Living the theory

Little has had a really good few months. Something clicked with her over the summer holidays and she seemed to be feeling so much more settled and confident in herself. I don’t know if it was the adoption order finally being granted (she was very aware of what this entailed and had been anxious to legally change her name for ages) or us having all spent a prolonged period at home being a family without the distraction of school, but things just felt a lot calmer. She’s had the occasional wobble since and we’ve still had to be very aware of her triggers and head things of at the pass, but on the whole things have been stable for the last 5-6 months. With her at least anyway. Tiny has made sure to fill the void so we don’t get too complacent, but that’s a whole other story... Something has happened in the last week or so though that has sent Little into a tailspin. We’re still not entirely sure what is at the heart of it... her behaviour was gradually slipping over a few days last we...

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 ...

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...

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...