Welcome to our first blog! We're hoping to share experiences of some of our Buckinghamshire adopters and foster carers to show you what fostering and adoption is really like.
This week is National Adoption Week so we thought we'd kick off with a lovely family who adopted their daughter over 2 years ago.
The joys of adoption and building your family always far outweighs the difficulties. Lynda and Robin adopted their daughter 2 and a half years ago and have never looked back... here's their story.
Our daughter came crashing into our quiet methodical lives at the age of 4 years old. In the early stages she almost led us into a false sense of security...I remember saying to our Social Worker 'this is easy, why is the process of adoption so gloomy'?... And then about 5 months later she started to push us and her boundaries. It was almost like she wanted to test our 'stickability' everybody else in her life had abandoned her so why would we be any different? Her anger and determination to control everything was at times suffocating. Her chaotic behaviour was unpredictable and had no reason, at times we simply weren't expecting it. We really had to draw on our support network, they have been and continue to be the voice of reason and perspective.
There are many words of advice and pearls of wisdom our brilliant Social Worker gave us 'Routine is important, set boundaries, consistency and stay at home as much as possible in the first 6 or 7 months'. The holiday was going to be difficult as we had previously enjoyed our time away. I remember our first Christmas and holiday were the most challenging events and not the most enjoyable. Both occasions were out of routine and very difficult for our little girl to cope with, bedtimes changed, different people coming and going, excitement and the attention all impacted. Several years on Christmas and holidays are special events in our world, we love them.
We are now able to see and almost pre empt a good day or a difficult day. We still have the angry chaotic outbursts but they are fewer and she's more able to talk about her feelings and how we can help her through these times. The most important thing we realised during these episodes is to stay calm, don't get cross, she would copy the learnt behaviours of her past. A calm reasonable way of dealing with these emotions was a different experience for her. I wouldn't say we've 'cracked' it but we're making progress, taking small steps....
We have experienced some difficult challenging times in the past few years but the joy, fun and laughter far out weighs all of it. We love her so much, our brilliant Social Worker knew us so well to match us together.
It is so important to trust your Social Worker, trust and listen to him/her. Our experience of the process was demanding, stressful, frustrating and repetitive but our Social Worker held our hand throughout and explained everything we needed to do.
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