Just starting and a few questions

Adopting out of birth order could be an issue due to the age of your child. Many of the kids in foster care have experienced abuse as a normal way of life and may hurt your child. Something serious to think about. I would highly recommend reading Greg Keck's books-Adopting the Hurt Child and Parenting the Hurt Child. I found them very helpful in understanding behaviors we encountered with our kids. Good luck.

I actually have both those books and have also found them helpful. I was actually thinking of moving my DD into the room next to us. The other bedrooms are on the other side of the house, so to get to her, they'd have to pass through us. I am a bit worried about the abuse, but I've thought I could discuss that with the CW. Is that right?

I would suggest alarming the rooms. It sounds wierd but the kids feel safe that no one can sneak up on them and then no one can get to your young daughter. Research as much as you can on attachment. good luck

Sorry, but I SO agree with the others. You think you can protect her 100% but the only way to really do that is to adopt same age or younger than her at her age. Please think about it. It would take a special sibling group to come with no concerns in that area. Where we are, and this differs in every state and often between counties, same sex can share a room but opposite sex can only share a room to age 4. Age 4 and 1 day and one would have to move out. Kim

First, welcome to the madness. Second, I'm sorry for the loss of your son. Don't give up your dining room! You'll need it with a larger family. Ours got used for playing games, setting up the Christmas tree, projects, homework, etc, etc. It went way beyond just being used for eating. Ours was large, too. It easily handled a table that seated our family of ten and a few guests with plenty of room left over. Putting a big table in it allowed one group of kids to do one thing at one end of the table while another group did something else at the other end, and stuff in between, too. We would have never made it into anything else because it was too valuable as a multi-purpose room. Our state required the kids to have separate beds, not separate rooms. And that requirement was glossed over during our first homestudy, because it did not make sense to our worker to be a stickler with kids who had been raised sleeping on the floor with the entire family in one room. Our girls were much more comfortable together in one bed than separated in the dark, scary night. But do ask for your state/county's regulations regarding your house. All of that will be gone over during the study, though. I agree with the idea you need to be very careful about adopting older kids. Not all of them will abuse another kid, but you do need to be aware of that possibility and be very cautious.

Thanks for all your advice! I will look very carefully at their backgrounds and everything before agreeing to a placement. I will protect the daughter in my home first and formost. I would really love to have much younger children. Here though, you cannot adopt through DHR until the children are 8 years old or older or if there are three or more or if they have major medical problems. All those are options to us, we don't really care what they look like or what medical issues they have. We've dealt with a lot of medical stuff with our DD already, so we've become accustomed to traveling to the doctors and hospitals a lot. We do have another dining area too (large area in our kitchen). The dining room right now is used as an office. It is really just an extra room that we have thought about making into a playroom anyway. If we need it as a bedroom, it would be good, but we won't use it unless we absolutely need it.

It makes a difference if you have a large kitchen. We didn't, and no family room, either. (Old but beautiful Victorian house.)If you're already dealing with medical issues for your daugther, be careful about taking on too much with any new kids. It can get overwhelming quickly when there's more than one who needs extra attention.

No, we did deal with those medical issues. She's pretty good now. Very few medical issues. Just an inhaler 2 times a day for the rest of the winter... maybe longer... maybe not. And also possible speech therapy, but I really don't think she needs that. We'll see. Anyway, thanks so much you guys! I really appreciate the experience!