Infant adoption, child adoption, domestic adoption - Dog's Eye View of Older Child Adoption: Embracing as "Yours"

11/01/07

Dog's Eye View of Older Child Adoption: Embracing as "Yours"

Posted by : Faith Allen in Hoping to Adopt Blog at 05:09 am , 417 words, 156 views
Categories: Older Children

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.

I have owned many dogs throughout my life, and I raised the vast majority from puppies. I would choose a really cute puppy, give him lots of love, and watch him grow into a full-grown dog. Along the way, I would deal with chewed up carpet and furniture and lots of housebreaking issues. This greyhound is the first dog I have ever owned that I did not raise from a puppy.

I have not found my love for this dog to be different other than that, in some ways, I appreciate him more because of not having to deal with the headaches of puppy issues. He has a real appreciation for living in a loving home, whereas some of my other dogs were, quite frankly, spoiled. This dog and I have a mutual respect for what the other has to offer.

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I have never adopted an older child, so I cannot discuss the difference in love from a firsthand perspective. Some adoptive mothers have told me that they love all of their children wholeheartedly, whether adopted at infancy or later, but that the experience is simply different. In some cases, there are issues that make it harder to bond, such as Reactive Attachment Disorder. In other cases, watching a child let down her guard and blossom brings a completely new level of appreciation that is not experienced in parenting a child who was never guarded. (See Nancy's posts about Beth on the Reactive Attachment Disorder blog.)

Based on the things I have read on others' blogs and based upon the conversations I have read on message boards, older child adoption is clearly a different experience from newborn adoption, but that does not make the experience "better" or "worse." Different types of adoption are better fits for different families, and sometimes they are better fits at different times in our lives. While bringing a puppy into my home was the best move years ago, an older dog was the right fit today. The same is true for older child adoption: It needs to be the right match and the right timing for your family.