I was asked recently about my experience in adopting kids who were unrelated to each other by birth. Had I had any involvement with my kids being inappropriate with each other?

A friend of mine, a mom with 15 kids put it best, in that she’d not adopt a teenage boy because her teenage girls would consider him fair game in the dating world.

It’s long been a concern of mine and I’ve been extremely careful in the ages that I’ve adopted. Recently contacted about foster care for three teenage boys, I said no way. Not that I, in any way, feared my teen girls being attracted to the guys, more so I feared the guys chasing after my daughters.

Most of the boys I adopted came here very young or else when they got here, they encountered moody, older teenage girls who thought these boys were a waste of their time. Overall, I’d say the age order in which I adopted had everything to do with this not being a problem for us.

Also as the boys got older I moved them up to a more isolated area of the house, they never shared bathrooms, I keep everyone busy with sports and activities, and I would have nipped a problem in the bud if I ever saw one developing.

I also never adopted any children with a history of sexual acting out behaviors. I think they’d do better in a small family, and I never felt confident in my abilities to handle such an issue that was already an identified problem.

I do have one daughter, not now living with us as the Department of Juvenile Justice has her in a therapeutic placement, that would have loved to have always acted inappropriately to anyone and everyone. As such she was always watched carefully by me, but she also had some issues that repelled everyone. A classic sign of someone who’d once been sexually abused, all the more important that I continued to monitor her like an eagle, being provocative at church, school and around the house indicated we had a problem. I’d had her in therapy for years and years.

My caseworker as well would have stopped me from messing up the age order in our family. She’s been my tour guide, so to speak, through my many years of adoption, and I always respected her advance, detailed knowledge of issues that I was later to encounter.

When I’d consider a particular sibling group, I’d think long and hard for months, about how to best fit the kids into our family, the logistics involved, grade levels, ages and issues. Now, looking back, thinking of all we’ve been through and still need to go through, I shudder to think of what all we could have also dealt with had I not been so careful and discerning.

Even being hyper-painstakingly cautious, we’ve still run into many other problems. Any sort of an incest situation would have been over-whelming, and how would I have handled it? I just don’t know. I’d advise all potential adoptive parents to be particularly careful in this adoption issue.