Living the theory

As far as looks go, our children are very obviously siblings. Personality-wise, however, they couldn’t be more different. I’m not sure whether these different personalities are innate, or as a result of their unique experiences in the birth family and in the womb - one, by virtue of being older, spent a lot longer in their birth family, while the younger one, due to circumstances at the time of birth mum’s pregnancy, probably had a more difficult in utero experience. Where one is a thrill-seeker, and doesn’t even seem to see danger, the other is naturally over-cautious and really struggles with high anxiety levels. Little will launch herself into a new situation without a backwards glance, and constantly wants to go faster, higher and longer. She relishes new experiences and is very happy with changes in routine. Tiny, on the other hand, hangs back in any new situation. Unpredictability leads to heightened anxiety - sometimes to the point that it makes him physically ill. He has seve...

Today we had a farewell visit with our social worker. It felt so odd, saying goodbye after her having been a consistent presence in our life for the past 21 months. Social workers often cop a lot of flak on the adoption message boards I use, and I don’t doubt that, as with any profession, there are good, bad and average ones out there. I can’t praise ours highly enough though. She’s been there for us through some pretty tough moments, has been a great advocate for us and our children, and has been exactly the right mix of professional yet human. I know some people look forward to the adoption order precisely because it means the end of  social work visits, but I would happily let ours keep coming if she could! I’ve been trying to do a mental tally of how many social workers have been involved with us over our adoption journey so far. I think I’m on seven: There was the social worker who did our initial home visit, who helped us across the first hurdle. We didn’t warm to her ins...

This is a guest post I wrote elsewhere for National Adoption week, but thought I'd reproduce it here since I haven't posted in a while. Trauma is a bit of a buzzword in the adoption community at the moment. The overwhelming majority, if not all, children who are adopted today will have experienced trauma of some kind, be it in person or in utero. The erroneous belief that a stable, loving home is all that is needed to make this go away is starting to give way to a deeper understanding of the effects of trauma, and the fact that whether  they consciously remember it or not, this trauma will have a lifelong effect in several areas of that child's life. "PTSD is a good definition for acute trauma in adults. (However when the trauma occurs in childhood) because children’s brains are still developing, trauma has a much more pervasive and long-range influence on their self-concept, on their sense of the world and on their ability to regulate themselves.” (Bessel van der ...

I actually had another topic planned for my next post, but we’ve been having so much push/pull behaviour from Tiny lately that I felt like I needed to write about it. This is something he does at times – it’s usually much worse and much more noticeable at times when he feels unsettled, and we’re still trying to work out which of several possible triggers is behind the latest increase. It usually starts with something fairly minor that for some reason he takes offence to. This morning it was the stairgate. Most times when he gets up in the morning the stairgate is closed. This morning Little was already awake and watching TV downstairs, so it was open. Cue lying on the floor screaming for it to be closed. From then on we can do nothing right. If we close the gate, he screams for it to be open again. If one parent goes to him he screams for the other. If we try to stay with him he screams at us to go away, with a little bit of kicking to make his message clear if needed. If we leave, h...

This week's #WASO theme invites us to write about challenges, positives or something that's worked really well for your family. It's a good one, as it's pushed me into writing a post that I've been wanting to write for a long time, but which I've been putting off because it's a big one and needs quite a bit of time and mental engery. I've referenced some training we attended recently in a couple of previous posts and haven't said much more than that. I wasn't meaning to be cryptic, I just didn't have the time at that moment to write too much about the specifics. And because it's something quite different to anything I've done before, I didn't want to mention it without being able to do it justice. So here it is... The Great Behaviour Breakdown, which is the cornerstone of pretty much everything we're trying to put in place at home at the moment. Rewind nine months. Little and Tiny had just moved in. We had the typical 'h...

I am ten pages in to Dan Hughes's book Building the Bonds of Attachment  and I can already tell that it's going to be a very useful read. It's not the first time I've come across his description of 'developemental trauma', but as with so many things, re-reading it with fresh eyes (or rather pretty tired and jaded eyes!) now that we've had the best part of a year to get to know our children brought home to me how much it currently applies to one of the little people in our care; so much so that I made my partner stop what she was doing and listen while I read it aloud. I've read a few things lately - in other blog posts or on various Facebook groups I follow - about attachment and how attachment difficulties are often (mis)used as a catch-all term to explain away any and all problems adopted children face, when in fact attachment problems are a symptom of the wider difficulty of developmental trauma rather than being a cause in their own right. I coul...

We've been trying to implement something called  the affection prescription  with the children in the last few months. It's much easier said than done, and we're currently taking it in the spirit of the idea rather than follow it to the letter. The basic principle is about ensuring that you are spending quality, child-led time with each of your children individually. The prescription is for 10 minutes first thing, 20 minutes in the afternoon and 10 minutes in the evening, which doesn't sound like much on paper, but the practicalities of daily life mean that it's very much a work in progress here... the main problem being that the ratio is often one adult to both children, and quality time usually means something different to each of them, so unless we're both around, it can be a challenge. One thing we have consistently implemented, however, is 10 minutes of quality, child-led time for each of them at the very beginning of their bedtime routines. We alternate ch...