I did a bunch of interviews yesterday to catch up on several issues surrounding Russian adoptions now. A point that one of them made has been bothering me, and I wanted to share it with you.

This individual was of the belief that the slowdown in adoptions caused by the new accreditation procedures has cost many children their chance to be adopted. "The children who lost their opportunity lost it forever," this person said.

Forever? No, I don’t think so. There are only a few times in life when I accept finality, and the current state of adoption in Russia isn’t one of them.

It's not that I don't understand this person's reasoning. Many adoptive parents, Russian or foreign, tend to want the youngest child possible--infants, or, now that that is not possible in Russia, children close to one year of age. That is the best way, they believe, to give these children a fresh start. The best way to blunt the negatives of the child's past. The best way to make these children their own. But the children that these parents might have gotten referrals for in the last two years, as accreditations began to lapse, are now beyond an age that they might consider.

As you might have gathered if you've been reading this blog since January, I'm a big fan of the older adopted child. My older son was 18 months old when I adopted him, which was old for 1999. My little guy was four years and nine months old at his court hearing.

If you are a newbie to the Russian adoption process, I hope you will stop to consider an older child, too. Why? Well, for one, they are going to laugh at your jokes a whole lot faster than an infant.

I'm not saying this to be flip about the work than can be involved in adopting an older child. There is work, but it is not as insurmountable as it might seem.

Yes, prolonged institutionalization can cause developmental delays. But those are largely correctable: With patience and perseverance, they pass. And if the child's medical record predicted a scary outcome because of the circumstances of his birth (my older son's record warned he was at risk of cerebral palsy), it is going to be amply apparent by the time he is 18 months old whether that risk is real. And think about the language gap just as a temporary difference in vocabulary--there are still plenty of other ways to communicate.

Give an older child a chance.