The effects of adopting children will be different for every couple, as will be the same for the adopted child. Every adoption will be different for a variety of reasons and circumstances.

Personally, we adopted our son when he was five months old. When they brought him out to see us, he had such a beautiful smile that we melted on the spot. We told the woman not to bother coming back, as we would definitely be keeping him.

To this day he was always our little man, and has never been treated any different to our daughter, and he is nearly forty now. We have never regretted our decision to adopt for a moment.

Honesty Pays in the long run.

Do you tell the new family member that he/she's adopted or not? In my opinion, we did the right thing. We told him from day one, that we chose him. We also explained to our natural born daughter that she was our special little girl and he was our special little boy. Even though he could not understand what the word adoption meant, as he grew, we explained in more detail.

Others have decided against telling their child. To me, this was wrong, someone we knew, adopted their child. She overheard another friend talking about her being adopted, when she was a teenager. She rebelled, simply because others knew and she found out through listening to gossip. That is a cruel and senseless way for the child to learn the facts of her birth. It caused so much distrust, and strain on the family.

Too much information (overheard)

Two young boys were arguing in the park, one said he was dopted the other said he was doctored. It came to blows, until an intervention allowed parents to explain they were both right.

The one saying he was dopted meant he was adopted. The other one saying he was doctored had been circumcised. Lifes little problems do have a humerous side.

There could be a number of reasons, why couples go through the process of applying for an adopted child. The couple may have tried unsuccessfully for many years to have their own child, without success. Some of these could have medical reasons for not falling pregnant, while others may not have fertile sperm.

For whatever reason, when a couple applies to adopt a child, they have to go through a lengthy process to be successful. Their screened as to their income, medical backgrounds, age, as well as both wanting this. Sometimes couples may apply although one just goes along with it to keep their partner happy. This is not a suitable situation for a healthy adoption. Years ago, it was a lot easier, as it was a disgrace for the parents, whose daughter becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Therefore, the daughter was virtually forced to move away, have the baby, then return home, to avoid a scandal in the household.

These days, so many girls have babies, purely to receive the baby bonus of thousands of dollars to bring that child into the world. The money is supposed to supply them with the essentials, like pram, bassinet, nappies, and clothes for the newborn. Most of the money more often goes for drugs, entertainment or similar, without the child receiving any benefit for the money.

Overseas Adoptions

Many people look to adopt overseas, agreeing to bring a newborn in from a less wealthy country. The long waiting lists and unavailability of adopting in their own country is the reason why.

Adopting the older child

Successful older adoptions depend entirely on many circumstances that the child and the adoptee parents need to be aware. Some children have suffered from abuse of many sorts which will naturally cause lots of mental, and behavioral problems.

There have been many success and failure stories, under these circumstances, although problems are not entirely due to the ages of the adopted child.

It is very important for this newborn baby or child to be living in a safe and healthy environment. If for any reason this is not so, the adoption should not, be allowed to continue. We have always given our son the option of finding his natural parents. We gave him all the details that we had regarding his parents, and offered to help him find them if that was what he wanted. In fact, we encouraged him to follow up on this, although he refuses to do it.

This has to be his decision and his alone. We will not try to influence him either way, except to say that it would be good for him to try to contact them, for his own peace of mind. We also explained that, his parents would not have given him up without good reason, especially if they had seen his mischievous little smile.

We tried to adopt another child. And, as the woman explained, we have two beautiful healthy children, why not be satisfied, because there are so many people still trying to adopt their first. We therefore had to withdraw our application for another child.

Have we ever regretted, adopting a child? Never, we would do it all over again, mind you any child has his/her good and bad moments, and we have certainly had some of those with both of our children.