Listen to her dialogue and look at the shackles on the wall. She starves the children, beats them, shackles them to the wall, denies them being adopted and basically crushes their spirits along with their bodies....she deserves the same treatment and more but I'll settle for beating her to death barehanded. I'm sure several kids have died on her watch from her harsh treatment, I kill her without batting an eye and will even do so on characters that don't join the DB or get asked to by Aventus.

Unless I want to beat the game again and get married again and make my house all over again, I can't get a previous load.

lol, I do the same. It's on my to do list when I show up in riften for the first time in every single playthrough.

So you have the master bedroom built, do you have all the containers in it? Maybe you need the cupboards by the childs bed or something. It can't hurt to build the single beds and dressers upstairs as well...kids will sleep in that area if you don't have the master bedroom so maybe that will bypass the bug you're experiencing.

If you do all of this then try visiting Lucia in Whiterun, give her a gold coin to raise her disposition then see if you can adopt her afterwards...she usually asks if you'll be her daddy/mommy after you give her money and ask why she's begging.
ha nice...dude you change avatars more then I change socks

Galtaur, do you have two each of beds and chests?

I know...The mods should lock my avatar so I can't change it lol.

@Op- Like others have said, do you have a fully built kids room?

you can adopt without doing this... speak to the orphan children scattered about Skyrim. But in order for the dialog with the children you need to have their beds and storage built.

You seriously have to kill her before adopting kids? That's not immersion breaking at all...

Well, they could have built in a thing where you persuade the Jarl to have her arrested or something (she won't allow the children to be adopted, as well as abusing them physically and emotionally), but then people would probably moan when they found out they couldn't do anything DB related. Also, you can still adopt homeless kids, AFAIK.

Still. They could have taken an easier route and just added another orphanage that doesn't require you to kill a lady in order to adopt a kid.

Skyrim is a harsh land... (Plus, while I don't necessarily think murdering child abusers is the way forward (i.e. obviously not) I don't think leaving them to abuse children is okay, either.) And you don't have to adopt from the Orphanage, AFAIK you can adopt a homeless kid whether or not Grelod is alive.

I suppose you're right. I usually end up adopting the homeless ones anyway, simply because I find it impressive how they attain means to make a living.

there were two child's beds and chests because you can adopt up to 2. the child's bed says someone owns it ._. maybe my wife?

Yeah, I always wish you could give them more than the odd septim while you're not at a point where you can adopt them - I've tried dropping sweet rolls and pies in front of Sofie in the hope it would trigger that thing where they run up to you and say 'hey, you dropped this! ...Can I keep it?' but no. I generally buy all her flowers, though.

The odd thing is that Constance can see you do it, but she doesn't mention it when you go to adopt a child later on. It's kind of like:

DRAGONBORN: "Can I adopt one of your kids?"

CONSTANCE: "Sorry, no. Grelod's headmistress, she's not allowing any adoptions."

DRAGONBORN: "Oh. Could you excuse me for a second?"

The Dragonborn goes up to Grelod, grabs her, and neatly snaps her neck. *CRUNCH* Grelod falls in a boneless heap. Calmly, the Dragonborn returns to Constance.

DRAGONBORN: "Can I adopt a kid now?"

CONSTANCE: "Do you have a house?"

DRAGONBORN: "Yup."

CONSTANCE: "OK, you can adopt a kid. I think you'll make an excellent parent."

(No, that's not exactly how it goes, but it's not that far off)

Yeah, it would have been nice for them to expand a bit. But of course when you drop something you risk triggering two NPCs wanting it... and we all know what happens after that.

Haha! Don't worry, I was *very* careful to wait until there was nobody else around. To, erm, offer a child cake. Because THAT doesn't seem dodgy...