It Hurts

My son hurts. He tries so hard to follow the rules, to do the right thing. He doesn’t always get it right. He used to spread his hurt to others. Backwards headbutts, hitting, kicking, biting, hurting. Now he tries to stop himself; it’s a visible struggle. When he does wrong, especially when it’s accidental, his instant reaction is to lash out. He’s learning to contain it, to control it, but his anger, his shame has nowhere to go. He screams, he cries, he thumps his hands up and down, until he contains them in his mouth. He doesn’t hit, he

I Have Adopted Siblings

This week is National Adoption Week 2017, the focus this year is on sibling adoptions which makes sense given that apparently 61% of children in care waiting to be adopted are deemed to need to be placed with a sibling. I have adopted siblings, we adopted them from care. Like most sibling groups they went through a ‘sibling assessment’ to see whether they should be adopted together or apart. Many people with children will wonder why on earth that would be required, why would it ever be in their best interests to split them? Well there are reasons which I’m

Making A Difference?

Today I feel like I’ve made more of a difference for some families than I ever have before. I was in a confidential meeting so I can’t discuss much about it, but the topic of post-adoption support came up. In that meeting I was the only ‘service user’ present, so I was the only person who was able to present any information from an adopter’s point of view. The others were either independent people with nothing much to do with adoption (professionally, at least) or social workers. There were two things I said which I think made an impact: “There

Unrealised Potential

I think it is sometimes very easy to think of our adopted children as broken, and the recent calls for extra support to be given probably hasn’t helped that concept one little bit. I don’t think looking at it that way is helpful, our children aren’t broken and to label them a such creates a detrimental stigma. Sometimes, though, they do need a bit of extra help and understanding to meet their potential. Maybe certain processes that work so well for 90% of children need to be changed or adapted to mean that children from a trauma background are able to

The Support Plan

As adoptive parents we are presented with what is called a “Support Plan” at a reasonably early stage. Our adoption agency does this shortly before Matching Panel so that the plan can be presented to the panel and forms part of the decision as to whether the parents are a good match for the children. Often the type of support detailed in the plan will vary based on the knowledge and skills of the prospective parents.

School: The First Week

Last week my Eldest son started his formal education at the school we chose for him last year after visiting it. Since January he had been itching to start, frequently asking “how many days until I start school?”, occasionally getting himself in a bit of a grump when we replied with a number that was a little too big for him to imagine. We had no doubt that he was ready to start school. When he is feeling secure he comes across as quite a mature little boy, he loves reading and is not frightened to use words that he

The School Visit

My Eldest starts school in September. I know, it’s ridiculous. What ever happened to my little boy still in nappies, not quite talking right, relying on us for pretty much everything without much complaint? He’s still in there somewhere, but the sprout of independence is slowly growing within him. The sprout that parents simultaneously hate and celebrate. A little while ago we had a visit from one of the early years teachers from the school we picked along with one of the teaching assistants. This wasn’t something we had expected the school to do, but apparently it is common practice

Pros & Cons – The Stay-At-Home/Work Parent

Before I wrote my previous post I had a conversation with the lovely Emma Sutton (a published author don’t you know?) and a few others on Twitter, which started off as a commentary on the ‘Gender Divide’ in people’s households. I was sitting there chuckling away because we are a same-sex household so by definition there is no gender divide. The only similar thing we have is that one of us is a stay-at-home parent and the other is a go-to-work, or as we’ve called it, stay-at-work parent. Emma and I felt there was definitely enough material in that to

The Stay-at-work Dad

One of the first things you have to decide when adopting as a couple is who is going to be the one who takes adoption leave to be at home with the children. Recent legislative changes mean that you can actually share this between the two of you, but this seems to be rarely a practical solution. For us the decision was fairly straightforward. I earned more than my husband, and it was just about enough to survive on without the need for a second income. I also work 10 minutes away from home and have fairly flexible working practices,