Well. I must disagree. My brother was adopted by his foster parents, at around age 7. My sister was 6. They weren't at all unhappy. I was --fourteen-- when I was placed in the full legal (and permanent) care of an older female relative, and as far as I'm concerned she's the only parent I ever really knew.
I must add, ALL of us were "bonded" to our own terrible mother, and I'm sure there were times when we all missed her. Though I personally can't remember any.. It wasn't all roses, but we were glad to have homes and we loved our carers, who truly deserved the term.
Older kids can be very successfully adopted, and grow up to be happy people, and go on to have lives as balanced people. Kids of 7 and beyond, given up by choice or taken by CPS - it REALLY doesn't matter. All they want is love and a family who cares, and I am sure this applies to the vast, vast majority.
Where the problem lay in this instance, IMO, is a horribly manipulative birth mother who knew exactly what buttons to push, in order to get her son on 'her side' and keep him there. And worse, involved in her process of acting out her own hatred for the adoptive parents, which of course was completely unwarranted. But psychomum projected all the crap on her liver at them, and her son bought into it because SHE put so much effort (at an extremely vulnerable time in her son's life..) into undermining every single good thing, and every single good feeling, he'd ever gained from being away from that hellbish.
I sincerely *hope* cases like this don't discourage people from adopting older children no matter how they ended up the system. There's so many out there who would truly cherish a good home. Or hey, even a clean one with regular meals included.
