The days and months after delivering my son were like riding a roller coaster. Here we are almost 12 years later and there are days when it feels like my husband and I are still adjusting to excitement of having our "baby" boy. Of course the adjustment was different after we adopted the girls because they were older and we already had a six year old. It was not the same as bringing a baby home from the hospital, and not only were we adding one, but two, new children to the mix of our family. Before the final placement day arrived there had been lots of transitioning visits, but that was different. They were just that, visits. Once the final placement was made, then it was time to get down to business. Or, was it?

Like everything else with adoption there are differing viewpoints on how to facilitate the transition once a child comes home for good. Some would say to expect everything to turn topsy-turvy, others would say try to maintain as much structure and routine as possible. The reality is that there are days when it was like we were living in a Keystone Cops movie, and there were days when we were operating like a well-oiled machine.

There is no question that changes will be made in an effort to adjust, but you can't live in a perpetual state of chaos either or you will never bond as a family. I've heard some suggest that you allow older children to ease into the new routine of the family and I am sure that is helpful for some parents. However, that is not the approach that we took. For my own sanity I just simply had to have the girls get on board with our family routine as quickly as they could without causing them overwhelming stress.

The girls were used to an entirely different rhythm of life in terms of waking up at a gawd awfull time of the morning, having a fully prepared breakfast, and being out of the house and on the go for much of the day. That was not going to work for us. One of my biggest complaints about children today is the way that life forces parents to put them on adult schedules and I had worked very hard not to have do that with my son. Initially, the girls wanted to wake up around 5:30 in the morning and get started with their day. It was easy enough to tell them to stay in the bed until the rest of the family was awake when they were just visiting for a few nights, but once they were permanently placed it became a hassle to "remind" them of this every blasted morning.

Eventually, it all worked out, but I had to be firm about it and I needed for the girls to get the hang of it fairly rapidly. It may seem like a small thing but for the girls something as simple as, what time does this family get up and start moving, was really a difficult adjustment for them.

There will be a million things large and small that will require adjusting once your child is permanently placed. I think that it is in the best interest of the entire family for the child to make the transition and the adjustment to the rhythm and routine of the new family as rapidly as possible. Read this article to get more tips on transitioning your child to the family. It offers a different perspective in that the author recommends that parents be patient with the transition process. I think that patience is warranted to an extent but that may not work for all families and may not even be in the best interest of every family. In those cases, I think that parents should move the transition along as rapidly as the child can tolerate.