This post is part of a series on older child adoption in which I am applying things I learned from adopting a retired racing greyhound to hoping to adopt an older child. While there are obviously many differences, I learned a lot that can be useful in adopting an older child.

Before we adopted our greyhound, he was living in a kennel. I took my son and our beagle along to meet him. We looked at the different on-line profiles of greyhounds available for adoption, but the picture and description... more

This post is part of a series on older child adoption in which I am applying things I learned from adopting a retired racing greyhound to hoping to adopt an older child. While there are obviously many differences, I learned a lot that can be useful in adopting an older child.

When you adopt a retired racing greyhound, the rescue spends a lot of time talking about the dog's life before he enters your home. My dog spent 22+ hours a day living in a small crate next to many other... more

My family recently adopted a retired racing greyhound. As I was moving through the process of adopting this dog, I was struck by some of the similarities to adopting an older child. Of course, adopting a child is much more complicated, and there are numerous differences, but I did see a lot of wisdom in the adoption process put into place for bringing this dog into our home. So, I thought I would put together a series on this topic.

There are many retired racing greyhounds who need homes. The breeders no longer want the dogs after they lose their profitability... more

On my post Deciding to Adopt a Child: What You Have to Offer, a reader posted the following question:

Is it bad that I don't think I'm ready to parent an older child yet? I've put a lot of thought into it. I'm not ruling it out for the future when I have more maturity, strength and confidence, especially since I might be a bit too young to parent a child younger than 9 (I'm 29) But it seems as if it involves a lot more than I thought it would back when I was 20.... more

This year's National Adoption Month seems to have a certain theme: adoption of older children. The focus is on foster-to-adopt, which is probably as it should be. If any segment of the adoption population needs a little PR, it's the adoption of older children from foster care.

Because of this emphasis there are tons of feel-good news articles on foster-to-adopt happy endings on the net. Here are some offerings:

"Adoptions make one day each month a happy day... more

Here is part 1 of this post.

Here's what one writer (Susan Ward) says about the advantages of adopting an older child:

You can learn more about an older child as to their abilities, interests, and personalities than you can with a baby.

You have more history (childhood illnesses, developmental milestones, skills, talents) that can be evaluated by specialists... more

Of course we have an Older Child Adoption blog on this site, so please refer to that for more complete coverage of this topic, but since many of the people who click on the topic "Hoping to Adopt" may be in the beginning stages of adopting, or just starting to think about the topic, I think it's appropriate to cover it here as well.

Adopting an older child can happen in all adoption situations: international, foster-to-adopt, and even private domestic adoption in rare circumstances.

In international adoption,... more