Those who've adopted older children, what was your experience like?

My best friend's family adopted a kid our age when we were in high school.

I think he moved in with them around 14 or 15 years of age.

He still has a relationship with his biological family,

and he doesn't usually refer to his adopted parents as mum and dad.

He'll say second mum and second dad, or just use their names.

But he does refer to my friend and her brother as siblings.

We're all mid to late 20s now, and according to her, it's been really great.

My friend and her family are small white people, and he's a really big black guy,

so he'll sometimes show pictures of his adoptive parents to people and be like,

this is my mom and dad.

And when others comment about him being adopted,

he'll pretend he had no idea he was adopted. All in all, it was a great move. He's been able

to attend the college of his choice and go into a field of study he wouldn't have otherwise

been able to. My parents never adopted him, but when I was 14, we had a 15-year-old boy

move in with us who stayed until he was 21.

It was very strange for me as a teenage girl to have an older boy who I'd never met move

into my house, and to see my parents take him in as one of their own.

There was suddenly all these rules for me, like I wasn't allowed to wear pajamas around the house

or be home alone with him for the first year or so.

However, he turned out to be the loveliest kid.

While we never really got over the awkwardness and never really bonded, the whole experience

...