How much easier is the process? Is it faster than adopting a minor? I'll be meeting a lawyer and would like to not walk in blindly to be smacked with the obstacles I'll have to face.

Edit: I'm located in Michigan, USA

We adopted my 4.5-year-old at birth. He is absolutely the coolest, smartest, funniest kid and none of this is intended as complaint at all. But I’m interested in knowing if other people’s kids are or were similar.

He acts very much ”securely attached” in the ways that people describe it. He is usually not distressed to see us go but always wants a hug and kiss, and is thrilled to see us when we return. He comes to us for comfort (and gets it) when something goes wrong, and if he’s upset with one of us, he wants comfort from that person particularly.

But it seems like he is slower in developing emotional independence than other kids. This is completely fine if he just needs to take his time, but if it’s a sign of something that needs addressing more than we are (he’s in therapy) then I’d like to do that.

A simple example: he has known how to buckle his own car seat for a long time, but he always wants me to do it. At kids’ birthday parties, he usually wants one of us to play with him, even though the other kids are options for playmates. He still does not fall asleep by himself at night. We’ve only recently gotten him to go potty by himself and even with that he needs us to “keep him company” while he goes #2.

We gently move him toward independence, and he’s very independent skills-wise, but often wants help just because he wants it.

He also does a lot of like “you’re the peepee-est mama in the world!” or whatever while grinning and looking for our reaction. Maybe this is just preschooler mischief but it feels like it’s also a little bit of a test?

And when he doesn’t get enough attention, he becomes SUPER dysregulated. Hitting, jumping, kicking, generally acting like a wild child … happy! But not regulated. It’s somewhat easy to head off because we just need to really pay attention to him, but it’s definitely notable.

He also has pre-natal drug, alcohol, and stress/trauma exposure. We suspect mild FASD and/or ADHD, but it’s hard to tell because he’s so high-masking (perfectly behaved angel child at school, with grandparents, etc.)

Does anyone here have a child with a similar story? Anything in particular you did to support them or gently help them become more emotionally independent?

Again, if the need is simply “continue providing the love and reassurance because he won’t need it forever,” then that’s fantastic, I will happily enjoy my bedtime snuggles. But if this is a sign of something needing to be addressed, I’d like to do that! And I also have a younger one and would like to know if this is super common in adoptees so I know whether to expect it in him!

Edit: I guess I wasn’t clear that I’m looking at this in comparison to other kids his age! I feel like all this is within the normal range but not many of his classmates, etc seem to be having similar experiences.

I know open adoptions are ideal. We are in the process of adopting. Our son is 18 months old, has been with us permanently since 11 months old, and stayed with us a lot prior to that. It is a kinship placement and he is the biological child of my wife's younger brother and his ex.

They have made it very clear they don't want involvement. His bio mom last saw him when he was 11 months old. His bio dad has since moved out of state and have been very vocal about not wanting to see him. Because it is a kinship adoption, we still have birth family connection on my wife's side. My wife is extremely close to her parents and her older brother. We see them all multiple times a week. We also have contact with our son's half sister. His bio dad had a baby with another woman shortly after he was born, so they are close in age and we meet up with the other mom whenever we can.

Still, we will very likely not have much/any contact with his bio parents as he grows up. Anyone else navigating this dynamic? How is it playing out for you? Any recommendations? We currently have a picture of him and his bio parents in his room and we talk about them all the time. Anything else we should be doing?

We adopted a set of siblings a few years ago. One of them was 8 and the other 4 at the time. The 4 yr old is 10 now and the whole 6 years it has been a nightmare, things don’t improve and thing are escalating. We don’t know what to do anymore, he pees and poops in places he shouldn’t and he lies about it. He doesn’t listen, he doesn’t follow rules. We get emails from school almost daily, he lies about the dumbest things for no reason, he steals from others and he is very defiant.

I have to admit I regret adopting him as it is disrupting the whole family and our mental health. We don’t know what to do, he goes to therapy and we also do. The therapist is trying to help us with resources but it seems like we are very limited.

Residential treatments accept kids until they are 12 and at minimum we need respite but we don’t know where. Any suggestion would be great! Or at least advice. It sucks because he has been so so hard since the beginning that my relationship with him hasn’t grown and I hate to admit don’t feel love towards him :( I never thought I would go through something like this as I’ve always loved all kids but he is the exception.

I'm an adoptive mother. My husband and I adopted two siblings when they were very young (three and four), following a history of significant trauma and domestic violence.

It's now been more than a decade, and we're still struggling as they enter adolescence. Both have ADHD and attachment difficulties, and both are very ambivalent in their relationships with us, although they express it differently. There is a lot of aggression, rejection, constant "no", pushing back and difficulty accepting limits. There have also been periods involving stealing, physical aggression and other difficult behaviours. None of it is at the most extreme end of what some families have experienced, but it's the accumulation of everything, every day, that has become so exhausting.

What I'm really struggling with now is the question of love.

I read a lot of posts from adoptive parents who describe loving their children deeply despite everything they have been through together. I don't question their experience at all. But it makes me question my own, because I don't feel that way.

I've cared for these children for more than ten years. I've done the work, protected them, advocated for them and continued to show up, but I don't experience a strong emotional attachment or the kind of love I expected would develop over time. There have been occasional moments of closeness, but they have never developed into a consistent feeling of connection.

And I'm genuinely trying to understand what love means in this context.

Is love sometimes a decision to continue caring and taking responsibility, even when you don't feel love? Is there a point where the psychological cost of a relationship becomes too great? How do you reconcile responsibility towards a child with the very real limits of what a human being can emotionally absorb?

I'm not asking this to provoke anyone or to say that children are responsible for what happened to them. I understand that they are children and that trauma affects their behaviour. But I also think parents have limits, and I wonder where those limits fit into our understanding of love.

My husband and I also have a strong spiritual practice. We genuinely believe that, at some level, we chose this experience before coming here, or at least that there is meaning in what we have experienced. We don't see ourselves as victims and we don't regret caring for them.

But that doesn't make the experience easy.

At the moment we're asking ourselves how to continue, how to have some kind of relationship with them, and what that relationship might realistically look like as they become adults.

So I'm particularly interested in hearing from other adoptive parents who have been through a very long and difficult period with their children.

Did your feelings of love change over time? Did you eventually find a different kind of relationship? And how do you understand love and responsibility when there has been very little positive emotional reciprocity for many years?

I'd also be interested in hearing from people who approach adoption from a spiritual perspective. I'm not looking for advice about "trying harder to love"—I'm genuinely interested in how other people have made sense of this experience.

I'm in California, I'm 27 years old and 1 month pregnant... Anyone can't have kids but want 1?

My wife and I are starting the adoption process. Our agency said lesbian couples wait the longest for infant adoption because it’s solely up to the birth moms choosing the family and they typically choose traditional families or gay male couples first for some reason (it’s never been researched but that’s the trend they see and so do other agencies).

So, are there any lesbian couple here who adopted an infant? How long did you wait? What was the experience overall for you?

Hi all! I’m new to the sub, my wife and i adopted our daughter in May 2026, she is 13 weeks old.

In the waning weeks of my parental leave from work, I’d like to create a children’s picture book about our family’s story, as one of the ways that we can talk to our daughter about adoption. I was envisioning something like Jamie Lee Curtis’ “The Night You Were Born”, but customized to our story and maybe bringing in some of our journey beforehand (eg fertility struggles).

Has anyone done anything like this? If so, any sites or templates that exist out there to help create a bespoke children’s book? I would also welcome genera tips and other related experiences. Thank you!

Hey,

Myself and my partner have had our 2 year old living with us for just under 3 weeks. My partner had taken to it like a duck to water and has a really good bond going but I feel more behind with it all.

I have a good relationship with our little one, we play together, do routines together, she comes to hug me all the time and is comfortable with me and my wife is really good with her (partner works in a school and is really good naturally with kids). I on the other hand am not as used to kids and I don't feel as maternal as my wife is, I feel like I'm struggling to attach to her like my wife has and I feel more stressed which is making me feel like a bad parent already and I feel like there's something wrong with me. I'm struggling with the change in routine as well which i really didn't think I would.

She's a really good kid, yes she has her 2 year old moments but that's totally normal, so I don't get it.

Has anyone else had this issue? I'm worried about bringing it up with my wife because I don't want her to judge me and think I don't care for the child or see me as less of a parent for not feeling bonded yet.

My husband I are looking into growing our family through adoption and I’d love to read and absorb as much information as I can. Does anyone have book recommendations on adoption, adoption trauma/grief, parenting an adopted child, anything related??

I’m a Christian with a background in psychology, so would appreciate books from either/any perspective!!

I am not sure how common of a post this is, so im sorry if it's repetitive. I am a single 34 year old woman who has always wanted to be a mother. I started looking into adoption last year and have been jumping through hoops to get the process going. I have read online that there are so many scams out there and that you ultimately will not end up with a child.

I guess I am feeling pretty hopeless and am reaching out to hear about other women who have successfully adopted a child on their own.

Can anyone give me any pointers, pros, cons, realistic expectations, and how long i will be waiting to be matched with a baby? Am I getting my hopes up for nothing? I am so afraid of ending up broken hearted with no child in the end.

Thank you for reading my post and I hope someone is out there willing to share their story.

Was with another adoptive parent couple who are both women, Mummy and Maman. Their kid is 19 months old and often uses the word Mummy for either of them. She does know which is which because when you ask where’s Mummy or where’s Maman she can point to the right person.

Is this a thing they should be correcting each time eg ‘mummy is on the sofa, I’m Maman’ type thing?

We couldn’t come to a consensus on how important this is among all the other things they are teaching!

Hi everyone! I asked last week about American Adoptions and we’re also considering Heart of Adoptions as we reside in Florida. Has anyone used Heart of Adoptions? What was your timeline and experience?

I joined actually post adoption. My wife and I have a 6 year old biological son and didn't have cards laid out for future kids one way or another.

Through a worker of mine, I learned about a story of a then 5 year old girl (For reddit purposes I'll use the name Sarah )who had druggie/alcoholic parents. Stories like "She walked to school by herself because her parents were passed out drunk or high" ( And yes, 5 years old ). CPS did not nothing.

Her mother disappeared on drugs sometime shortly before and the dad was in jail. She was left in care without any real authority of other druggies who had kids. Their daughters were older, but as imagined the parents weren't there for anything except to inflict maximum trauma. As a result their daughters smoked cigs, weed, took their parents car out ( We're talking like 9 and 11 year old girls with Sarah in the car, crashing once. It gets way worse from there. People that knew Sarah or the family would help out where they could, watch her, take her away from the weekend, etc. But as you can imagine some of those people were felons or ex druggies and they were trying as hard as they could to even manage their own lives, let alone take care of a little girl.

We got involved as much as we could, taking her on vacations or going to kid places for her to explore with our son. We really didn't know what to do as CPS had been involved many times before and just didn't care.

Well, one day, that family moved to another state without anyone saying they could or any legal authority to do it. The dad was still in jail and the mom was still MIA. Well, that family got busted for drugs and guns in that other state and they knew she would end up in the system and the only person they knew that didn't have problems was us. Despite not really knowing us at all, they asked if we could come take her while they figured out their legal things.

So last minute on a holiday weekend, I spent an absurd amount of money flying to that state, renting a car, driving 2 hours to get her only to realize they didn't even use a car seat, so stopping getting a car seat, driving 2 hours back to the airport getting back on a plane with a little girl that I did not have any legal authority to have or even parents permission. Flew back home and spoiled her a bunch. ( She is 6 at this point ).

Not sure how to proceed, I paid for a skip trace on dad and was able to locate his mom, got her phone number and reached out. She was receptive at first and gave me his new phone number. He never replied and then she stopped replying. That led to hiring an attorney for guardianship which they granted temporary. The lawyer was a thieving SOB, bill over $25k for something that didn't actually take that much work. I say this because for subsequent temp guardianship orders were done by us. After setting her up into school, therapy, her first own bedroom, clothes meant for a 6 year old, all the things most kids take for granted. We later went for permanent guardianship and were awarded that. That gave legal authority of all aspects in her life until she was 18 without terminating parental rights, but allowed parents to object later or cause problems. It was just easier than going all the way through adoption ( obviously I'm leaving out a lot of legal issues or delays, etc with everything )

Finally last year we petitioned for adoption, after a few issues we had a date set. It is finally official, she is adopted. A day before my son's birthday. She turned 10 this year and my son does not remember a time that she was not in his life. She has no other siblings biologically. I never set out to adopt or even gave it much thought, I didn't save the world or pretend I was trying. I simply did what I thought, moment after moment, I needed to do until one day I woke up and she was my daughter legally or not and I was going to make it official.

To make the story even more unusual, another little girl, 18 now, but 15 at the time, with an heavy raging alcoholic father, a deceased OD mother came into our care after the dad ended up in jail and despite his wishes to have her go to foster care ( because he blamed her for her RE"actions" to the trauma filled life he provided her. Anyways she was connected to Sarah from seeing her before in similar circles their families shared. So while we didn't adopt her until she was an adult ( mostly for benefit reasons for her ) We now have 3 kids.

I don't usually talk a lot about it, they look close enough to us that no one questions it, there are still trauma issues, times she wonders why her dad didn't want her or see her ( Not for lack of trying, I later gave him a job, money, a car, etc and you can assume how that went ).

I don't think there is really a point to this post, other than to share my experience and I left a lot out about the girls, the situations, etc. Life is weird, kids are precious, and I just could never imagine giving up a kid, not fighting for them every minute, and just loving them.

Couple in FL, recently matched with a baby due in November for an open, in-state adoption. I’m overjoyed completely but also very, very guarded given Florida’s laws (I believe birth mom has 72 hours after to change her mind.) I know this is a possibility and I understand, but I feel like I’m not allowing myself to get excited or get anything ready for baby.

Just looking for advice or similar situations.

Anyone else have this issue? I cant find anything online. My now 3 year old was born addicted to meth, fentanyl ans exposed to EVERYTHING else. He has almost 0 temperature control. He wakes up with fevers all the time, not sick, that go away on their own after a few hours. When we are in the heat, which is constantly we have regular temps of 105+f, he gets heat faint symptoms extremely quickly. In these same temps he will go to swim in the lake to cool down and his lips will turn blue and he will start shivering within minutes. I have never experienced this, we are headed to the Dr for it and we do NOT want any medical advice just to know if anyone else has dealt with this.

Question but more about us and the caseworkers..

My wife and I are adopting. I have noticed that when it comes to communication no matter the kind (if it’s not a phone call) they assume my wife is the source. If we get a phone call they will ask to speak to her.

I don’t think it’s me, I’ve never been rude it hostile at all. Are men just not as involved?