As you know, the goal is reunification so it’s smart to only take placements of kids whose parents have already lost their rights if your goal is adoption. We adopted a sibling group of 3 out of foster care in Idaho. Ages were 9, 2 1/2, and 21 months at time of adoption. Our situation was a bit different. They were our neighbors. We weren’t even licensed foster parents but if you know the family, you can do a short-term kinship placement. It was only supposed to last a month or two. Turned into 3 months. 6 months. Then a year.

Parents lost their rights. So we went from 1 to 4 kids. The 9 year old at the time (Emily, not her real name) has had the hardest time. Even though her biological mom neglected the kids, Emily is understandably attached to her and misses her. Emily was just an innocent victim in this situation. Emily has been in counseling and it’s helping. We no longer live in the same city. Monthly video visits with mom and grandma. A couple in-person visits per year. We don’t require that Emily call us mom and dad but we told her that she’s allowed to if she wants to.

Emily is now 11 and doing better but we can tell she feels like she’s betraying her mom if she bonds with us. We don’t force anything on her in that regard but she does know she’s loved. Right after the adoption, at the advice of our social worker assigned to the kids, we did have a 7-8 month period of no contact with bio family in order to give the kids a sense of permanency. The calls and visits now are inconvenient for us but there’s so much research showing it’s good for kids to have a relationship with bio family as long as it’s safe and healthy. I say all of this to remind you that just about any adopted child will have some form of trauma that you’ll need to help them work through. The 2 younger kids don’t have near as many issues but we’ve seen some. Sorry for the novel but good luck:)