My Husband and I Adopted Teenage Siblings—Here Are My Most Surprising Lessons (So Far…)

Jeanie Gaskill and her husband Jeff live in Arizona. They adopted siblings John, age 16 and Patty, age 11, three-and-a-half years ago. We chatted to Jeanie about the ups and downs of her adoption journey and what her biggest learnings have been so far. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When my husband and I became foster parents, we were open to eventually becoming a child’s permanent home. And we had no idea how long that might take. But, as I’ve learned to expect with adoption (and parenting), nothing ever goes as planned. The first kids we were designated to foster were already in need of a permanent home, and they were scheduled to visit for a weekend. But then they ended up needing emergency placement, so they showed up two nights earlier than intended. And then…they just never left. Nearly four years later, here are some of the most surprising—and important—things I’ve learned since adopting my teenage children.

Every state is different, but in Arizona we had to train to become foster parents and then become certified to adopt. That took us about six months. When we finally adopted our kids, it took about another six months after they were placed with us through the foster program. This is all part of the bureaucratic labyrinth that you’d expect, and our adoption process was probably quicker than most because the children had been in the system for four years before they came to us. But all of that is going on concurrently to the day-to-day needs. On top of bonding with the kids and doing our best to make them feel safe (our main priorities!), there was a mountain of immediate logistics to manage—new school enrollments, medicines to track down, doctor appointments to make, etc. I felt like a deer in headlights that first month of fostering.

There were times in our early adoption process where I was like “Oh my God, what have we done?!” But then we’d have these moments that began to solidify our family. And then it would happen again, and our bond would get deeper and deeper. I remember after one of our family trips, we pulled back into the house and John, our oldest, said—without even thinking about it—“Ah, home sweet home.” Like it was a relief to be home. It’s a small thing, but so meaningful to our family. My husband ordered this little plaque that says “Home Sweet Home” that’s hung up in our house now. On the back the date John said it (October 18^th, 2022) is inscribed.

Beyond their interests and personalities (John is an introvert who hates attention while Patty could bathe in it!), we had to navigate the actual adoption very differently with each of them. Patty was already saying things like “I want to be adopted today!” a couple months in. For John, the quieter one, we knew he wouldn’t outwardly say what he wanted, but we also didn’t want to force anything on him. He’d had such little control of his life that I really wanted him to feel like he had full control of this decision. Also, he was a bit older than Patty, and some teenagers prefer to stay as a foster placement and as to not sever ties with their biological family. With the help of our amazing caseworker from The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, we learned that John did want to be adopted, but again, how we shared the news with him would have to be different from how we told Patty. For Patty, we excitedly told her there was going to be an adoption day! For John, we kept it chill, sort of just saying, “So we talked with your casework, and he said that you’re open to us adopting you. This is what that means. Do you want to do that? We love you guys and we want to take care of you.”

Every child needs to be connected as closely as possible with their biological family as they can without it disrupting their childhood. Around the time of adoption our Dave Thomas Foundation caseworker arranged a meeting with us to meet the children’s mother. Mom had done a lot of work on herself and was supportive of the adoption, which isn’t always the case. We’ve wound up having a really unique experience. As for my husband Jeff and I, we felt that we could make a really good connection with the many people in their biological family. Now, they have monthly day-long visits with their family and open access to call and talk whenever they want.

One of the hardest, most unexpected parts of the whole process was having to readjust my marriage, which is why we did couples therapy in the beginning. We had parented before (Jeff had a daughter from his previous marriage), but I was the stepparent, so we’d never really had conflict because I wasn’t in the lead. With John and Patty, it was very different—we had to learn to compromise and communicate our parenting decisions, which was a whole different skill set.

The endurance part was also one of the most challenging, unexpected parts. You can't be ‘off’ with a kid who's been in several placements and/or has trauma and attachment issues—especially for the first year. It's so hard because children with these backgrounds can be hypervigilant; any sign of rejection can mean something more serious to their brains than it would to a kid who's secure. It means possibly going out on the streets again. It's a serious fear. For instance, if I was a little bit off with Patty, there would be a raging, screaming, door-slamming, one-hour screaming temper tantrum. You have to be 100 percent soft, pure love. And, yeah, that’s actually impossible, and you will fail—we failed a lot. Trauma-informed parenting is not for the weak of heart.

People often celebrate their adoption day, but we found this less celebratory since it's also a severing of the past for the kids. So, we decided to celebrate “Family Valentine's Day” instead. John and Patty came to us on February 10 pretty late in the day. They’d already eaten dinner, so instead of a meal, we took the dogs for a walk (they’re both big dog lovers) and got ice cream. Now, that’s what we do every “Family Valentine's Day” —take the dogs for a walk and eat ice cream. We do that like a hundred other nights too, but especially on February 10^th to celebrate the first time we came together.

The Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption is a national, nonprofit public charity dedicated to finding permanent homes for the more than 140,000 children waiting in North America’s foster care systems. Created by Wendy’s^® founder Dave Thomas who was adopted, the Foundation implements evidence-based, results-driven national service programs, foster care adoption awareness campaigns and innovative grantmaking. To learn more, visit davethomasfoundation.org.