I have a confession to make.

I am an adoption rule breaker.

I am really not usually the rule-breaking type. I was on the honor roll in high school and graduated fifth in my class of over 500 students. I have always been “early to bed, early to rise”. I don’t curse. I go to church every Sunday. When I was little, all that my dad had to do to discipline me was to say he was disappointed in what I had done, and I was a blubbering mess. I have been accused of being a “goody two shoes”. I have never even had my ears pierced.

And yet behind this façade of goodness and honesty lies a big time rule breaker. I break adoption rules. I break ‘em big time.

Want some examples?

Experts say, “You should not adopt a child that is within six to 12 months of age of any other child in your house, as that is artificial twinning.” Done that!

Experts say, “You should not adopt a child that is older than your youngest child, as that is disrupting birth order.” Guilty as charged!

Experts say, “You definitely should not adopt a child that is older than your oldest child, as that is really disrupting birth order and is likely to create all sorts of problems.” Add that to the list...

Experts say, “After adopting a child, you should not start another adoption for at least six months to a year after your child is home.” Oops, I’ve done that one too.

Experts and all sorts of people say, “You should not have more than five or six kids, because anything beyond that is preposterous and you could not possibly be a good parent to more kids than that.” (O.K., so that may not be a real adoption rule, but it definitely seems to be a prevailing attitude among many, and it is one to which I respectfully say, “Hogwash.”)

It is not that I set out to break so many adoption rules, and it certainly isn’t the case that I don’t respect the thought process behind them. It is just that I believe strongly that sometimes, parents know better than “the experts”.

While I understand how having two children that are the same age through artificial twinning could lead to competition or rivalry between them, I have also seen how well it can work out.

Every day I see my Maggie and Amanda, who are closer than any two sisters can be and do not even like to be apart for short periods of time, and I can’t imagine one without the other.

Every day I see my Shane and Ben, who are the best of buddies and I see the special bond they get to share at home, in school and in sports. They do not compete, but they cheer each other on and always have each other’s backs. I know that they were meant to be brothers.

And every day I see my Belane and Marcus, who are as different as night and day when it comes to personality, size and just about everything else. I see the way they learn from each other and care about each other and worry when the other is not around. I saw the comfort they both took in having the other present at their preschool orientation. I hear the way Marcus saves his very best laugh for Belane, and witness the way Belane will drop anything if Marcus needs some help.

I see these things, and I know that the “no artificial twinning rule” was for us, ok to break.

I understand why most experts recommend that you do not adopt a child older than your oldest, and I certainly would not recommend it unless it was being done with a lot of thought and preparation. For us, we knew that our oldest, Nathan, would likely find it very difficult to have a new brother that was older than him, but we felt sure that he would do well with an older sister.

Now that he has had his “big sister” for three years, and we’ve seen how easily they ironed out their differences and how quickly they became brother and sister and then friends, we are glad we broke that rule too.


It certainly makes sense that you would not want to hurry and start an adoption right on the heels of a previous one, because you want to make sure that your child has the time he needs to bond and adjust to your family, and you want to be equally sure that your family has the time it needs to adjust to having a new family member, before you go mixing things up again.

However, when me met Belane while we were in Ethiopia adopting Benjamin, and we knew she was our daughter, I also knew that we could not go home and wait six months to start the process to bring her home. She was ours, she belonged with us, and we had to get her home as quickly as possible. In that situation, the “rules” didn’t mean much to me.

Truth be told, we’d probably get invited to a lot more dinner parties and we’d probably have a lot more extra cash if we had stopped growing our family when we hit three or four kids, as most people would have recommended. And yet, as I give and receive ten hugs and kisses each night at bedtime, watch 10 kids run around the yard together playing soccer, hear 10 kids laughing as Josh and I tell stories and see those 10 beautiful faces hanging on our family wall, I know we’ve made the right decisions.

These are just a handful of the examples I could give in how we broke “the rules” and things worked out perfectly. In fact, in all of our adoptions but two, we broke at least one adoption rule, and sometimes it was two ore more (Belane’s broke three).

We did not break the rules with reckless abandon. We put a lot of thought, preparation and prayer into every one of our adoptions, and put extra thought, prayer and preparation into our decisions when we knew we were doing something that wasn’t necessarily recommended.

I respect the rules, and the logic behind them. I respect social workers and adoption agencies who enforce the rules because they feel that they are in the best interest of the children and families they are serving.

And yet I am also very grateful for the social workers and adoption agencies that can look past the rules and look at individual families, children and situations, and allow families to be their own experts.

I get a lot of emails from people who are considering adopting a particular child, but are worried because the adoption would disrupt birth order, displace their oldest, make a pair of “artificial twins” or give them an even bigger family than they already have.

My advice is to:

- Honestly assess your family, and be truthful with yourself about what may or may not work well. What works well for one family could be a very bad choice for another family. Look at the personalities of your family members, look at the strengths and weaknesses of your family as a unit and put a lot of thought into what is right for all involved.

- Understand “the rules” and why some agencies enforce them, and then decide if you feel breaking that rule might be ok for your family and situation.

- Be prepared to defend your choices to your social worker and adoption agency. Your social worker and agency will likely want to know that you have put adequate thought and preparation into your choices.

- If your agency will not permit you to break a certain rule, such as adopting out of birth order, consider switching agencies. There are some agencies that have rules very set in stone and they will not bend them, and there are other agencies that are more flexible and look at individual situations.

- Talk to other families who have made similar choices and find out what they found challenging and rewarding.

Sometimes, even if you are usually a law-abiding citizen, breaking the adoption rules can be the right thing to do for your family.

More reading:

Article on virtual twins

Sibling spacing: When to add a second child… Third? Tenth?

Hoping to Adopt a Sibling: Birth Order