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. I ended up parenting situations I once never could have imagined, but these challenges were unforeseen in their earlier years.

I was a working, single mother until five years ago when I took an early retirement from the school system. I was then parenting thirty children; some were grown by then but no less emotionally needy.

I stopped adopting when my gut, my instinct, a word from God told me to stop, and I felt supremely confident about that decision as well. I suppose that’s how one knows that one is following their true calling. Stopping is as important as was starting the process.

In the adoption of older sibling groups I always felt frustrated over the loss of their early childhood years. If I were that upset, imagine how the children must have felt. I need to figure it out, do the math, but my best guess would be the average age for joining our family was about nine or ten years old. That’s way too much developmental time that was lost to us.

I attempted to parent with purpose, to make up for lost time, nearly an impossibility and I’ve learned with amazement, how much bonding has also occurred after age 18, when the children discovered, much to their surprise, that I was still just as committed to them. This family time wasn’t over, it hadn’t ended, and if anything we grew closer. It was then our mutual choice to do so.

Our family quickly, and without effort, grew large just by adding sibling groups, older groups that grew up too fast for my liking and left home. But then again, I’m finding the real work starts after they are grown.

Photo Credit Cindy Bodie