Intro's - Managing with LO's already

Not got any experience of this as my two came home together.

I know Chotimonkey has just done this with her newest addition in the last few days.
She may reply if she has the time, but you might like to read her intro's for some tips.

I think the biggest thing she said that worked for her was having the GP's come to stay with them in the accomodation, as GP's were not only able to help out entertaining the older two, but also cooked meals for the family which freed her up to concentrate on LO.

Don't know if this would be feasible for you, but it certainly worked for Choti and also helped the GP's feel involved too.
(that's Grand Parents not Dr's LOL)

We are in a similar position to you and I am not sure how to handle the actually introduction of our BC to LO.

We are approaching intros at the very beginning of January. We have three children. Fortunately our intros are fairly local, but my mum is going to live at our house for most of january to help us. She did this went we had our third child too. It was a massive help. She will be getting the children ready for school, taking them, collecting them etc when we are away with LO and generally allowing us to concentrate on the intros. Also she will be free during the day so will be able to rest then so hopefully it won't be too much for her. Our friends will also help out wherever needed.

We have spoken to school and they are very supportive, the head's best friend has recently adopted a toddler and she was a reference and very involved in the support of her friend. So we are very lucky that she understand about intros. We are trying to minimise the time out of school but it is inevitable the children will miss some, again the head is being very good about this. Our children do have an excellent attendance record and I do a lot of work with the school PTFA so having a good relationship has definately helped with this.

So that is all good, the part which bothers me is when our three actualy meet LO. They are very excited about a brother and are very cuddly and demonstrative children. They will want to cuddle and play with him. He will be 14 mths old at intros. I don't want to hold them back too much, but it will be overwhelming to a baby if they all want a cuddle and to play. I need a plan for them meeting him where it doesn't overwhelm LO.

Hope you don't mind me adding to your thread, but any advce from anyone who has done this, or any fostercarers who have expereiced moving a child to family with children already would be gratefully received.

Mum to 3 birth children, linked to 12 month old little boy. Hopefully coming home at beginning of January.

am doing this from the other side very soon so watching with interest as its new to me too!  all my other bubs have been the first child to the parents so easier to manage at a distance. 
I had one that went under SGO and the son of the auntie met LO the week before she was due to move, but he was almost an adult so very different.  little man's intros include an older (2.5 year old) sibling.  I have some ideas how it could work but don't know the sibling so really need to be led by the parents on that.  do know that grandma is coming up too for all the reason quoted above by others.  good luck with it though.

Hi
Yes are just home from intros for curious george (little man 10 months) with our two ads (3 and nearly 2)

We were about two hours from home so we had a "holiday house" apartment rather than hotel accommodation , which had exciting things like a play house, park round the corner, etc. we also took a tonne of slcalm atuff for the girls, favourite DVDs, new sticker books glue, crayons, playdough, snow dough, books, mix of old and new toys for security and novelty. My parents came with us so that they could look after the girls whilst we were with curious george. They also did all cooking and shopping and petrol runs which helped immeasurably. Otherwise go for easy easy food to make and clear up, my mum froze some stuff and brought it for evening meals.


As well as the official intro plan, we made our own schedule for who would be where when, I spent almost the entire time with curious george, whilst dh brought dds over to see curious george, took tgem home and did breakfast and dinner with them. We let the girls stay up a bit later so I could get stories and bedtime snuggles with them. As ours were similar in age the time at FC was quite easy as they has lots of toys that were age appropriate for our girls, but if not think about what to take to FC to amuse them. We tried to make the whole intros seem like a special holiday with lots of little treats to give them positive associations with curious george. We ali kept all children in their respective routines.

We went a day before intros started to settle into accommodation and talked to the girls everyday about what would be happening and when we would see them, grandparents did lots of making things to show mummy when she got home a d took lots of phone pics m to show mummy' to reinforce we were coming back. We also use ' whats app'' phone app to make lots of videos to send back and forth, between us. Before intros FC and I had been sending lots of short video clips by email to each other
To show the children of each other and started a sort of video conversation between them and in the last couple of weeks we'd send nursery rhymes night night clips etc

We are going to keep all clips and edit them together to make a video of the whole time.

Dds have used curious George's intros to help them do some processing of their own adoption, squirrel monkey (3) particularly has started to get a real sense of herself as a baby being v. Loved in FC, howler monkey (nearly two) is a bit young too understand in the same way.l

Our intros this time were v short, and squirrel and howler are v settled and have v positive relationships with tgeir grandoarents, so squirrel and howler only had two full days where we were away from them.

Howlers intros were longer and squirrel had only been with us for 5 months, I didn't feel comfortable leaving her and she had been with same FC, so was v comfortable in the house so we had her with us all the time. With two you still have enough adults for one to one ratio, so if dh was playing with squirrel I was with howler and vice versa...

With three another two pairs of hands was v helpful

Hope this helps, sorry it's so random I've written different bits if it over several 5 min bursts of quiet

Please feel fre to pm if you want to ask anything

Good luck

Thank you ever so much everyone, really really helpful to hear all your experiences and thoughts.

Chotimonkey, especially appreciate you taking the time to reply given how very busy you must be!

Lots of food for thought here. Will definitely be roping the Grandparents in!

Dimples, I know what you mean about worrying about your children overwhelming new LO.... At the moment my two are so very excited and I think they will want to smother tiddler - however, tiddler does not sound like a little one who will like being smothered.... Was thinking for first meeting may get them to give tiddler a new toy and via FC get tiddler to give them both one so that might take the focus off them thinking tiddler is the new toy!

Hadn't thought about whether school will let LOs be off - will need to speak to them.

Oooh, very exciting (and scary)!

That's a lovely idea Loadsofbubs, might pinch it for future intros myself if you don't mind!

Almost all the intros I've done so far have had older children in the new family. It's common (and understandable) for new parents to want the other children involved from day one, but really not practical.

The one time it happened everyone (including parents) was so overwhelmed that the morning became a farce and no-one really got anything out of it - and that first meeting is so important.

I'd keep the first meeting fairly brief if possible, then build on that gradually.
Most of my intros have been fairly local and have worked best when grandparents or relatives helped out, leaving any real interaction between the children to when the action moves to adoptive parent's houses.

My house is geared up for different ages of children but not all foster carers will be so I second the advice about taking some toys if needed.
Even if there are toys there your other children will probably benefit from having something familiar to them.

Be prepared for even the best behaved children to become little terrors! They're excited, confused and anxious and so are you.
Add a load of long days to the mix and tempers are bound to flare.

SWs don't always take all this stress into account when planning intros so try and insist on at least 1 rest day.