Children without the sex! (Adoption)

Member Name: millergirl

Product:	Adoption
Date:	24/01/02 (217 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A child can get the loving family they need and couples get the child they long for,

Disadvantages: Mistakes are made and people hurt. Good people are turned down therefore some children will miss out.

I am one of the many fortunate women that have become pregnant without difficulty and I have been blessed with three fantastic children. So when I talk about adoption I have never been in the position some of you may have found yourselves in, deeply desiring a baby and not having that desire fulfilled. I wasn’t adopted as a child nor were any of my siblings so why do I want to write about adoption? Well it is because I have seen adoption from a child’s viewpoint.

I have been fostering children for several years and have helped children move on after a long stay with our family into a new family that will become their very own, their Mummy and Daddy!

Can I take a step back and first comment on the whole process that would be adopters are put through before they ever meet ‘their’ child. I know how hard that is I have spoken to many people and even read about it here on Dooyoo but I feel it is a necessary evil! As I told a couple this week maybe it is to give them a similar experience to the pains of childbirth!

To have all areas of your private life delved into is tough; I know this as foster carers go through a similar process. To have your past brought back sometimes to haunt you again must be terrible BUT we must make as sure as possible that vulnerable children are placed with people who will love and cherish them in an appropriate manner. I suspect that if you go through all of this and come out with a baby/child then it is all worth while but as with natural childbirth if you go though all the pain and at the end there is no baby that must be hell on earth.

The system is far from perfect, people are refused that would probably make excellent parents or as in one op that I read they already were parents. On the other side it happens that people are approved for adoption and turn out to be far from suitable and I know of one particular case where two children were cruelly abused by their adoptive parent
s and were removed again. It will shock no one if I say that I believe Social Services are not perfect, but generally they try their best!

Why do people want to adopt? For one of two main reasons I think and usually for the first of them. Either because they have a gap they want filling, a deep desire for a child to love and share their home and lives with and for some reason nature has not provided them with one. Or secondly for more altruistic reasons, to help a child that has not had a good start to life to have a better more comfortable one in the future.

Back to where my experience comes in, when a child placed with us waiting to find their ‘forever family’. The reason I am writing this now is because we have a boy (I’ll call him Tom) of six who has just this week met the couple who will be his Mum and Dad, how scary is that?

Now Tom has been with us for a year and he has always known that it was not permanent that it was until a special family was found for him. I told him that his Social Worker was looking for just the right people and when they found them I would meet hem first. Only if I thought they would take good care of him and love him would he meet them and start the process of getting to know them! So for the first time a very nervous Tom met an equally nervous couple, I’ll call them Jack and Sarah and a new family was beginning to be made. Not as sexy as the usual way a family is first formed I know!

The period of introductions will take about three weeks; this differs with the age and maturity of the child and can be altered as things go along. Some children will quickly bond others will take longer and it is for me to try to help them shift affections from our family to their new one. Then the day will come when Tom will leave for his life with Jack and Sarah and I already know that I will have very mixed emotions. I know I will miss him but assuming this time goes well I will be happy fo
r them all, it is a real privilege to watch as a real family starts to take shape.

We have moved little ones on for adoption that have been with us since they were tiny babies and believe me it is very difficult indeed. But when you see it really working it is fantastic! I think back to a beautiful baby girl that lived with us for a year and a half before being adopted by a lovely couple that we instantly gelled with from the first moment we met. They have since adopted her a little brother and they are doing fabulously. We keep in touch, at the adopters pace and they are very honest with her about her past, talking very naturally about when she used to live with us. We are moving house later this year and before we do they want her to come here to visit and to say a final goodbye to the home that was hers for the first year and a half of her life.

What I really want to tell you is that adoption can and does work. Parents and children alike benefit and really become a family unit just as though they were a traditional birth family. Deep attachments can be formed and with love and understanding problems can be worked out.

The T V image of a couple adopting a tiny baby is but a tiny part of adoption but there are so many wonderful children just longing for a family to call their own. Children who through no fault of their own may have suffered abuse of one kind or another and then may have been moved from foster home to foster home. Of course there may be problems but believe it or not even ‘home grown’ children can present problems!!

Adopters do need skills to help a child answer the questions which will occur as they grow up but they should all receive training before a child is placed with them. They will be given all the known information about the child and their birth family and may even meet the parents before they meet the child.

If the child is old enough to have some understanding before adoption,
life story work should be done with them. This will tell them about their family and the reasons why they could not remain together as a family. If there are siblings it will talk about them and what has happened to them if they are not placed together. This will be done to a suitable level for the child and something put in book form for them to take with them. Hopefully this will help the new parents to answer some of the questions later on as the child tries to make sense of it’s past.

If there a single thing I would change about the adoption process it would to make all children available for matching with all adopters throughout the UK. It is so frustrating to watch a child waiting for parents when I am sure there must be couples waiting for that child.

Families that adopt need to be secure to begin with, sure of their feelings and reasons for wanting to bring a child or indeed another child into their home and lives. (Really the same could be said of a couple deciding to have another baby of their own!) If this is one day your experience I wish you well and hope the process is not too painful. Take it from me it can be wonderful for parent and child alike!

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