Intros and those first few weeks of being a family

I completely and utterly forgot that i blogged on the morning of intros! Anyway, here's a quick overview of our life for the last month or so.

The first day of intros was...awkward. Wife had a serious case of food poisoning which had her up vomiting from 2am, as we were about to leave, the other end started. It was awful! She felt so rubbish all day and all Big and Little wanted to do was run and bounce on the trampoline.

When we walked into the foster carers Big and Little were there and just stared at us. Big came to me and Little to Wife, we sat on the sofa and both of them stared at us. Big kept looking me right in the eyes and smiling their little head off. Later that day, Big told me that they had been dreaming of me, absolutely melted my heart!

Foster carer was great from the get go, no awkwardness with us and let us get on with it. We got a great family photo done at the park that is strange to look at now, it's almost as if none of us look like the same people.

Overall introductions were very successful. Neither of us felt like we'd "gone through" introductions if that makes sense? It was all going very, very smoothly and we were all very happy. By day 3 i started to feel the big L and was getting incredibly emotional. Wife wasn't there at all at that point, she likes them very much but not there with anything else.

Both Big and Little were getting very confused with all the back and forth business, we kept saying that this was their forever home but you can't stay here today and that just didn't make sense to them. We had to do lots of reassurance over the 8 days and made sure that they knew exactly when we would be there etc and that helped so much.

The worst thing about intros was actually Big and Little's goodbye party. We just felt so out of place, neither B or L were really that bothered about us for the most part because so much was going on. People kept telling us how lucky they are (infuriating!!) and how we don't even know what's about to hit us etc etc. Lots of needless small talk that just isn't really relevant to us or adoption in general and people thinking they know all about parenting a traumatised child because their great uncles second cousins nephew was adopted in 1753.

Forever family day arrived at the right time, we were all fed up of the endless driving and going back and forth all the time. We picked them up and said a very quick goodbye to the foster carer and got in the car. I was fine until the foster carer hugged me and i collapsed in a flood of tears. Wife decided to drive so i could gather myself but the whole exchange only lasted about 3 or 4 minutes, it was just so intense and i really felt like i was severing a limb or something. Very strange feeling knowing that you can't just ask that question or be reassured by that nod from the other side of the room suddenly. We have kept in touch and plan to do so in the future, they have made such a difference to B&L's lives, the change in them is phenomenal, they're barely recognisable as the same children who went into care.

The drive home was very quiet, neither B or L spoke much at all until B broke down about 20 minutes from home. We decided that the best thing we could do was to reassure them and i decided to hold their hand and stroke it from the front. It seemed to work and they calmed down and just sat holding my hand for ages afterwards.

Each day we have a thing that has to be done for Big. Big does not like it but it has to be done. Doing this on forever family day is where our wonderfully happy family dynamic started to crack apart big time. It was also the first time i was punched by my child, it was hell and it really did show us exactly how things were going to be from that point on.

Over the next week, things got worse and worse. Big hit, kicked, punched, spat, screamed, shouted, shoved, strangled, pinched, you name it really and Big did it. Going in the car was filling us with dread, it was becoming dangerous within 5 minutes of getting in the car and we were stopping, we just didn't know what to do for the best.

We turned to our trusty Twitter community and our social worker. Lots of people suggested getting an mp3 player each so that they were distracted in the car and not focussing on each other and that has honestly worked wonders!!! The first day we tried it, we managed car journeys plus shopping for 2 hours and 41 minutes without incident. We were completely over the moon!!

Behaviour at home was getting worse and worse and just when we thought it couldn't get any worse...their social worker came for a visit. On the day they were both fine but the following day was WWIII in the AM household. We had 7 hours of pretty much solid violence coming in a new wave every 10-15 minutes. It was unbearable and we just didn't know what to do. We were on damage control whilst trying to make sure that no one was getting hurt. I'm fortunate that i don't bruise because if i did, i would have had black eyes and multiple big bruises on my face, arms, legs, stomach, back, neck. Pretty much everything has come at me, very little of it has been directed at Wife. It was like going in to the hunger games and hoping to be the victor. Big managed to communicate that they were scared and worried that their social worker had/was coming to take them away. We knew that would be the case but hearing it was horrible especially when they clung to me as they said it.

Everything we were trying was failing, everything that had helped us cope up until this point and made things manageable had stopped working. We were completely out of ideas and trying to avoid getting the crap beat out of us. Big is of school age (we know doesn't really say much for you reading this) and when you have a child who is functioning in that moment as a toddler but is the size of a child 2 years older than their chronological age, it's very difficult. For those of you that aren't adopters or haven't been through stuff like this, imagine having a small teenager having a full on throw yourself on the floor tantrum in a supermarket whilst being in an irrational teenagers rage and try to stop that from happening without anyone getting hurt. Big isn't a teen but the principle is the same. It's an impossible situation and if you're in it, i can pretty much guarantee that you will shout. Then you'll feel guilty about shouting. Then you'll shout again.

We'd reached out for help from their placing LA earlier in the week and had an appointment set up with therapeutic support to try and help the situation. Therapeutic support told us to call/email if anything else got worse or we needed anything in the meantime. We did and got the biggest load of bull back in an email. I was so angry. Suggestions of having their social worker speak to them on the phone to 'diffuse' the situation and the like. Completely unhelpful and worrying that it would be suggested under the circumstances.

Throughout everything our social worker has kept us sane. From Big screaming in my face that i've hurt them whilst trying to restrain them, Little disclosing some really worrying things and everything getting on top of us, she's been amazing. She's done additional therapeutic visits to try and help things, she's been on the phone at the drop of a hat and really supportive of everything we've done.

When she visited she asked us how we're feeling. We'd been talking to each other about that very thing the evening before and agreed that out of 10 (1 being the absolute worst we could feel and 10 being the best) we were on a daily 2. Maybe a 3. She wasn't judgemental or shocked but did say that it was really bad that we were feeling that low. She did and has continually given us a boost and told us that she's amazed with how well we're doing and very proud of how we're working together.

We've been getting some big disclosures recently and since Big's most dramatic one, their aggression has calmed so much. In the last few days *touch wood* we've had no violence. We've had a few little things where someone has been pushed very lightly or i had their foot against my stomach but the tension went straight away and it changed from being intended to kick me to stroking me gently. We're nowhere near where we want to be yet but we've got a few consecutive days going now, fingers crossed it stays that way for at least the rest of the day.

The only thing that we're getting especially after a big few hour long meltdown that we're struggling with is the constant questioning and need to be in contact with us. We'll get 10 questions a minute for as long as 5 hours. In that time a face or arm will appear out of nowhere. I was chopping some veg the other day when Big grabbed my arm, i was using a 6 inch long very sharp knife. scared the living daylights out of me!!

We've been introducing our family to them for a little while now. We've introduced the main people who are going to be around regularly and everything has gone well. Both B&L have some cousins who they're idolising and are now forever asking to see them. It's good for us too, we suddenly have access to our support network in a way that those first few weeks wouldn't allow. It's coming more naturally now which is brilliant for all 4 of us.

I definitely love them but it's not a mother's love as such. It's very fickle, when things are bad a really can't stand them, I hate that we've brought the tension, stress and aggression into what was our happy little house. When things are good, i'm beaming. Everything they do makes my heart swell, one cheeky little grin from either of them and i love them that little bit more. Every cuddle means the world, every time one of them tells me that they like me or picks a daisy for me whilst we're on a walk i'm a bit of an emotional wreck. They've both started stroking our backs/arms when we have a cuddle in the way that we do to them, it's the most beautiful thing ever. They're the most amazing children in the world and i feel very privileged to be one of their Mums even though i don't actually feel like i'm a parent yet. Wife doesn't love them yet. She says that she's happy and she likes them but it's just not developed into more than that yet.

One thing that we don't remember being mentioned on our training was how hard it is to parent a child who is showing you lots and lots of extreme behaviour when you either don't love them or you don't love them unconditionally. Especially when they're using the other sibling as a punchbag. It's really, really shit.

We really have had a month from hell with them, we haven't been able to relax at all. If it wasn't for the fact that we can feel the attachment developing and that they sleep, god knows where we'd be.

The only thing we know for certain is that if it wasn't for our agency, social worker, twitter and a very good friend, we wouldn't all be together as a family anymore. That sounds extreme but the only way we were truly finding all of the strength we needed to get through each day was the constant contact and support from them. They have been incredible and we will be forever in their debt.

My biggest piece of advice for anyone about to embark on this journey is to be strict. Rules can be loosened as and when appropriate but going the other way is so much harder and in our experience, they need to know the boundaries and the stricter you are with the basics to start with, the sooner they get to at least start to understand where they fit in and how things will be in their new family.

Preparing for the arrival of Big and Little

It's obviously been a while since I blogged and so much has happened!!! I can't go into everything on here but i'll give you a brief overview.

We're well into the swing of buying for Big and Little now, they've got all of the essentials and their bedroom is coming together. Their social worker is proving to be a bit...awkward. We've asked very basic questions and she either seems to be dodging them or is quite indecisive when it comes to giving an answer.

The biggest thing we wanted to know was whether or not they are currently in the same room because we wanted to keep it consistent for them until we feel the need to change things. She could not answer the question at all. One day they are in the same room, the next they're not. It was driving us insane!

When we visited the foster carers, we got to see where they sleep and they are in the same room. Surely their social worker should have known that? Even our social worker said that she should be checking out their bedroom each time a visit happens. Couple that with her originally saying that she wanted a December panel then changing it to January. Then something else happened and it was February. Then when we did life appreciation day it suddenly became March because she couldn't possibly have the paperwork done in time.

On life appreciation day she also said that she'd sort some extra stuff out for us, nothing huge but stuff that will help with school admissions and then when we asked for it she's said that another social worker is now dealing with it. So frustrating, we completely respect that she's realistically over worked with very little 'spare' time but if that's the case, don't make promises that you can't keep.

There's lots of life story work stuff mentioned too because both children are going to need to be worked with more and more as time goes on as neither is completely understanding of why they are where they are. We asked if their life story books are going to be available for placement as someone is currently working on it and their social worker couldn't understand why we'd need it that early and stated that normally it only arrives once the order is through. She does like to contradict herself!! We have just booked to go on a course run by our agency about life story work though so we're hoping that helps us whether we get the books when they come home or not.

That's that rant over!

When it comes to details about Big and Little, we're keeping very quiet on it all. We're not (at least for now) revealing their genders or ages. It's a personal choice really, it's part of who they are and not even family knew anything until Christmas.

Family were over the moon and emotional when they saw the pictures and we started telling them all about their personalities and likes and dislikes. There were tears and hugs, lots of excitement and so many questions. It was so wonderful being able to finally talk openly about Big and Little, it's really made a difference to us.

The main thing i guess we're trying to focus on now is to try and be as prepared as possible. We know that they like to be up early so we've started getting up early and trying to be really quite active as soon as possible (walking our dogs or doing an exercise DVD etc) to hopefully help form the habit that we'll have to deal with for a long time. Intros are going to be fun...up before 5am to make sure we'll be there on time, eek!

We'll be starting their welcome DVD soon too, we're planning a trip to the country park that's fairly local with all sorts of fun and games on the playground. We're hoping a couple of the closer family members want to make an appearance too.

The thing i'm becoming quite aware of is that i am most definitely looking at the future with rose tinted specs on. I'm imagining the fantastic fun days out we'll have as a family and where we'll go and what we'll do. I'm very much aware of the behaviours that Big and Little are currently showing and that they're likely to intensify on placement but that hasn't fully hit home yet.

I don't know if anyone could go into this thinking everyday is going to be hell on earth and i don't think you can fully prepare for the shock of it until it's there in your home. We're both trying to come up with strategies and ideas that may help with certain needs that they both have and hoping that when the time comes, the training we've received from our agency will kick in and we'll handle things well enough. i know that this is just the beginning and i know that we'll have days when we want to do nothing more than curl up in a ball and hope it stops but right in the corner of that thought i can see a flash of a smile or a cuddle at the right time and know that we'll be alright.

I think everyone has rose tinted specs on to a certain extent and i don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I think it can be a very bad thing but so long as you understand where your child(ren) is coming from and why certain things may happen and respect that and try to work through it with them rather than against them, i think you'll be just fine.

I'm starting to get quite stressed in quite a few ways now too. We've had to change our idea about being Mummy and Mommy (or Mum and Mom) because Big and Little's social worker doesn't think they'll ever get it. You would not believe the discussions we've had for hours about why we think it'll work just fine and our reasoning behind it. We've settled (for now...very much for now) on Mummy and Momma, i think it'll do for now but it's still giving me a shed load of anxiety.

Last night i barely slept at all. I had the Mommy/Momma thing going round my mind and then yesterday we found out Big's middle name and it's the same name we wanted to give them. It feels wrong to keep it because Little will be getting a new middle name so we spent ages searching the internet and discussing alternatives. All night i was trying to come up with an alternative and i just couldn't settle. We have now agreed on a new name that we do love, it has a twist too which makes is really meaningful to us both so we're really happy.

I also dreamt about doing our first letterbox letter to birth Mum which was so strange. I remember a lot of the stuff that i put in it and it feels bizarre to be thinking about it at the minute. When i eventually woke from the dream my jaw was absolutely killing me and wife told me that i'd be grinding my teeth, i've not done that in years and i've never done it so much that i've made my jaw hurt!

The stress of everything is starting to show i think, we've managed to get a good email relationship going with their foster carers and that is helping a hell of a lot, they answer all of our questions and have so far made it really easy for us.

Anyway, i think that's the latest stuff, sorry it's all a bit jumbled up and strange!

Anonymity

Something seems to have come up on twitter recently, both myself and someone else (i can't remember who it was) realised that even if you're account is locked, you can be tweeted by people who don't follow you.

This lead me to think about overall internet privacy especially in regards to adoption. I'm normally quite an open person and don't hide much but recently, i've become more and more aware of the impact that could have on our children. 

We don't know the background that our children come from and don't know how safe we will be to put details about them online in any form. We don't know who might be watching everything we tweet, what is there to stop a genuine birth parent from posing as an adopter, getting talking to one of us and then discovering who you are just because you've slipped up without thinking on a couple of things and then have them turn up on a twitter meet up that you invited them to where your children are there? 

That absolutely terrifies me, the children that we end up adopting are going to come from a situation that is at best detrimental to their health and development but could well be life threatening. 

It's a big 'if' when you're talking about these things but you just don't know who knows who, how many times have you seen a friend talking to someone on Facebook that you know from a completely different social circle? What if one of their friends is a friend of a birth parent? Especially if you adopt through a fairly local authority, these things can and i'm sure do happen.

We've decided between us that we won't be announcing the genders of our children, their ages or birthdays, any of their physical features, no pictures from the neck up (maybe even not at all), no names, basically nothing that can be used to identify them. 

The same goes for us though, we won't tell people on twitter anything recognisable about us unless we actually meet them. No jobs, no birthdays, no anniversaries, no 'we're going to see X in concert tonight', no mention of the region we live in, no mention of the name of our agency, as little as possible. 

The risk to our children is just too great, lots of chance things have to come together for anyone significant to find us but it's possible. Nothing on the internet is ever safe and as the most basic thing,  it'll be our job as parents to make sure that our children are.

Gender Stereotypes

We had a visit from our stage one social worker yesterday, she made a comment about our newly decorated bedroom being ideal for a boy because of the toys we already have in there. I called her on it by telling her that it was all of the stuff i was into as a kid and she apologised for stereotyping.

I mentioned it on twitter and we got into a really good discussion about it and the differences between girls and boys and what's generally seen as acceptable.

I'm all for our children, male or female, to express themselves in any way. If that means we have a boy that wants to run around in dresses and sleep in a princess bedroom, that's fine because it's his preference. In the same way, if we have a girl that never wants to be associated with the colour pink, again that's fine. I'm not saying that if a girl wants to wear nothing but pink and a boy wants to never even see a doll that they should be forced to, it's about their personal preference.

Toys in particular really drive me mad. You walk into any toy shop and have a quick look around, instantly you'll notice the divide between girls (pink) and boys (blue, red green, black) toys. Why can't toys just be toys?? Sweden have this one spot on, their 'Toys R Us' equivalent launched a new catalogue in late 2012 showing boys and girls playing with the toys on each page. A quick google search will bring you some images up. Isn't that how it's meant to be though? Children learn so much through play and by limiting what they're allowed to play with creates a negative attitude towards the anything that isn't included as the 'norm' for that gender.

Girls tend to have the princess thing forced upon them from an incredibly early age, so many people instantly think that because they're having a female, she'll be a 'girly girl' and want to grow up to be a princess when they're older so few people think to call them anything else. I have another twitter account and a while ago i saw this link and loved it. If we have a girl or girls, i'll be using them daily.

Girls get it before they're even born. How many times have you heard of someone having a girl and being told, "Oooh! You'll finally have someone to go shopping with!!" or something equally as stereotypical. Why is it that girls are the ones that are generally encouraged to help in the kitchen and more so with the cleaning? Are we really still living in the 1950s ideology of what a woman should be? Have we not moved on from the cleaning, cooking and child rearing image at all?

I do think that boys have a much more difficult time of it than girls especially when it comes to their emotions. If you read the responses to this tweet you'll see that i had a great reply from 'Two out of Three' who, i think, hits the nail perfectly on the head.

Generally speaking, boys (and in many cases men) aren't expected to show emotion or any feminine attributes because they are then perceived as weak or weird. Surely being able to show that you're upset & want a cuddle regardless of you age is much better for your mental well being than bottling it up and then potentially getting angry because you don't know how to deal with it?

I hear so many boys being bullied when they try new things or want to play with different toys and (scarily!!) a lot of it comes directly from the parents. I've heard boys being asked if they're a weirdo because they wanted to try a bit of nail varnish on 1 or 2 finger nails, I've heard parents calling their sons girls because they've cried for some reason or another, i hear boys being called gay by their peers constantly because they don't like this 'boys' toy/game/tv program/computer game/colour.

I believe that we need to allow children to just be who they without putting this excessive social pressure on them to conform to something they may not be.

I believe that a girl who wants to climb trees and get dirty will grow up being as strong and brilliant as the girl who wanted to dress head to toe in pink everyday.

I believe that a boy who wants to play dress up and sing along with songs on his favourite film will be just as amazing and well balanced as a boy who wants to do nothing more than rough and tumble.

The difference being that it's their choice, not anyone else's. Children have a right to find out who they are without feeling restricted by what society calls 'normal'.

Age

That may seem like a weird title to a blog post but since we started the process, age is something that has come up more and more.

Everyone we've told that we're hoping to adopt has asked about the age of the children we're interested in and when we say that we're thinking of up to the age of 7, theres 2 responses. The first is, "Oh but wouldn't you just prefer a baby??" and the other is, "But why 7?"

The first is a little annoying at worst but we explain that a baby isn't the be all and end all of parenting and they get it.

The second is a little more to do with our age. I'm still in my (late) 20s and my wife is only just in her 30s. If we had a child that was older, we're worried that they would feel even more out of place initially and then struggle more with attachment etc because of it.

Plus, if we turn up to school with a 10 year old, there'll be even more questions than there will have been anyway. The playground can be a very cliquey place anyway, we just don't want to add extra strain especially for a child that has been through the mill already. I'm not saying that this sort of stuff won't be an issue with a slightly younger child but i'm hoping it won't be as much of an issue.

Staying on the subject of our age, i feel young! The adoption circles seem to be mainly populated by people who are 35+ and each time i talk to people or see people at our agency, i'm feeling very aware of the fact that i'm a 20 something still.

Our agency haven't mentioned it at all and the fact that we've been together for over 10 years helps a lot but i'm still very aware of it. I'm hoping our maturity helps too, we've both been described as 'wiser than our years' since we were small.

I'm not sure whether being younger is going to go in our favour or not but i hope it does. After all, age isn't everything.