Anonymous wrote:I know this is an old thread, but I have a related question:

When do you tell the child and how? We're at the beginning of the process and haven't been chosen yet, but with even the slim chance of an adoption falling through, I'm not sure what I should tell my child and when. I like to think these things through early so that when the time comes, I'm mentally prepared for the conversation. My biggest fear is that we will bring the baby home and the birth mother will change her mind. I don't want my child getting attached to a "sibling" and then being heartbroken.

Those of you who've BTDT, how did you handle?

My plan had been to tell my older kids at some point between the time of our referral and the time of our travel (we did International for number three). However, with my kids having been through foster care and being older (4 and 7 at the time I started the process for a third), they could smell a social worker a mile away. So, when the home study started, they knew right away that something was up and the best explanation seemed to be the truth. So, they knew for a year before the baby came.

There were lots of things that went wrong and lots of political changes during the process so we were never sure if or when it would happen. I never discussed these things with the kids because it would have been unnecessary for them to stress about what might or might not happen. I guess, if it hadn't worked out, I guess I would have figured out what to say. But, thing is, even when you have a baby, things can go wrong. And, there was no particular baby/kid that we were going to get so it wasn't a real person that they were attached to. The other thing is that while things go wrong during adoptions, I don't think it happens as often as people believe. You might not get the kid that you thought you were getting, but almost always it works out that you eventually can adopt.

That poor girl. Having to be the only person in the family of one race is incredibly difficult.

10:03 here. The adoption falling through, while normally a very real concern, wasn't applicable in this situation. We adopted our oldest, and the child we are adopting from foster care is his biological sister. We are considered her family by virtue of previously adopting her older brother. The only people with greater claims were the BM (Rights terminated for neglect) and BF (Not interested). By the laws of that state, social services had to offer us the chance to adopt our son's little sister.

The story has a happy ending in that our daughter's doing really well and our son is a loving big brother.

Anonymous wrote:

So what would have happened if the adoption fell through? How would you have explained that? Did anyone in the education process address this as a possibility and how to manage expectations?

I have a friend going through this right now. Frankly, there is no good way to handle it. There is nothing you can say to siblings to make it make sense. She's kept it all very factual with her son at this point and he seems to be handling it OK, but you never really know.