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Not me; I have one. Rather some reflections on the series on Channel 4 that ran before Christmas and on a recent blog in the context of us receiving our first contact letter from one of our child’s siblings, because ultimately it might turn out to be “Finding My Family” for them, in the fullness of time.
‘That’s the name of the game in the early days. Reassurance.’ said the social worker on the phone. ‘Just reassure him that everything will be ok. As much a you possibly can.’
For a large part of the time our son has been with us we have been waiting - and worse still expecting - for there to be a very obvious and significant improvement in his behaviour, waiting for the signs that he had indeed settled and that he had let go of his hurt and anguish and that he had embraced the love and more importantly the security he now had in our family.
My heart breaks when I think of their past, when I think of them suffering, of them left uncared for, for every day that they went hungry and for each cry that went unanswered.
It's your birthday, it's your birthday.
Last year we didn't see you.
But we thought of you so much.
All day, every hour.
I'm writing a letter to you to be read when you're a little older.
I'm writing it now before I forget all of the emotions and events that whirl past me at a hundred miles an hour as I attempt to mother you to the best of my abilities
A year or so after our boys joined us and we became a family we had a call from the agency to say that another couple were in the process of adopting siblings and would we mind being put in touch with them to discuss our experience and how things were working out.
Social workers are just people doing a job and of course like all of us they are sometimes less than perfect; however they are dealing with people’s lives so even simple mistakes can be emotionally wounding. We became very aware of this through our own experience and also that of friends who have also been through the adoption process. It can be as simple as failing to immediately tell you of a change in the panel date - which of course means a huge amount to you, but is just a correction in a diary to them - to fundamentally not “getting it”.
Hearing that We Are Family and the South London Adoption Consortium were running a presentation on “Why Children Placed From Care Need Support In Schools” was exciting news for me on multiple fronts. As a prospective adopter, I am trying to gather as much information as possible to help me prepare for life as an adoptive parent, but additionally, by day I work as a Deputy Headteacher at a London Primary School, and am always keen to learn more about how I can support vulnerable pupils at school.
So with two hats on, I felt like I was well placed to write a review (or two) of the evening. Thanks to We Are Family for giving me the chance to share my thoughts!
We soon realised - and it was a shocking realisation - that we were in it over our heads. We had listened intently at the prep' course, read copiously, had scoured the internet, picked the minds of the experienced parents around us; we thought we were prepared. However, can anything truly prepare you for the impact of an adopted child coming into your life? Especially when a child displays the trademark behaviour of a traumatised child?
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