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.

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.

9 to 5

The plan was always that I would be the stay-at-home dad and that in our family mother would be the breadwinner. This is what we said when S- was being matched by the adoption panel with us.

However, I think M-, our social worker, was disappointed when all these things came to pass and, after our time off work building the bond with S-, G- put on her suit and got back on the treadmill.

G-, being the steadfast person she is, didn’t rave or moan or whine. She just got on with it: ‘life is how it is and we’ve got to do these things,’ she said.

To her credit M- choked it back, and has been a rock since. At Christmas, she bought S- a book called Owl bables to help S- cope with her mother’s absence during the day. The symbolism of the story may seem overdone to us adults – the owl babies huddle on a branch all night and call for mummy, who turns up at the end of the book – but S- loves it.

‘Mummy,’ she yells 2 or 3 times a day now, racing across the lounge to point at the TV. So on goes the DVD that came with the book, again. Sometimes we even read the story, too, or at least turn the pages.

Much of this blog seems to be about birds, but S- also now has a picture of an owlet on her bedroom wall: a photograph we brought on a recent week away in the Cotswolds and shoved in a clip frame.

When we see G- pull up in her car at the end of the working day S- wriggles and giggles with excitement, but all this energy seems to vanish when G- actually gets into the house. Suddenly there’s a ton of other stuff to be interested in: books, hairbrush, toys… And when it comes to bedtime it’s always ‘dada’, ‘dada’, although we make sure G- tucks her up at least a few times a week.

It’s the same in the morning: S- is getting increasingly reluctant to say bye-bye to her mother, even though I know we’ll later spend quite a bit of the day calling G- up on the toy telephone.

G- won’t thank me for this but I really admire her for the way she copes with S-’s apparent disinterest. I know it would be tearing me up and I wouldn’t be able to help getting depressed about it. Yet G- stays so calm and positive, and interested. And uncomplaining.

But that, as I said, is the sort of person my wife is.

Book of love

G- and I are both bookworms, and so I thought it might be useful/interesting/not completely dull to list some of our recommended books on parenting.

Then I remembered that one of the things we had to do way back when we went to our adoption panel to be approved for a child was to provide a reading list.

Don’t ask me why [perhaps it was just to show what swots we are]. The panel certainly didn’t – ask us about our reading, I mean. [Perhaps they could tell - that we were swots, I mean.]

So was it a complete waste of time? Well, almost but not quite, because I can now save myself a bit of effort and cut and paste the list.

• Archer C. First steps in parenting the child who hurts. Jessica Kingsley Publishers 1999.
• Campbell N. Blue-eyed son. Pan 2005.
• Cleese J, Skynner R. Families and how to survive them. Vermillion 1993
• Fahlberg V. A child’s journey through placement. BAAF 1994
• Ford G. The contented toddler years. Vermillion 2006
• Faber A, Mazlish E. How to talk so kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Piccadilly Press, 2001
• Gerhardt S. Why love matters. Routledge, 2004.
• Hirst M. Loving and living with traumatised children. Reflections by adoptive parents. BAAF 2006
• Layard R. Happiness. Allen Lane 2006.
• The adopter’s handbook. BAAF 2006
• Stoppard M. Complete baby and childcare. Dorland Kindersley 2006
• Verrier N. The primal wound. Gateway 1999.

The one that our social workers were keen on was The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. This helped introduce us to social work thinking on adoption and to theories on the damaging effects of childhood trauma, abandonment and loss. But it is a bit of a slog, and any reader should bear in mind that it’s based almost exclusively on research with adopted adults who were relinquished as babies. Here in the UK at least, that’s an increasingly rare phenomenon, and there was always a question in my mind as to how up-to-date the book is.

So which ones did we really like? Well, Sue Gerhardt’s Why Love Matters, which does a fantastic job of explaining early child development, and the one with a long title about talking by Faber and Mazlish. This one’s brilliant at encouraging a healthy relationship with your kids.

Nicky Campbell, who’s a TV presenter in the UK, was adopted and his book is an interesting insight into how it feels to have both birth and adoptive parents [as well as a large extended family]. He’s particularly eloquent on the subject of identity and how adoption affects the jigsaw of your personality.

Richard Layard’s Happiness is nothing less than a prescription for a healthier society and a better environment for us to bring our kids up in. That to me is worth at least a look – which you can do from here.

The other author I should mention is Gina Ford. We found that S- really benefited from routine and stability, especially in the early days and some of Ford’s ideas were helpful. The single most useful advice we had on daytime sleep came from The Contented Baby, and this was to manage things in terms not so much of how long your children stay down but how long they are awake before their naps. That to me was a revelation.

Oh, just one more – ok, two. Murkoff, Eisenberg and Hathaway’s What to expect books are useful aide memoires, and surprisingly amusing, too. But we wouldn’t be without Penelope Leach. Baby and Child [Penguin 1989] might be a bit old now, but to me Leach is the guru. I hang on her every word.

The look of love

You don’t actually get to see your future adopted child when they’re originally brought to your attention. First, the adoption social worker tells you that there is a potential child for you, and gives you a few brief facts. You must then say whether you’re interested or not before he/she can go any further. That’s the procedure.

Assuming you say ‘yes’, the social worker then pulls out a thick file and reads/takes you through a number of documents. You get a medical history, a short physical description, any extant information on the birth parents – let’s call them ‘X’ and ‘Y’ – and a few days to think about it.

But you don’t get a picture: the danger, I guess, is that you’ll read either too much or too little into it.

All that seems so remote now. S- is part of our family. Her quirks and foibles, likes and dislikes, moods and tempers are more and more familiar. She seems so known to us, and we to her.

When I look into her liquid blue eyes, ruffle her wisps of hair, stroke her cheek, it’s so easy to forget she hasn’t always been with us. I can’t imagine not seeing her. Her face is always in front of me, just a few months after our social worker came to see us with those first sparse, dispassionate details.