Today was the day our home became our youngest child’s longest home. This can be a very significant day for an adopted child. For us though, due to our child’s age, I think today has gone unnoticed. We had the same temper tantrums and, shall we say, “exploring the function of teeth” as we have had over the last few months. No changes in behaviour at all, although we didn’t expect any. I think when the equivalent day for our oldest comes it will be far more significant, but that is some way off.
Category: Adoption
The Best Present
We have received the best Christmas present anyone ever can this year. We have become the irrefutable, absolute, legal parents of our children. (with no backsies!) Shortly after my post in September, we sent off the Adoption Order paperwork. We hoped that we had managed to get it to the court in time for it to be processed before Christmas, but we expected to be too late. We had been told it should take about 12 weeks, and that took us up to and probably beyond Christmas. A couple of weeks later we received a letter from the court telling
The State of Adoption
Over the past year or two there has been a lot of governmental attention given to adoption and the adoption process. Most significantly the decision to streamline the approval process has greatly reduced the amount of time it takes for a prospective adopter to be approved. This was billed as being necessary because there weren’t enough adopters coming through in order to place the children requiring permanent homes, and those that were were taking too long to be approved. In part this was due to the sheer level of bureaucracy involved and, in my opinion, the lack of structure to the
Life Story Books
Here’s a post I promised a couple of months ago about what are called Life Story Books. Somewhere along the line ‘the powers that be’ found rather than concealing a child had been adopted, treating it as a taboo subject, as if it were something to be ashamed of, that if someone knows where they came from and why they are better able to become well-rounded individuals. One of the things which social services are now obligated to do to help with this is to provide every adopted child a Life Story Book. So what are they? They are a
The Road So Far…
In the grand scheme of things our journey and travels through the adoption process have been quite short. Many prospective adopters wait a lot longer to be linked to a child than we did. Many people have delays caused by problems with social services staffing issues, and sometimes prospective adopters get assigned a social worker to assess them that they just don’t feel comfortable with. Occasionally social workers make mistakes which delay things – they are human, they make mistakes – and sometimes Life just gets in the way. I am pleased to say we have experienced very few of those of things and
Conversations with a pre-verbal child
Before I write this post I would like to point out that I’m not mad, while these conversations are based on real events they never actually happened anywhere other than in my head. The Request Child: That looks interesting. *points to age inappropriate object out of reach* Parent: No, you can’t have that. Child: Can I have that please? *points again, moves closer* Parent: No, that’s not for you. *moves child away from object and next to some toys in attempt to distract* Child: I want that toy! *returns to object, points again* Parent: That isn’t a toy, you can’t have it.
It’s been a while, but here we are…
So, for some reason I’ve been a bit busy for writing blog posts. This isn’t just adoption related but work related too as (don’t tell anyone but…) a lot of my posts are actually written on my work computer. We are currently on the cusp of sending off our adoption paperwork so that the court can decide whether to change us from ‘Prospective Adoptive Parents’ to ‘Adoptive Parents’. There are quite a few differences between the two, mostly legal, but at that point we no longer need to deal with social services unless we want to. We would contact their
What Happens Next?
So, we have our children Placed with us. That’s the technical term ‘Placed’ – as in they have a Placement Order so they can be Placed with prospective adoptive parents. Yes, that’s technically what we still are. When does that change? The answer to that varies depending on the age of the children, how settled they are, and what your personal circumstances are. The children need to be Placed for a minimum of 10 weeks before the prospective parents can apply for what is called an Adoption Order. This is when the case goes to court and if successful the
And so it continues…
A few more observations: 9. Driving on a dual carriageway (highway for those of you across the pond) whilst doing a full family rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (with actions for the non-drivers) is a common occurrence. 10. Replace Twinkle Twinkle with any other nursery rhyme/song and repeat point 9. 11. Associating video with audio from a different source is learnt behaviour, young children just don’t get it. 12. Proper names of parents no longer exist. Forget them and go with the parental titles instead, regardless of whether children are actually present. Unless of course you want to be
Introductions
Introductions have been an amazing experience. Wonderful, exciting, nerve wracking, and tiring. One thing is clear though, if you have a good foster family helping you things go a lot better than they otherwise would. Introductions are customised to the age of the child/children that you’re being introduced to. Younger ones tend to have a shorter period, older ones slightly longer. Sibling groups longer still but again depending on their age. They are structured so that the first half is based at the foster carer’s house with them showing you the routine that the child/children is currently in, and slowly
