Living the theory

We’re having sibling issues at the moment. Or more specifically, Little is having sibling issues. We’ve had a massive increase in CPV and violence towards Tiny from her in the last couple of weeks and we’re at a loss as to how to stop it. It’s always triggered by the same thing - Tiny getting something she sees as unfair. Saturday’s outburst was triggered by him having a play date (she has play dates all the time, this was his second ever!). Sunday’s was triggered by him using my computer (they’re allowed an hour each for games at the weekend and she’d already had her turn). She was intent on hurting us and him, constantly running off looking for new missiles to throw at us then running back with a grin on her face. She ripped up and knocked over things he had made and would not let up shoving her face in his and intimidating him. It culminated with me and him locked in the bathroom while she tried to bash the door down with his toy guitar, and then, when she’d eventually run ...

This week is LGBT adoption and fostering week. I am an adopter. I am also LGBT. If you read my blog regularly, you’ve  probably worked out that I’m parenting as part of a female same-sex couple. It’s not something I’ve explicitly written about in any level of detail though. Not because I’m particularly trying to hide it, but more because I feel that as a parent, the adopter part of my identity is much more significant than the LGBT part, in the sense that if I were to separate the two, I can usually find a lot more common ground with other adopters (be they gay, straight, single, coupled) than I can with lesbian parents who have chosen other ways to build a family. Would I have become an adopter if I weren’t LGBT? I can’t honestly answer that, because I don’t know. I’ve never tried to have a birth child or felt a need to try so I don’t know if it would have been an option for me under different circumstances. My wife and I knew early on in our relationship that we wanted childr...