Living the theory

We went to watch Little’s school Christmas show today. It’s the second Christmas show we’ve seen her in, and as we watched her bouncing around, bright-eyed, over-enthusiastically joining in with all the singing and dancing, we couldn’t help but cast our minds back to this time last year. At the time of her last Christmas show Little had been living with us for around 6 weeks. She’d barely been at her new school a couple of weeks. She’s always been Christmas mad and had made a good effort at learning the songs and joining in, but she was still visibly shell-shocked from the huge changes that had just taken place in her life. We all were. I’m sure the show was good last year, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. I remember feeling anxious and overwhelmed. We were squished into the school hall like sardines, it was hot, Tiny was fidgeting on our laps and constantly trying to squirm away and join his sister on the stage. I didn’t feel like I knew how to be a parent and I was there watching ...

I fell foul of the health visitors this week. One of the strategies we use to help regulate and calm both of our children is a child carrier. It’s a fairly sturdy one, with padded straps and clips and it provides us with a comfortable way of keeping them close at times when they need it. They both really like being in it, and will often ask to use it if they’re feeling a bit wobbly. We also sometimes use the carrier to transport Tiny. He’s only 3, he can’t walk as far as the adults or his sister, and it’s a more connecting way of getting him around than the buggy. When he’s in the buggy he’s facing away from us, we can’t hear him well and he often completely spaces out. When he’s in the carrier we can interact with him a lot more, with obvious benefits for the attachment we’re still trying to build with him. We’re not the only ones who do this; a quick Google search will find you many other parents who believe there’s a benefit to carrying toddlers and preschoolers, both birth and ...

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...