Stage One

We're officially in Stage 2! We're really pleased that everything has gone relatively smoothly up until this point and just want to make a note of it all for future reference.

We were accepted onto Stage one in April and straight away we jumped into doing our homework (the enormous mountain of the stuff!!) and had our first workshop the following week.

The homework was more awkward that anything. Talking about yourself isn't something that comes naturally to a lot of people and we definitely fit in that category. Some questions were really simple to answer but others were difficult. To be asked what you feel your best characteristic is when it comes to being a parent and yet you've never been a parent, it's difficult. We both answered as honestly as we could and used friends and family to help with some of the difficult bits.

The workshops were really helpful, we covered a hell of a lot in the few hours that we had. We did an exercise with bits of string where one of the group had to be a child that was about to be adopted but we had to think of all of the people that had been in her life up until that point and how she felt about them and what they meant to her. We both found that exercise in particular, very helpful.

In the following workshop, we had a discussion about the specifics of abuse (i've mentioned this in another post) which again was helpful but draining.

We have been reading lots of blogs during stage one and we're going to point family and friends in their direction a little later on in the process.

We've both read 'Creating Loving Attachments' too. I have found this to be seriously helpful and have already recommended it to someone who is struggling and arguing lots with her birth children. Even when we've been babysitting for our many nephews, we've tried to use some of the stuff mentioned to try and get us used to it. What with that and Nick King's (follow the guy on twitter, lots of laughs and some good advice from time to time) '7 second rule', we're awesome babysitters! Not 100% sure about how it'll transfer when we have our children but we're starting as we mean to go on.

We had our end of stage one interview with our agency, this took us a little by surprise. We weren't told anything about it before we got there then were told that it takes about 3 hours...totally shocked but tried to hide it and answer everything as well as we could. It all seemed to go well although with hindsight, we both agreed that we could have answered some of the questions much better and at the end we were told that both social workers were happy for us to proceed but the manager had to sign off.

After that we were both relieved and started talking more about what we were expecting in stage 2.

Weirdly, i then had a wobble for a couple of days where the thought of becoming a parent terrified me. One thing that i've learnt through reading about PACE is the importance of acceptance and that starting with the acceptance of your child's 'inner life'.

Knowing that and experiencing the fear that i was, i suddenly realised that i need to accept it. It might sound strange but i was scared for a reason, i was scared that i couldn't cope with the sorts of behaviours we might be faced but regardless of how much i tried to deny it, i would still feel that way and that's fine.

Since then i have accepted that it's fine to be scared. I think that if you're not all scared about the prospect of suddenly having a child or two move in with you forever, that's a little weird.

We are going to face challenges that we've never had to face before and that is scary and intimidating but we are so determined to do everything we can to make it work. We're determined to learn as much as possible between here and there and then to continue that learning for as long as possible.

We're not always going to get it right but the fact that we care enough to want to always get it right speaks volumes.

Thank you to those of you on Twitter that helped me see that.