Single dad from Buffalo adopts five siblings at once — for a lifetime total of 10 adopted children

A single dad in Buffalo, New York, has a lifelong passion for parenting endangered kids. According to ABC News, Lamont Thomas has fostered over 30 children over the last 20 years, in addition to raising his own two biological children, and five others who he adopted out of the foster system.

Thomas believed that he was out of the parenting game once the youngest of these children was grown and out of the house. However, a special case brought him back, and he is now once again a full-time single dad — this time of a group of five children who are all under the age of five.

According to ABC News, Thomas learned about the five siblings because one of the dozens of children he fostered over the years was their biological father. The kids had been taken into the foster system due to neglect and placed in four different homes. When he heard that the siblings had been separated for a year and a half, Thomas decided to "come out of retirement" and step back into the parenting game.

"They deserve to be raised as siblings, and that was my fight," Thomas said.

Thomas had allowed his foster parent certification to lapse since he believed he was done raising kids, but when he heard about these siblings, he got re-certified as a foster parent and brought all five of them into his home, with the intention of adopting them all. As of October 17th, the adoption went final, according to the Daily Mail.

Thomas told "Good Morning America" that he began fostering children in 2000 as a way to help out some friends, and that it then became a calling for him. According to Michael Thomas, his oldest adopted son, Lamont "never turned [a child] away. They either aged out or went back home to their own families."

As for the challenges associated with parenting five new children who are so young might be daunting to some, Thomas says that the children give him new energy, and that he is so happy to have them in his life that he was moved to tears when the adoption was finally finalized.