Raising your grandchild, nephew, or cousin has led you to adoption. While there are many beautiful benefits to kinship adoption, there are also unique challenges to adopting a family member and shifting to a permanency focus. However, the shift to permanency itself can be a significant struggle and bring up strong feelings for everyone involved. During this process, your goal should be to increase the child’s sense of felt safety and assure them that you are present with them for the transition to adoption.

8 Tips to Ease the Transition into Kinship Adoption

Integrating a family member into your existing family through kinship adoption provides a profound sense of permanency and anchoring for the child. Once the process is underway, you might also feel a sense of relief or closure. By keeping these tips at the forefront of your mind, you can support all the big feelings your family and this child may have around the transition.

1. Educate yourself. 

Whether you’ve had this child in your home for a while or you are bringing them home because of this adoption, you must understand that adoptive parenting is different from parenting the children you gave birth to. It’s not worse. It’s not better. But it is different.

When you are adopting a niece, nephew, or grandchild, you need the same education, support, and preparation that other adoptive parents need. Here are a few places to start building your knowledge and skills for adoptive parenting:

We recommend that you follow the trail of links and related resources when you find one that piques your interest or meets your child’s needs. You can also follow CreatingaFamily.org on social media for the latest content and ongoing practical educational support.

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2. Stay focused on the child’s best interests.

Navigating the adoption of a family member can get sticky for some families. If you can do it, spend time with the family members involved in the situation to be transparent and set healthy boundaries. Try to share your expectations, hopes, and concrete plans or timeline for the process and discuss what “post-adoption” might look like for your family. Through it all, hold the child as your focal point. Keep bringing all the conversations back to “what is best for this child?” and be gentle but firm in re-directing discussions that don’t prioritize that point.

3. Bring in the professionals.

If you haven’t already, you should find an adoption attorney or agency to help you navigate the kinship adoption process. Our two resource pages, Adoption Agencies and Adoption Attorneys, can help you understand what to look for, what questions to ask, and how to find one in your area that has kinship adoption experience.

Emotional and mental health support

Consider seeking the support of an adoption-competent therapist or counselor to help you and your family prepare well for the addition of this child. If the child is already living in your home, arrange time for them to process with a therapist or counselor, too. The CreatingaFamily.org resource page, Therapy Resources, has suggestions for how to find a mental health professional, what to ask when you interview them, and how to support your kids in therapy.

4. Don’t try an international kinship adoption on your own!

It might be tempting to try and navigate the adoption process of this relative child through the private attorney who has always managed all your family’s business. However, it would be best if you did not try to adopt a child on your own in the country of their birth without the support and knowledge of an adoption agency in the US accredited under the Hague Treaty. You can learn about accredited adoption agencies at these sites:

We cannot stress strongly enough that you should use an agency or attorney with experience in international kinship adoption to guide you through this process.

For families proceeding with an international kinship adoption, you must understand the detailed definition of “orphan.” This is the criteria by which a child qualifies (or doesn’t) for international adoption.

Adopting a Relative from Abroad

6. Consider an openness agreement.

Again, adopting a family member’s child can get sticky. An openness agreement may not be legally binding, but it can symbolize your family’s collective commitment to doing what’s best for the child while preserving relationships in the family. You can set yourselves up for a smoother transition by including these types of issues:

  • What kind of contact both the adoptive and birth parents want
  • How often contact takes place
  • The preferred methods for contact (private Facebook group, email, text, video calls, in-person visits, etc.)

7. Dig into the dynamics of blended families.

If you have children already in your family, also known as resident children, spend time learning about the impacts of combining adopted kids with bio kids. CreatingaFamily.org has many resources to help you prepare yourself and the children for this transition.

8. Like, Subscribe, or Follow the Podcast.

We are fortunate to welcome worldwide experts to discuss many topics impacting kinship, foster, and adoptive families each week. Our two weekly podcasts provide opportunities to learn practical skills to strengthen your family built by kinship adoption. Here are a few examples you will benefit from:

Hold Your Intentions Closely

The transition of bringing home your kinship-adopted child can feel fraught and overwhelming at the outset. However, holding your intentions for this child in front of the extended family is essential. When you all aim to give this child a safe place to land, heal, and thrive, you can navigate the experience from a loving, healthy starting point.

Image Credits: Yaroslav Shuraev; Mikhail Nilov; RDNE Stock project