Saturday 17 May 2014

Technology and children

If you could go back in time and stop the internet from being invented, would you?

This may seem like a preachy and slightly hypocritical post but i assure you, it's not intended to be read that way. It's purely my opinion and comment on technology in a modern society.

I love my tech. I love that i have so much power in the palm of my hand that with just a few taps on a keyboard, i can find out just about anything about anything at pretty much the same time as ordering a gift, paying my bills and booking a table at a restaurant.

The internet has opened the world up to more possibilities than ever before and that is a truly remarkable thing.

My issue is that i don't think enough people respect it. I don't think people talk about the negatives enough and i certainly don't think people are protecting their children from the dangers.

This isn't a comment on the high profile issues such as grooming and cyber bullying (although i'm not trying to play the down, this just isn't the post to be raising that discussion), this is more subtle than that.

When i was a child, i wouldn't dare ask my parents or grandparents for anything that would cost any more than about £50 and that would be pushing it but that apparently doesn't cut it anymore. A few weeks ago when i logged onto Facebook a friend of mine had put a picture up of her 3 year old sons birthday presents.

She bought him an iPad air and printer.

What the hell does a 3 year old need an iPad for??! Seriously.

It really has sparked something in me. No child needs a tablet and yet this seems to be the norm, more and more children are being given these overly expensive gifts before they have any concept of what they cost. More and more parents are feeling pressured to provide these things for their children despite struggling to pay their bills.

All this comes at a price, the more kids get, the more they expect. First it's a games console, next it's a tablet, by the time they're 8 or 9, they expect £500 phones. They don't learn what it means to be able to have these things, it becomes something insignificant.

On top of that, so many kids become obsessed with the internet and games etc to the point where they are seriously lacking in even the most basic of social skills and are constantly demanding the familiar sight and feel of a tablet or phone in their hands.

I'm not completely against a child having access to the internet and the tech that comes with it but i think it needs to be moderated properly. It shouldn't be an all day thing, they shouldn't be given the tablet etc to babysit them.

I'm hoping that when the time comes, our children will have a good understanding of the internet but won't rely on it to pacify them. I'm hoping that the same will be said for TV. I'm hoping that we will be able to encourage them to enjoy their childhoods and to be silly and to use their imaginations. To enjoy being outside and playing games and running around just because they can.

I don't want my children to become tech zombies. I want them to live.

To answer my own question, as much as i love the internet and all the positive things that come with it (the blogging community and twitter support for starters!), i would absolutely do it. Without a shadow of a doubt. Children need to be children and i honestly think that the internet is slowly but surely forcing them to grow up way too early.

Thursday 15 May 2014

Workshops

We attended our second workshop as part of stage one yesterday and i felt the need to blog about it.

The first briefly covered loss and grief, contact, becoming part of a minority group and legal issues. This was very informative and we both came away having learnt more than we were expecting and both had a different perspective of things from the childs point of view.

This week we attended the workshop dealing with child development, attachment, abuse and trauma and parenting, healing and hope.

This was a different kettle of fish. The abuse and trauma sections really had an impact on me to the point where i was exhausted by the time we got home and it wasn't even 8pm. I think it's completely normal to be in a situation where you're thinking about abuse and its effects (affects?!? i never know the difference) for it to have that sort of impact. It was mentally draining.

Whilst we were talking about abuse we had to give examples of neglect, emotional, sexual and physical abuse and domestic violence. All of that was fine and completely understandable but a couple of things that were said proved to be very controversial in the room.

When we were discussing emotional abuse, someone said that post natal depression was a form of abuse. Quite a few of us were shocked that it came up in that context without explanation and one woman spoke up. She was very unhappy with it being classed as abuse and gave examples of friends who would have been mortified to hear the same thing after going through it themselves.

I completely agreed with her. I personally don't think that PND is abusive. I think the repercussions of it can be in certain circumstances but this wasn't considered until it was challenged.

The next thing that was difficult was discussing sexual abuse. This is never going to be an easy subject for anyone to discuss, we all know that it happens and what it entails but to sit and talk about the technicalities and exactly what goes on is a whole other ball game.

So far this has been the only thing that has made me uncomfortable. It sounds daft as a grown adult but sex has never been something that has been discussed in my family (apart from the time that my Granny had a serious water infection and was convinced that the doctors were trying to have sex with her!) and to discuss it out in the open like that was weird. I know that makes me sound immature but even now, sex is a taboo subject with my lot.

We've been having lots of discussions about the sorts of children we feel that we'd be able to adopt and we've both said that we don't feel as though we have the right skills to be able to raise a child who has been sexually abused. The social workers made a point of basically saying that we can't say no to sexual abuse because they can't possible know everything before a child is placed.

This bothered us both again because if something came up then we would find a way to deal with it whilst keeping our children's best interests at heart but neither of us feel comfortable with taking on a child who is known to have experienced sexual abuse.

All in all, yesterday was tiring!

Tuesday 13 May 2014

The worries

At this moment in time, we are throwing ourselves pretty much completely into the unknown. We don't know what stage 2 is going to reveal, we don't know how we're going to react to any of it and we certainly don't know what our social worker thinks of us.

Most of it, we're pretty confident about dealing with, however, there are little things that i keep thinking about and over analysing.

My upbringing was not great. After speaking with my Mum about things recently, we're both pretty convinced that if it was now, i probably would have ended up in care. Mainly down to my Mum's ex and the abuse we all suffered as a family thanks to him but my Mum being bipolar really wouldn't have helped matters.

Is that going to go against us? Is the fact that my Mum and I get on really well now even though lots of stuff happened back then and she (from the outside) did nothing to prevent it? What if they decided that my wife's upbringing was too straight forward? What if that's all fine but they think that we're completely irresponsible now?

A few nights ago, I dreamt that we got to panel and were declined because of my hairstyle. They saw it as being something that showed that i was immature. They then banned us from ever applying again.

The week before that, i suddenly thought about my tattoos. Now i don't have lots of really OTT crazy tattoos but i do have a few and one that has a huge amount of meaning behind it is on my forearm. What if we get through this whole process, we're approved, matched and go to meet our children with everything being fine. Once we get there, what happens if my tattoos set something off with them and they instantly distrust me?

I know these are only little things but they're still there and they're very much real.


Thursday 1 May 2014

Twitter

If you follow me on twitter, you'll know that i have been cracking one with my stage one homework recently and it's been going well.

We had our first visit from our stage one social worker this week so that she could help with/ask about our homework. She was pleased with our progress and was keen to talk about some of the bits that seemed a little silly etc.

One of the pieces of homework is for us to do our 'eco map'. This is basically a list of people and organisations who will be there to help with support etc when any children come to live with you. She mentioned that we shouldn't forget things like CAMHS and the agency as well as friends and family. 

I mentioned that we'd listed twitter as a good source of support and she was very intrigued. I explained that i'd set up a new user and had linked up with lots of other people who are going through the process and have adopted and she was quite impressed.

So far in this journey, twitter has been incredible. the support and advice we've received has been second to none! The blogs we've connected with are brilliant, they're honest and informative in a way that we haven't experienced with the process yet. I'm so happy that i decided to set up a new user for this, it really is the best decision (other than which agency to go with) we've made to date.

When we were trying to conceive, we dabbled into the pregnancy and baby blogs and following people on twitter but were pretty much blanked. It felt like being the fat kid at school getting picked last for football, i was an outsider and boy did i know it. 

The adoption gang has been the complete opposite and i'm so happy about it. I'm hoping to connect with more people over time, offer support where i can and have somewhere to turn when we need it.