By Claudia Fletcher
I am a post-adoption support parent liaison and the adoptive mom of 8 children (adopted in the last 3 years, ranging in age from 4 to 13). Obviously biased, I do believe that my insight is based on my experience, as well as that of many other large adoptive families with which I am acquainted. Claudia Fletcher Large adoptive families are unique. The bustle of activity, the noise level, the clutter, and the chaos are frightening to outsiders. But, to those of us who parent these children, the joy and thrilling challenge we have in impacting so many lives far outweighs the stress and frustrations that come our way.
As parents of 8 children adopted in the last 3 years, ranging in age from 4 to 13, (and waiting for number nine), my husband and I are among those who have taken on this challenge. However, many social workers are biased in placing children into families as large as ours.
For this reason I have developed a list of the benefits of large adoptive families which can be shared with social workers who are nervous about placing children in families like ours. They are based on my experience as well as that of many other large adoptive families with which I am acquainted.
Here are the Pros as I see it:
1) Large families are active and busy. There is never a dull moment at our house. There is always something going on and often, children leaving foster care lack the creativity necessary to plan their day. If left as the only child alone during those strange odd moments when it happens, our kids are at a loss for something to do. The business of our home keeps things moving for them.
2) Large families provide instant companionship. Some of our children lack the social skills to develop good friendships at school. Others lack the organizational skills, due to FAE or ADHD, to plan activities with other children. However, at home there are a bunch of friends, who also happen to be siblings, who are almost always here. My kids often name their siblings as their best friends (even though nobody has more than 2 siblings in our home who are related by birth).
3) Large families provide relief for children with attachment issues who are working on bonding to their parents. While we strive to give each of our children some individual attention every day, children entering our family can attach at their own pace. They can choose to begin by attaching to another sibling or two if they are two threatened to bond to us. They find a place to belong in the family system and enjoy that sense of belonging without having to become too intimately involved with us as parents.
4) Large families provide role models of attachment. All of our children are at different stages of bonding to us. In our family, a new child can see various levels of attachment and choose to model behaviors comfortable for them.
5) Attachment to parents is less threatening for adopted children in large families. While I seem to be repeating myself, I see this as such a major issue. Many social workers feel that a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder will do best in a family with no other children. I strongly disagree. Nothing would be more frightening or threatening for an RAD child than to be sitting at a dinner table, for example, with two adults who are expecting the child to interract appropriately with them. The acting out would begin immediately.
6) Large adoptive families provide an easier transition for adoptive children. Most foster homes and, obviously, all residential treatment centers have a large number of children. Moving into a large adoptive family is more similar to a foster home or RTC and thus more comfortable, and yet it provides more nurture and complete permanency.
7) Children can learn self-acceptance by being a part of a family where there are other kids like them. None of my children are singled out as being a problem child. Each child has issues -- often different from the others and yet sometimes the same. It's not weird in our family to take pills in the morning, to go to therapy, to have diagnosis, to have an IEP.
8) Adoptive parents of a large number of adopted children learn coping techniques that keep them psychologically more healthy. When our first sib group moved into our home, I engaged in countless control battles with an ODD child who was similar in temperment to myself. Over the last three years I have learned a great deal about picking my battles and have become a better parent. Our children now have much better parents than we were when we were a smaller family.
9) Adoptive parents of a large number of adopted children are familiar with resources, issues, and support systems. We know how to advocate in IEP meetings, find therapists who are familiar with adoption and attachment issues, fill out hoards of paperwork, acquire respite services, etc.
10) Adoptive parents of large families have a better idea of what types of children they can handle. If/when we add to our family again, we know which types of children and which issues we can handle. We can wade through descriptions and psych evals and know if a child would do OK in our home or not.
11) Disruptions are less likely to occur in large adoptive families. While I have no statistics to back me up, I'm fairly certain that families who have adopted and stuck with many different kinds of kids would be less likely to disrupt for less than life-threatening reasons. We have adopted a child from a disruption who is doing great with us.
12) Expectations for children in large adoptive families remain reasonable. By being involved in post-adoption support as a professional, I have learned that unrealistic expectations can destroy families. I know a family who has a couple of severe RAD kids they adopted as toddlers. They are now teenagers. They mentioned in a support group recently, "We used to have big dreams for our boys. We felt we would be successful if we could raise them to go to college and have a career. Now, 15 years later, we realize that we will be successful if they can make it through life without killing themselves or someone else." Parents who have raised kids with issues know how to maintain realistic expectations.
13) In order to survive, large families must have structure and consistency. Older children being adoptive must have this kind of structure.
14) Almost all large adoptive families have at least one, sometimes two, stay at home parents. This constancy is so important for special needs kid and to know that mom or dad is always home is comforting for them. They need to know what to expect.
15) Large adoptive families teach cooperation, life skills, and responsibility. It is physically impossible for parents of large families, without outside help, to maintain a household, including cooking, cleaning, and laundry, when there are several children. For this reason, children must work together to assist parents in keeping the house running smoothly. Our children begin doing chores at age 4. Each child over six is responsible for picking up and vacuuming or sweeping one room of the house. When they turn 13 they begin learning to help with laundry. And during the summer they take turns cooking the evening meal (with supervision). They also learn to care for younger siblings.
16) Large sibling groups can better melt into a large family. A sibling group of three placed into a family who only has two children, for example, outnumbers the existing chlidren. This can be a very weird dynamic. I always encourage social workers I talk to to consider big families for big sib groups. I think it is healthier.
17) You gotta learn how to share in a big family. My former career in college student development and residence hall direction gave me the opportunity to deal with a lot of roommate conflicts. They usually came from college students who had never learned to share a room. In addition, could it not be possible that marital conflicts occur between people who have never learned to share?
There are obviously some challenges in raising a large family. The household management is tricky -- scheduling can be a nightmare -- and at times the amount of individual problems of each child can combine to make it overwhelming. But as stated before, the joy far outweighs the stress.
About a year ago I read somewhere that adoption can become addicting. At some point adding just one more doesn't seem to be that big of a deal. But at least in our situation, our kids are our life. My husband doesn't golf and we aren't in a bowling league. I don't meet the ladies in town for coffee. We do kids. We love what we do. And, if that's what we're going to do, we want to do it for as many as we can.
As Barbara Tremitiere pointed out in her dissertation, large adoptive families are indeed "A Special Kind of Normal." >>
Now for the cons:
1) There is less time for individual attention. I am presently working on setting up some outside help so that my husband and I can each spend more individual time with each child.
2) It gives the kids one more way in which they aren't "normal." Our big family draws attention to them and we have one child who has always just wanted to be "normal".
3) It can keep children from having things their friends have -- their own room, designer clothes, etc. But our children know that we wouldn't have more material possessions (boats, jet skis, snowmobiles, etc.) even if we had fewer children.
I'm sure that I have provided lots of opinions to create lots of controversy. I definitely think, though, that large families are often an excellent resource that are often ignored by social workers.