When you go through the home study process, the social worker will talk with your child about the adoption. So, you will (obviously) need to talk with your child about the adoption, too. You will probably have many conversations with your child throughout the adoption process because he will have the same kinds of questions that any child would have about adding a sibling as well as questions related to the adoption process itself.

When we went through the adoption process, my son was only three years... more

Here is part 1 of this topic. Here is part 2 of this topic.

More from the experts about what to do to prepare your child for the adoption of another:

To help parents and professionals prepare sibling-to-be, Weitzman suggests the following tips: 1. Elicit the child's fantasies about the sibling about to join the family. 2. Give the... more

Here's the first thing I wrote about adopting a sibling.

I will now write about the aftermath of adding a new child to our household. Here's some forshadowing: it was not pretty.

Big J, my older son (then age 4), had been a very happy only child. Very happy. He was smart, well-behaved, compliant, and probably a little spoiled since his parents both thought he was the best little boy in the world.

Then he got a little brother. A non-infant,... more

When we started the process of adopting my younger son we had already been talking to our older son about adding a sibling for a while. Up until a month or so before we started the adoption process I had been pregnant. I was the kind of pregnant that you talk about - well beyond the 12 weeks point, seriously showing, oh my aching back kind of pregnant. My older son knew we would be having a baby.

Then one day, we weren't having a baby anymore.

He was full of questions. What happened to the baby? Why did the baby die? Will we have another baby? For a while... more