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.

As I mentioned in my last post, the greyhound rescue strongly encouraged us to keep the dog on a leash for the first two weeks any time he was out of his crate in the house. I followed this advice to the letter, and I had a very well-behaved dog on my hands. There were times that he might show interest in an off-limits item, but a firm "no" kept him from actually touching that item.

My husband could not say the same thing. He kept giving the dog freedoms that he was not ready for, leaving the dog unsupervised around the house for various amounts of time. To date, my husband has had to clean up shredded chalk, shredded crayons (including an unopened box of 64 crayons I purchased to replace the first shredded set), a dictation tape, and a couple of my son's toys. If my husband had supervised the dog until he had earned the privilege of being left unsupervised, then he would not have had to clean up so much garbage. We are fortunate that the dog was not injured by getting into "off limits" items.

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Your child needs to learn the rules of your house, and you cannot possibly put every single one of them on a piece of paper and post it on a wall. There are things that you need to teach your child about your home that you probably will not even think about until it comes up.

Safety is also an issue. You do not know what safety rules your child has already been taught and which he hasn't. You don’t want your child to learn the hard way why it is not okay to blow dry her hair in the bathtub or what happens if you stick a fork in an electric socket. While these basic safety rules are obvious to you and me, they might not be obvious to child who has grown up in a very different type of environment.

Related Blogs:

• Older Child Adoption blog


• International Adoption blog

Photo credit: Faith Allen