

I’ve proved for so many years that I, unlike the birth parents from which they were removed, will not drink alcohol nor use drugs and mess up a celebration.... more

What I don’t know about adoption could cover several continents. I think the longer I’m in the adoption world, the less that I truly know. I am not any kind of expert or guru simply by the fact that I have so many children.

Before I had so many, when I was debating about writing a thesis for my PhD or simply jumping off the academic safe place into the abyss of older child adoption, I thought I was fairly knowledgeable. Yet the higher I climbed in the university world, the more I realized how little I truly knew.

It’s a big world out there; chock... more

I’ve been talking to several adoptive parents lately, good-hearted, intelligent couples who wanted to share their upper middle class lives with older children who needed a family.

They excitedly contacted social services, had a home study done, got their fingerprints cleared, and jumped through every hoop that was demanded of them.

They fixed up bedrooms, buying the best, outfitting closets, packing book bags in anticipation, repainting, renovating and buying larger vans or automobiles. Beside themselves with anticipation, several of them already... more

I should have been born in a more tropical climate, Georgia is steamy and humid, but our winters bore me. We rarely see snow, most days are pretty enough for me to work outside, but our nights are cold with damaging frosts.

I probably shouldn’t complain as one adoptive mom of a large family in Minnesota told me that their ground freezes six feet deep. That is unfathomable to me. I’ve always felt that I wasn’t having fun unless I was sweating.

So I fight a lingering... more

Being an adoptive mom is a lot of work; that’s not a news flash. Adopting older children is even harder. From your comments and the emails I’m certain I don’t struggle alone. These battles are universal.

The hardest part though may come from knowing that we pour out so much of ourselves, so much 24-7 hands-on, super-intensive parenting, therapy and the constant searching out of more resources because our children are so needy; that when they fail to meet our minimal expectations, such as getting a job to support oneself when one is grown, that our deep resulting frustration seems all... more

Sometimes, in the adoption of older children, I am bumfuddled by their very angry issues. Simple stuff they never learned since they’d never been parented, such as table manners or treating others with kindness and respect.

Kids that have actually been taught to physically fist fight for everything. Someone hit you? Slug them back, an anathema to my own once peaceful existence.

I reply in astonishment, “Do NOT hit anyone back,” as I hear long drawn out explanations that always boil down to, “He/She hit me first.”

“Come tell me, let me deal with it,” I always respond and usually... more

An email asked me to detail the story of my children’s arrivals. I’m not certain I could do that in less than a book. In a nutshell, I set out to adopt school age sibling groups that were hard-to-place.

Hard-to-place means a special needs situation in adoption. Older, with the emotional problems that came from not having parents, and needing to be placed with their brothers and sisters, fulfilled my main criteria.

I tiptoed around issues that I felt unqualified to deal with; I knew I was not cut out to be a parent of children with medical needs or severe diagnosed behaviors.... more

My family has recently been given a great deal of help. A local business took a few days off and sent a construction/painting crew to our house, working on a great deal of my deferred maintenance.

Each morning I need to prioritize what needs to be tended to, and my children’s needs always come first. I’ll pay attention to each of them long before I’ll worry about calling a plumber to fix a leaky faucet. With this many children, I have IEP and SST meetings, teacher conferences, therapist sessions, and the usual doctors and dentist appointments to attend.

I’m experiencing... more

Writing about age 18 yesterday, a reader remarked on the need to move back after moving out, returning to regroup, and I whole heartedly believe this also is an issue.

My family is blessed to have a doublewide trailer on our property, an independent living facility so to speak, that’s certainly taken a beating over the years. It has needed constant repair and it must feel as if its walls are rubber so many times have kids bounced in and out of it.

The world is a cold, hard, cruel... more

There’s an uproar in the foster care system, and rightly so, to keep kids in care, or at least give them the option to remain in care past age 18. The New York Times had a lengthy article and I read through some great comments there as well.

As an adoptive parent, the need can be equally as daunting. Some of my kids were adopted at ages 12 and 13,and even my 9, 10 and 11 years olds have lacked that very necessary foundational teachings that I’ve been... more