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Hi lizzy Many congratulations on your adoption - your little one sounds lovely and it’s so good that he has settled so well. That’s a really good sign. I have two children - we adopted the second, our as, when our ad was 4.5 years old. She had been with us for 4 years by then but personally I think that that was too soon for her. She herself was going through a period of transition - she started school a few months later - and I think it was all too much for her. She really regressed and we had a few very difficult years. Admittedly though she was insecure to start with and very anxious - she was also later diagnosed with adhd. So quite a complex child in some ways. Wind forward 7 years though, and they are now both doing extremely well.But it hasn’t been an easy road always to get here. My as is probably more like your as. He was very settled with us from the early days and has always been pretty easy. We adopted him as a baby too, but he had a much more settled start than our ad - just one foster placement, then us. Even he though has some insecurities. These are most evident at night - he still comes into my bed most nights and co sleeps with me. It’s great that I am able to do this and meet this need - I couldn’t do this if he had a younger sibling. I think he has benefited from being the youngest and being babied for longer - my ad was forced to grow up too quickly when he arrived.she still really needed to be my baby. In an ideal world I would adopt a second when my first was about 8. By then they would hopefully be fully settled in school and you would have a much better idea of their needs. I think by then they would be more ready to be the older sibling and hopefully embrace that role. I can see that my as at 7 is still not quite ready for that, but is moving in that direction. He has grown so much in confidence in the last year. He asked me the other day if he could have a little brother or sister - but that’s not going to happen. I’m far too old and tired - 2 children is more than double the work of one! And we are not going to try 3! If I were you I would try and leave this for a good few years and really enjoy your little boy. He is still so young, just a baby really, and I think would really benefit from your undivided attention for 4-5 years much more than having a sibling. Hope that helps xx

Hi lizzy Many congratulations on your adoption - your little one sounds lovely and it’s so good that he has settled so well. That’s a really good sign. I have two children - we adopted the second, our as, when our ad was 4.5 years old. She had been with us for 4 years by then but personally I think that that was too soon for her. She herself was going through a period of transition - she started school a few months later - and I think it was all too much for her. She really regressed and we had a few very difficult years. Admittedly though she was insecure to start with and very anxious - she was also later diagnosed with adhd. So quite a complex child in some ways. Wind forward 7 years though, and they are now both doing extremely well.But it hasn’t been an easy road always to get here. My as is probably more like your as. He was very settled with us from the early days and has always been pretty easy. We adopted him as a baby too, but he had a much more settled start than our ad - just one foster placement, then us. Even he though has some insecurities. These are most evident at night - he still comes into my bed most nights and co sleeps with me. It’s great that I am able to do this and meet this need - I couldn’t do this if he had a younger sibling. I think he has benefited from being the youngest and being babied for longer - my ad was forced to grow up too quickly when he arrived.she still really needed to be my baby. In an ideal world I would adopt a second when my first was about 8. By then they would hopefully be fully settled in school and you would have a much better idea of their needs. I think by then they would be more ready to be the older sibling and hopefully embrace that role. I can see that my as at 7 is still not quite ready for that, but is moving in that direction. He has grown so much in confidence in the last year. He asked me the other day if he could have a little brother or sister - but that’s not going to happen. I’m far too old and tired - 2 children is more than double the work of one! And we are not going to try 3! If I were you I would try and leave this for a good few years and really enjoy your little boy. He is still so young, just a baby really, and I think would really benefit from your undivided attention for 4-5 years much more than having a sibling. Hope that helps xx

Agree with Freddie. Our first wasn't an easy child - lovable and loving, but all sorts of issues. We adopted our second when she was 6, nearly 7 - just before she started in year 2. School was always an issue for her - difficulty conforming, with peer relationships and engaging in learning - but she was happy in herself and keen to have a sibling. It did work well in the sense that dd2 was only 2. I had a year's leave from my part time job and was able to devote myself to her during the school day. She fitted in well to our routine and didn't mind being bossed around by her elder sister. I don't think it was that detrimental to our eldest directly but she lost our undivided attention and really, being a forceful character, attempted to keep as much as she could, which meant maybe the youngest got less attention than she should have (I felt very much that I simply couldn't give her the time I'd given the eldest and that was hard). They often got on when younger if it was just the two of them, though dd1 always ignored her away from the house. Dd2 was much more compliant so it was easy to overlook this at first. She also did well at school and socially, so barring some anxiety and the odd tantrum, was easy to parent on the whole. But rivalry soon became a problem. Dd2 had always been jealous of her sister and came to resent the attention she got. By the time dd1 hit her teens they really didn't get on and we kept them separate as much as we could. They're 13 and 18 now. Their relationship is still an issue. Slightly better recently since dd1 has matured a bit and dd2 shares more of the same interests. But generally they tend to disagree on principle - down to claiming to hate the food the other likes - and most of their encounters end in rows. Currently dd1 is the more stable and dd2 causing us worries re mental health issues. I can't say if a larger age gap would have worked better - maybe, though I found it hard to have a toddler again after getting used to the life we had with just the one child, so can't imagine having a toddler when she was, say, 9 or 10. But I do think no one should underestimate the degree of attention a traumatised child truly needs. On a good day I hardly see either of them (ie they amuse themselves) but we still have fraught times when both need way more attention than normal for their ages. To be frank, both can still revert to toddlerhood emotionally, which means full-on parenting. And we never know for sure what a day will bring.....

my experience is that most people who ask this question go on to adopt more than one child, no matter how often people say hang on... wait a bit longer... are you prepared for...? Especially those who are still in the halycon days of beautiful adorable child with no apparent issues, Yesterday I spent some time with two of my children looking at some old home videos, and I tell you, my Twirl could not have been a more beautiful engaging child... by the time she was nine we would have (and did) described her as challenging but manageable. That was when we adopted her half-sibling, who was 2.5 and like your child, had had just one very wonderful foster placement prior to living with us. We had no inkling what was ahead. Fast forward another six years and our life together is often intolerable. Yes, there are positives to bringing up the girls together but there are also many negatives. Neither of them get the attention they need. Both are a bottomless pit of needs expressed in different ways - one by rejecting angry behaviors, the other by clinging controlling behaviors. They re-traumatise each other, damage each other, undo so much of the good stuff we do manage to inject, we have to keep them separate most of the time. It's rare that they can even eat a meal at the same table without all hell breaking loose. They are endlessly competitive, literally sometimes over the air that they breathe. As a couple our marriage frequently feels more like a parenting management team, rather than a relationship which has anything to do with our own needs whatsoever. Both of us have had to reduce our working hours, we spend too many of what free hours we have in meetings with professionals, therapists, school, social workers etc in an attempt to get help for the girls. The last couple of years have included MASH investigations, police investigations, allegations, assaults, sexting, self harm, endless anger and victimisation, This from the beautiful toddler with no apparent issues. She no longer goes to school. She's 15. And last weekend our younger daughter from the lovely foster carers, who has been totally traumatised by living with her angry older sister, by the sheer venom of her words, and the unpredictability of her rages, attempted to drown herself by running a sink full of water and sticking her face in it. Because I said no to something she wanted in a shop. Or that was the surface trigger at least. But really it was the huge well of sadness and trauma and self-hate that too often comes with adoption. I cannot put into words how exhausting all this is. Maybe you think this couldn't possibly happen to you. Well I thought that too. In adoption two is almost always more than 1+1. Don't go into it blindly.

Tbh my first thought was why did it take so long for him to be adopted? Even though it was only one placement it must have been a huge upheaval to leave the family he was with for so long. At only six months in with you, I’d suggest maybe this is still the honeymoon period and whilst life is plain sailing at the moment it may not continue like that. I’d certainly wait until the ‘first’ anniversaries are over with because yoi just don’t yet know how he will react. 3 is still young. He has school to negotiate and that can often be traumatic and is often when any additional needs become more apparent - and when life gets difficult for parents who have to battle to get needs understood and supported. I understand the desire to want to start again - because I did - but it’s been a slog!

Friends of ours adopted a special needs child first. Then they took on younger sibling, who seemed OK at first. Now starting secondary at a special school because he has several acronyms diagnosed now and can't cope with regular school. The older one also acquired a similar but milder version of one of the acronyms, on top of the original physical ailment, though he is coping with school with extra support. Other adopters I know have two reasonably ok children, though one has some teen struggles these days. Personally we have two kids, one no bother at all, the other kept in order by the older one, though life can get hard during a flare up of aggression every so often. I think what I am trying to say is that you simply don't know what you will be faced with till it happens ! This is the same for all families but the trauma backgrounds make it more likely parents who adopt will face various degrees of issues ( on top of usual parenting ones) Some relatively minor , others horrendous, and everything in between. What I am saying is that you really don't know what difficulties you will face. If you are desperate to have two nothing will stop you, it didn't stop me because I knew I would regret it, if I stopped at one. It was two I wanted. I am glad there was a big difference in age ( over five years ) between mine though, from a management point of view ! Neither is special needs though eldest does have dyspraxia it just meant he has rubbish hand coordination action for writing and had to use a computer at school. We only waited a few months for number two but that was because we agreed to foster him first till legal stuff got sorted out. I should say that my kids were older children so we knew how they were coping at school. With a small child it's really Unknown, many things don't show up or get diagnosed till school age. If your present child is recognised already as having some delay it may help him get the support etc when he does go to school. At least you shouldn't have to fight to get that recognised, like some adoptive parents. Re Preparing your child for arrival of a new sibling SW will talk to them , and there are some good story books out there for young children apparently. I do not know the titles but others here will. My eldest was a bit big for them ! Best Wishes Pingu

I'm not saying we regret our decision to have two. The pros outweigh the cons!

As for prep. We involved dd1 as much as we possibly could. She had to know we were adopting again as the sw talked with her about it as part of the assessment (aged 4). Once we knew we were matched, when she was 6, she came with us to help us choose toys for dd2, helped us make a photo book for her, narrated the DVD we made etc. We watched the DVD of dd2 the fc had made together. We included her in all the intros and agreed jobs she would have involving caring for her sister once she moved in. Intros went really well - beautiful weather - and they played together from the off in the fc's garden - that was pure luck!