The Things We Miss

My previous post was a re-blog of a fellow adopter listing what he thought were the top 10 pro’s and con’s to adopting. One which got me thinking was this: You will miss the early important bonding period and some important milestones in your children’s lives Even if a child is adopted from birth there are things the adoptive parents will miss out on, usually the actual birth for one, but the longer the child is in care the more that will be missed. We will never know what our eldest son’s first word was. We don’t know which was

The Year Gone By

This year has been a pretty amazing roller-coaster of a ride. At the beginning of the year all seemed great; we had our final few assessment sessions ahead of us, our Approval Panel date had been set and we had been approached by social services about a pair of siblings who just seemed perfect. Our Prospective Adopters Report read very well, our social worker got us spot on – the rough and the smooth – and it was on the back of this that we were approached in the first place. We were on Cloud 9; all these tales of

Big Day

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.

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

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

Goodbyes and Hellos

We’ve said some goodbyes over the last two weeks. Firstly to our Social Worker who came to the end of her placement for her course, so has moved on. She has to finish her course with dissertations and other such academic things, then she’ll be starting her new job. We have enjoyed working with her and really appreciate the hard work she has put in to getting us as far as we did within the time she had with us. There were some hiccups along the way, and we still aren’t absolutely certain of the future, but she was there

Support

The last couple of weeks have been very hard for us. Something that has become so incredibly clear to us has been the level of total unconditional support that we have from pretty much everyone we know, and even people we don’t. So, this post is a massive thank you! We cannot express how lucky we feel to have you all behind us. The New Family Social forum has been absolutely brilliant, after I posted a message on there we received many messages of support and advice, all of which have been vital. The comments on my previous blog post