Kenneth’s story on adoption as an older parent!

I sat at the kitchen table drinking a glass of ice-cold water. It was late June, in the middle of a Texas drought. The temperature outside hovered around 110 degrees. My cell phone rang. With sweat dripping down my nose I glanced at the caller ID.

The name of our child placing agency appeared on the screen. I sighed. We had turned down several placements for different reasons. So, even though I didn’t feel like taking the call, I hit the accept button.

My wife and I were in our mid to late 40s, and we wanted to adopt through foster care. Because of our age, we expected to foster children who were in the 5-10 year-old range. We put twin beds in the anticipated children’s room. We accumulated age-appropriate toys and accessories.

I felt ready as I could be for a child to come into our family…as long as they weren’t too young.

I listened to the case worker as she described the child that needed a home immediately. Did she just say he was about eight-months-old?

My mind struggled to keep up with the conversation as she quickly gave me what information she had, but my thoughts about the child’s age competed for air-time.

“We don’t have anything that a child this young needs. Nothing.“, I thought to myself. And, I didn’t know if I had the energy to foster an eight-month-old baby.

Yet, I had no other reason to not accept this placement, especially when the caseworker stated that in her opinion the baby would stay with us for only a couple of weeks. Several extended family members had an interest in the child, so most likely he would end up with one of them soon.

I accepted the placement mainly because I felt I could do anything for a couple of weeks.

Two weeks later when I celebrated my 50th birthday, that precious baby boy was still living in our home. In fact, he still is. We adopted him just before his second birthday, and now he is over four-years-old!

I admit, I mentally struggled with being almost 50 years older than my son. I even voiced my concern at times, usually in a joking manner. I wondered if I was too old to adopt a child so much younger than me.

God seemed to notice. I began to meet or learn of several men who had young children later in life. They each expressed the joy and benefits they encountered because of this fact.

Benefits to adoption for older parents:

• I am never too old to love and provide a home for a child.
• I am better off financially. I have 10-20 years of learning how to manage money, save, and invest. Not that money buys happiness, but it can lend to a less stressful home environment.
• I have more life experience. Maybe you have already raised children, or like us have traveled and lived in different parts of the world. At the very least, I have learned from both mistakes and success from living more life.
• I understand the brevity of life. I have a better grasp on how quickly life goes by, so I understand the importance of living life and learning life lessons now rather than “getting to it later.”
• I have grounded expectations. I don’t place as many expectations on my son as I probably would have in my younger years. Partly this is because I don’t feel the pressure to meet others expectations now like I used to feel.

So, are you too old to adopt a child? Think of it this way, do you think a child would rather have older parents…or no parents at all?

If you want to read our entire foster and adoption story, check out Adopting the Father’s Heart.

Kenneth Camp is a longtime Austinite. Although he married his beautiful wife over 25 years ago; they adopted their son in September 2012. He loves being a writer after previous careers that include project management, missionary, and pastor. He enjoys sports (both watching and playing), traveling, reading, digging in dirt and hanging with friends and family. You can find more of his writing on his blog.