You know you’ve been adopted as an older child when…

…your new adoptive parents think you have identity issues, but in fact you’re not thinking “Who am I?” but “Who the f*** are you?”

…you have to stop yourself starting sentences with “When I first met my parents…”

…everyone thinks you’re confused and can’t handle your very complex set of family relationships, but really they’re the ones who are confused and who can’t handle them

…you struggle to breathe under the weight of everyone’s low expectations

…due to the many families you’ve lived in, you have more insight than your mono-cultural adoptive parents do into the fact that their beliefs regarding etiquette and rudeness are not in fact universal and obvious

…you find yourself thinking about how your new parents’ “firm boundaries” are just as arbitrary as the “firm rules” of everyone else, and not really that different, revolutionary, or helpful

…you know that it’s not birth or an adoption certificate that make a family, as your foster families are important too

…you have a unique insight into teachers’ expectations, assumptions and prejudices as you experienced going to schools where they knew you were a child in care and also ones where they assumed you were the birth child of professional and articulate middle class parents

…you know, through experience, that there are many ways to bring up a child – and that in spite of criticisms one set of parents might have for another they’re all OK as long there’s no abuse or neglect

…you find yourself sighing as a child because everything you do is interpreted as being because you’re adopted. Because, as we know, nothing adoptees do is normal or like things other, non-adopted, children do. This is especially so if you were adopted as an older child. Apparently

…like all adoptees, you are always a child, even when you’re 25, 35, 60 or 100.

…your “relevance” to adoption, your voice, and your ability to access post-adoption support has a shorter shelf-life than those adopted at younger ages. You reach the magical cut-off ages of 21 or 25 much sooner. After these ages you’re no longer deemed relevant to adoption or given a voice by any mainstream organisation. This is in spite of the fact that other adoptees who were adopted on exactly the same day that you were are still considered relevant and given support – because they were younger than you were when they were adopted (and are thus still under 25). Yet you have been adopted for exactly the same length of time. Weird. Especially when one could argue that many of those adopted at older ages require more support. And, even if they do not, they definitely do not require less support and they are not less relevant to “modern adoption”. The ARE modern adoption

…you don’t have a birth order. Well, you were born as a first, middle or last child but you’ve lived in every position possible in the 5, 6, 7 or 8 homes you’ve lived in. You grew up as the eldest, youngest, and everywhere-in-the-middle child

…internet memes and stereotypes about birth order make absolutely no sense – and annoy you because you’ve lived in absolutely every combination under the sun

…you know you’re not as important as your adoptive parents’ birth children because maintaining their birth order is important, but your birth order within the family can be changed to suit everyone else

…you know more about your childhood than your parents do

…you know more about your childhood than your parents think they do

…you write half your life story book yourself because your social worker has missed bits out

…you correct the spelling and grammar in your Be My Parent advert and your life story book because your literacy levels are higher than those who have responsibility for you

…you are able to see the inaccuracies in your files and realise that they’re utterly useless and that it’s good you kept all those diaries and remembered everywhere you lived, because if you didn’t you would have no idea about anything

…you know you’re not going to be believed or ever win if it’s ever you versus your parents’ birth child or another child. Don’t forget: adopted children are a danger to all other children and are liars – and older child adoptees are the absolute worst

…anything bad you do is because of your birth family or your <whisper> experiences, but anything good you do is because of what opportunities your adoptive parents gave you

…if you don’t succeed it shows that older child adoption doesn’t work, but if you do it demonstrates that adoption is A Good Thing

…you’re an adult before you can start a conversation with your parents with “Remember when…”

…your adoptive parents treat you like a little child when you first arrive, even though you’re already into boy bands and reading the classics. It’s quite excruciatingly embarrassing for everyone as you pretend to like toys and books for young children

…you read the books your parents are reading to help parent you and even at that age you think it’s all b****cks. When you look back when you are at an older, more mature, age, you adapt your opinion slightly and think it’s all dangerous b****cks

…you find you have less freedom as an adolescent than you did as a pre-teen because your new parents are stricter than your foster parents

…you pretend not to be into teenager stuff just yet because you are acutely aware that your new parents didn’t really want to adopt a teenager – and that you’re what they got stuck with

…you’re advertised by the social worker as the ‘Buy One Get One Free’ child

…your adoptive parents are still more or less strangers when you have to tell them about starting your period or dealing with facial hair

…everyone – and every book and every film and every adoption advert ever – is telling you that you’re lucky that anyone even wanted you

…you were a non-adopted child for longer than you were an adopted child, and can compare the two

…you’re old enough to remember your birth name and the addresses and phone numbers of your birth and foster families

…for some reason it’s OK for your new adoptive parents to “fake it ’till you make it” in terms of giving you the impression that they love you when you’ve only just met, but if you do that it’s manipulative and a sign of attachment disorder. Or something.

…because you’re an older child adoptee, your intelligence is mistaken for manipulation and calculation

…it messes with your head to use your adoption certificate in place of your birth certificate because it means, administratively speaking, that you were born in adolescence

…you didn’t have a strict, liberal, religious, or secular upbringing, but all of them

…the questions ‘were your parents strict?’ or ‘were your parents religious?’ make absolutely no sense in the context of your life

…you have to cut short anecdotes when speaking to acquaintances because you realise halfway through that it makes no sense unless you explain that you were living with six children’s home siblings at the time

…you forget how many brothers and sisters you’ve told someone you have so you worry they’ll think you’re a liar if you start talking about them again

…you forget whether you’ve told someone about your birth, foster or adoptive heritage, and therefore can’t remember if they think you’re Irish or Jewish or Polish or whatever

…you’re like a chameleon and can fit into all sorts of situations – or be equally uncomfortable in all of them

…you’ve known someone for several years and they stop a conversation short halfway through and ask for clarification about which sibling is which

…you realise that other people class ‘older child adoption’ as referring to children who were nearly a decade younger than you when you were adopted

…you answer questions about your childhood with ‘Well, it depends on which parents you mean…’

…most adoptees are adopted at an age when you were still living with your birth family and social services weren’t even in your life yet

…you feel an affinity with both care leavers and adoptees, but you don’t quite fit into either box

…virtually nothing written or said about adoption, even about so-called “older child adoption”, reflects your life in any way whatsoever