Sunshine of your love

So stay-at-home dad is standing in the wood holding the pushchair, while the dog runs around under the oak trees. S- has stopped about 10 feet away and is looking at me, waiting.

She’s so tiny and cute, and stubborn – but I’m not actually thinking about that. I’m actually thinking about what H-, one of our friends, said recently in a similar situation: ‘Of course, the idea of a path only comes a lot later.’

I hadn’t seen it in that way before, but now it seems blindingly obvious. S- doesn’t know that we’re following a path. She doesn’t understand, and nor does she care, that we’ve actually decided to go in this direction.

The world these days has reference points that she recognises: the ’svings’, the moooos, the car, and so on. But beyond that she doesn’t yet think in straight lines – she’s an explorer, not a traveller – and it’s simply puzzling to be asked, with increasing sharpness, to ‘hurry up’ or ‘come this way’. [Not to mention amusing to run off in the other direction and to have daddy come chasing after her!] She needs to be guided, not force-marched.

I crouch and hide behind the pushchair. ‘Boo,’ I say, reappearing from the other side. ‘Boo,’ I say again, and then I wait a minute. Then I say, ”Hello S-’, and I wave. Her face breaks into a big, joyous smile, and she lurches off her heels and comes tumbling towards me.

Saving all my love for you

S- was calling from her bedroom. ‘Da da, Da da, DA DA.’ It was 4 in the afternoon and she’d woken up from her nap bang on time.

I was at the computer, typing. I had nearly finished what I was doing. Soooo nearly.

The thing was, I knew that with another 5 minutes I could get what I was doing completed and then go into S- and not have to think about the essay again …

It’s amazing how 5 minutes can turn into 20 right under your nose!

When I started writing this blog it was suposed to be just a diary of my time, and I was very concerned that it didn’t interfere with family life or my burgeoning relationship with my daughter.

Later, when friends and other people started commenting on the blog I began to think of it differently.

‘It’s for S-,’ I’d say. And in a way that’s true. I hope that when she’s older she does have the opportunity to read it and understand a little of what this unprecedented time was like.

But in a sense it was an evasion, too. I may have been writing for her, but the writing was beginning to take up more and more not only of my time but also of my mental energy. I was getting shorter and more impatient with S-, regretting my reaction, apologising and then starting to think about how I could include the whole exchange in the blog.

The so-called ‘diary’ was taking over our time together.

I’ve written before about the difficulty of remaining selfless when you are a stay-at-home dad [or mum] with a toddler. I had planned to say more. But I think this sums it up.

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About four months after she came home to us, S- suddenly got very ill. She ended up in the hospital with a chest infection so bad that, at one point, she stopped breathing.

We thought we knew her quite well by then – after all, we’d been with her day and night for a third of a year. But we didn’t, not really.

She was so strong. Strong and tiny, and angry. I looked at her restless, fighting body, saw all the rage and distress and the fear she was going through, and mixed in with my own fear and helplessness was what I can only think of now as a profound sense of respect for her.

When it got really bad I sat next to her and held her hand like they do in the movies. They were putting a drip into her foot and she was exhausted. Exhausted and at the end of her tether. She had her head turned towards me and she was looking at me. Her eyes were extraordinarily big and blue. I wiped away my own tears and saw the question framed in the big, limpid pools of her eyes: can I trust you?

She was only a year and 1 month old at this point and she had been fighting a battle not only in this alien environment for the last couple of days but in the alien environment we’d taken her to for the last 6 months. Now she was asking me the biggest, most serious thing.

Can I trust you?

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. I just sat and held her hand and looked into her eyes.

You can get it if you really want

There are three pieces of advice I would pass on to anyone who’s working through the process of adoption.

I’m talking here specifically about all the stuff you have to do, to complete, to write, to listen to and say yes to so that you can be approved – not the actual bit you’re presumably interested in: being matched with a child and bringing her/him home.

It is good, practical advice I’m passing on [though I say it myself]. But just one thing to note: G- and I- were approved by a local authority and it may be different in some detail for those going through a private agency. However, I’d be surprised if it differed in essentials.

1. Preparatory groups.This is the bit after your application is accepted and before you are approved to be an adopter. G- and I- attended a half-day training session on trauma and loss, and then four days’ worth on adoption practicalities. Bits of it were interesting. Other bits less so. Anyhow, the main thing is you are being watched. Whatever the social workers say to the contrary, they are assessing you, and it pays to be the school swot. Ask lots of questions. Bone up on the theory, the books, so you can impress them with your knowledge. Be keen. Make yourself noticed.
2. Home study. This bit comes after the prepatory groups and is supposed to make you ready for the approval panel. It can last anywhere from 6 months onwards, though in the UK you’re supposed to have it completed within 8 months. Expect to find the questions, the comments, the invasion of your privacy difficult. Expect to be embarassed, upset or annoyed at least sometimes. If you find yourself sailing through it may be worth asking yourself why you think that is. If the social worker is being easy on you she/he is not doing you a favour because if the panel isn’t completely satisfied it has the power to defer your application or even reject it completely. Likewise, the report the social worker writes on you at the end of the home study should challenge you or at the very least surprise you in one or more of its findings. That means the social worker has done his/her job and investigated you, thoroughly.
3. Brochure. This is your task at the end of the home study: producing a colourful, child-friendly, attractive and interesting document on you and your home life that your social worker will use, along with his/her report [see above], to try to get you matched with appropriate children. The brochure is actually a difficult thing to put together [much more difficult than you might think: we had 3 attempts at it] but don’t give up on it. Ask to see other people’s brochures and get your social worker/adoption agency person fully involved. Above all, get used to the idea that you have to ’sell’ yourself. [Don't fool yourself about this: once approved by the adoption panel you become a commodity - or as they put it, a resource - for your agency, and you need to make yourself as valuable as possible.]

So, those are three of my ‘key points’, though I have written elsewhere about the process of adoption. I’d love to hear what other people’s experiences were/havebeen/are like or if there are any other pieces of advice that may be of use to others.

Bridge over troubled waters

There are certain conversations that adoptive parents can find difficult. One such classic: ‘Oh, she’s going to have her mother’s good looks, isn’t she?’

Does that mean we can’t or shouldn’t have these discussions with our children, albeit using different noun phrases and at a slightly different angle? ‘Yes, X-,’ we might find ourselves saying, for example, ‘You’ve got your birth mother’s eyes/hair/nose’ [circle and/or delete as appropriate].

I am, to use the neologism, ‘conflicted’ when it comes to the issue of ‘contact’ between adopted kids and blood relatives. I’m not sure how it works everywhere – somehow I doubt it happens much in international adoption – but in many instances I know of there is an arrangement/agreement to keep all three arms of the adoption ‘triad’ in dialogue: birth parents, adopters, adoptees.

The arrangement can be individualised in any number of ways, depending on the circumstances, but essentially it boils down to either regular letters [one- or two- way], face-to-face meetings, a mixture of both, or none. Some expression of intent for how contact should happen is usually set out as part of the legal orders when the formal adoption takes place.

In theory the arrangement is in the adopted child’s best interest because it keeps the lines of communication open and gives both child and adoptive parent a way into talking about the adoption.

Thus those odd, slightly tangential conversations I referred to earlier can take place more successfully, or at least with more information behind them. The child, and the adopters, will have a much clearer idea about, for example, physical characteristics having met or at least corresponded with [and possibly received pictures] from the biological mother and/or father.

And if in fact child X grows up having stayed in touch with birth mum and/or dad then he or she will gradually form their own opinion of them. It will be a realistic opinion, untainted by magical thinking ['I'm really a princess and one day my mummy the Queen will come to rescue me'] and free of any bias, whether intentional or non-intentional, imparted by the adoptive parents. That’s the theory, anyway.

Contact is a difficult area. It’s one that many potential adopters are put off by, and also an issue that many people in the wider population are reluctant to accept, I suspect partly on moral grounds. ['They've (the birth parents) had their chance: it'll only mess things up to go back to them now.']

However, the logic behind it is sound – if you accept the theory that it is in the child’s interests. To extend the analogy of The Primal Wound, it’s better for the child to keep reopening the wound, letting it heal gradually from the bottom up, rather than allowing it to close over and risking the development of an abscess.

The trouble is that contact so often appears to be more in the birth parents’ interest. Contact stories I’ve come across often end with hyped up/hyperanxious, overloaded children, while the adoptive parent rages that the birth family have broken the terms of the agreement, either by being late, or arriving pissed and/or stoned or subverting children through sneaky gifts and suggestions. At different times many people – some adoptive parents and some interested observers such as family friends – have said that contact simply doesn’t work.

There’s huge potential for cock-up, too. Over at the Adoption UK website there’s a thread on the message board about social services mistakenly sending birth parents’ the addresses of their adopted kids’ new homes. That is most definitely not the kind of stress that a family needs to have in their lives!

Yet contact may prove to be of value eventually, despite all the heartache. What about the child adopted young who doesn’t remember his/her birth parents but grows up with regular contact through birth siblings placed with other families, or in different parts of the country? This type of relationship could be of massive help to a young man or woman trying to work through identity issues, especially if his/her adoptive parents never met biological mum and/or dad.

It is a dilemma, and there are no easy answers. Actually, I’m beginning to think that there are no answers, full stop. Perhaps all you can do is make sure that when your child asks about ‘tummy’ mummy or daddy you can look them in the eye and say you did your best and found out as much about them as you could.

In the meantime, there are other conversations about identity that adoptive parents can also have with their kids. Here are two examples: ‘Aren’t you generous, X- – just like daddy?’. And: ‘Yes, you’re a brilliant cook: you love sharing time in the kitchen with mummy, don’t you?’

The times they are a’changin

Spring is unfolding around us. The woods are full of bluebells and anenomes, and people walk around in jumpers and shirtsleeves.

We went to the little play park in the large village near us, and S- swung on the ’svings’ and climbed the steps to the slide while another little girl played among the celandines.

S- has no qualms about setting off down even very steep slopes, but she keeps planting her feet. Sometimes she stops halfway down a slide so abruptly I feel she’s about to come pinging off, flying head first through the air towards me.

It’s a good day. As we wander around the village centre we meet four different bloke wheeling pushchairs of children of varying ages. Is it a coincidence [ie is it just that all these dads have all taken the day off work today]? I prefer to think that each one is a stay-at-home dad hero.

Wind of change

We were saddened, G- and I, and perhaps S- too, when we stood at the window and watched M- drive away. Our social worker had just paid us a final visit: it was more in the nature of a social call than a statutory meeting.

Over the last few years M- has been an ever present in our lives. She was both mentor and guide to us in a time of rapid and total change, and a faultless advocate and adviser as we navigated our way through the emotional turmoil and legal rigmarole of S-’s adoption. She as much as anyone has helped us get to grips with being parents, too.

When we first met M- she informed us that she would be many things to us but she wouldn’t be one of our friends.

She was almost wrong.

There’s a part of me that wants to send this link to M-, so that she can see how profoundly G- and I appreciate the support and help she gave us. On reflection I know it would be the wrong thing to do.

I’m enough of an amateur psychologist to know that part of my, our, sadness is that we’ve reached the end of a significant chapter in our life. The fact of M-‘s leaving us has made us realise that we’re the authors of our own lives again. Scary stuff!

I know, too, that this is the beginning of the end of adoptivedad. There won’t be many more posts before I stop writing this blog. My regret about this is real, but tempered with anticipation and relief.

We – G-, S- and I – are out on our own now, about to start a new chapter as a family together.