The Power Of Yet

Every kid that has ever walked the face of the earth has at some point in their life slammed something down and shouted "I can't do it!". Goodness knows, I know plenty of adults who do exactly the same.

I can't do it!

It's very final, isn't it? There is an a whole load of quitting going on. Dummies are being thrown out of prams and toys are being kicked (both metaphorically and literally!).

The initial reaction to a statement like "I can't do it" is to say something that very much sounds like "there's no such thing as can't".

Now I'm a positive person but even I know that there definitely is such a thing as can't. For instance, I can't go on a date with Drew Barrymore (if you're reading this, Drew, call me!) and I can't lift a 10 tonne truck with one hand.

So how do you deal with a negative comment like I can't do that? How do you make it positive? "Sure you can, buddy!" will only get you so far. My opinion of my inability to date Drew Barrymore isn't going to change because someone said that I can, is it? But surely we can't just let our kids wallow in negativity? We can't say "no, you're right, dude, you're never going to succeed" because that's even more harmful than false positivity.

And this is where we get to the point of this blog. We, as parents, have a super power. That super power is that our kids will believe most of what we tell them (especially younger kids). If we use that super power with false positivity we erode the trust the kids have in us. It only took a couple of times of people saying that I could date Drew Barrymore before I realised that they were being less than truthful. "Sure you can!" starts to be met with an eye roll rather than an uplifting attitude. We can solve this little conundrum with just one word.

Yet.

In using the word "yet" we acknowledge the very real anger and frustration that a child may have as they fail at something. "I can see that you are struggling with this" is what we are saying to them; but we continue "it may not always be this way".

Wow, all that meaning in one word. It really is powerful, isn't it? With that one word we turn a phrase of anger and failure around, not into a false positive but into a very real hope.

"I will get better"
"One day I may be able to"
"I can't do it... Yet!"

I don't have a date with Drew Barrymore... yet! (Okay, very real hope may be stretching it on some things!)

The Journey (Part 3)

Previously on #daddydaycare...

Infertility

Rejection

Restarting

Approval

And now...

So we were approved as adopters. It felt like we had travelled the proverbial long and winding road. Our emotions were tattered and we were physically exhausted. It felt like the end of a road but in reality we hadn't even really started on the road, we'd simply been told that we were allowed to go on the road, like an adoption version of the M6 toll! It was like a scene in a movie where the heroes are trudging forlornly across a desert and climb what they think is the final dune to see the desert stretching out in front of them.

So we took a deep breath and on we trudged.

Matching is a clinical word for the process that adoptive parents and childrens social workers try to come together to match a child to the perfect family (and it's always thought of in that way, the adopters come a very far, and very correct, second to the needs of the children). Our social worker sent us profiles and we logged onto a website which contained profiles of children who are waiting to be placed for adoption (seriously, it's like a weird adoption-themed version of Facebook!).

I should probably now talk about how much Adoption has changed over the years. Years ago children were placed for adoption because of shame. Children born out of wedlock or born to young mothers, or a whole host of other reasons that society decided were immoral (which only goes to prove that society is an idiot!) were adopted at birth and the children were never told. Some of them probably grew up, led full lives and went to their graves never knowing that the people who brought them up were not their mother and father.

Now, with societies morals changing for the better children don't tend to come into the adoption system at such a young age, but this also means that adoption has changed. It is now not a means to find a home for babies whose parents do not want them, or are not able to look after them; it is now about finding a safe and loving home for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society.

This is because the children who are available for adoption have been removed from their families because of neglect, abuse or violence, because of this the children often suffer from Global Developmental Delay, Infant Alcohol Syndrome, drug addiction or severe cases or what looks like the descriptions I've heard of PTSD (I'm not a doctor so their may be a fancy name for this that I don't know about). This is because they have missed out on a lot of the early-years nurturing children need to fully grow and thrive.

Anyway, back to our search. We were sent profiles of various children who our social worker believed were good matches for us. If we decided that we thought they were too we would request the child's Permanence Report. The CPR is the report that details why a child was taken into care and put up for adoption. We read about instances of abuse and neglect that aged the both of us by a number of years. If you think the world is a horrible place, just wait until you read some of the stories that you don't get to hear about. 

I'm a positive person and it is a good job because the things I read made me very, very angry (me being angry is like Richard Dawkins saying that Christianity is right after all). I had to separate myself from the words I was reading and focus on the positive messages coming through the words on the page. 

We began to think of it less like what child do we want to complete our family, but rather which child would benefit most from the skills and the type of parents that we would be. We knew that one of our strengths lay in talking and listening. We'd been together for 13 years and hadn't ever stopped talking and listening to each other. A child who we could talk to and listen to was our preference and we'd always wanted two (and we didn't want to have to go through the approval process again!) so we decided that an older sibling group would be perfect.

We attended an event at our adoption agency and saw a profile of a pair of children we knew would be perfect. These were children we could help. These were children who would complete our family. Kevin and Lana were ideal. So we asked for more information. We found out that there was something in their history that we had previously said we would not consider so we had a long discussion about that and decided that in this instance we would like to proceed. The problem didn't seem quite so daunting when applied to actual children who needed our help that it did when presented in a list at our initial social worker meetings.

It wasn't long before we heard back. Kevin and Lana's social workers were interested in us too and so they set up a meeting. We'd climbed the last dune and we could see the oasis in the distance with all of it's lovely, refreshing water.

Not every oasis in the desert is real. Sometimes it's a mirage...

p.s. childrens names have been changed

National Adoption Week: The Journey (Part 2)

Earlier this week I posted about our the first part of the adoption process. As National Adoption Week draws to a close the Adoption Journey continues...

So, we'd been moved onto stage 2 of the Adoption process, but what does that mean? It meant that we'd passed the initial assessment process and would be moving onto assessment by an adoption panel to be approved by our adoption agency as an approved adopter.

While Stage 1 is intrusive, Stage 2 is gut-wrenching. You are visited by your social worker regularly and talk through all of the things you'd written about yourself during Stage 1. All of the feelings and emotions that were raked over during Stage 1 are dug up again and inspected with a magnifying glass. The reason for this is because our social worker was identifying any weaknesses in our approval and wanted to get them straight in his head so that he could answer any inquiries the panel may have regarding our suitability. 

Understanding why he was doing this doesn't make it any easier for someone to list all of the things about our adoption application that he thought wasn't up to scratch. The fact that the Mrs didn't speak to her dad was seen as a weakness and the fact I had been divorced was seen as a weakness. Going through all of this again really and truly hurt.

After a fair few meetings our social worker told us that we were ready and that we had been booked in for panel and it was booked in the head office of our adoption agency, about an hours drive from our house. We decided that rather than travelling over on the day we would book a cheap hotel and stay the night so that we were at least in the city on the morning of panel and didn't have to worry too much about traffic.

I don't think either of us got very much sleep that night, there were far too many thoughts racing around our heads. We had a meal together and a quiet drink in the hotel bar and stared at the ceiling for the rest of the night. 

We arrived at the adoption agency's office on time and met our social worker there. He told us that he had already spoken to the panel and they had some questions for us. One of them was about our weight. This wasn't the time that we wanted this particular issue raising it's head again. However, we simply said that we understood healthy eating and would promote that with any children that were placed with us.

Our social worker was called into panel and the longest fifteen minutes of my life (until the next panel!) began. The feeling of helplessness was absolute knowing that a room full of strangers were discussing our suitability to be parents without any input from us. I was nearly sick a few times.

Then  the door to the panel room opened and the our social worker came into our waiting room with the chairperson of the panel who introduced himself and gave us a couple of questions to answer when we were called into panel. He shook our hands and then left again whilst we discussed our answers.

The first question was easy. What support could we offer a child who was placed with us. We decided to talk about our calmness and our patience and our belief in therapeutic parenting. The second question knocked me for six. As I was going to be the primary carer while the Mrs went back to work they wanted to know how I (as a man) would cope with the children when they were having a bad day! The answer, of course, was exactly the same way the Mrs would cope, which in a roundabout and polite way is what I told them when I got in there.

And so they called us in, 12 people sat around a table, suspiciously like a jury of our peers. They asked their questions and we gave our answers and we were asked to wait again.

After what seemed like an age the panel room door opened and the chairperson was on his way back again with our social worker in tow. Hidden behind the chairperson our social worker gave us a thumbs up.

I still didn't believe it was true until the chairperson said it. And it was unanimous!

We'd been approved as adopters. Now we had to find our family.

National Adoption Week: The Journey (Part 1)

This week is National Adoption Week and over the course of this week I will be blogging about our adoption journey. If I can help to give one child a happy, loving home then it will be worthwhile, so I would appreciate it if you could reblog this post on social media using the hashtag #supportadoption

You are all wonderful.

The start of our adoption journey is a difficult one to pinpoint. Does it start eight years ago when we decided to have children? Does it start when we found out that we couldn't have children? Does it start from the point we were refused access to IVF that we probably didn't really want anyway? All of those are correct, but for the purposes of this post I'm going to start from the point we decided to adopt.

The Mrs, still coming to terms with what she thought was the loss of a dream, saw an advert on Facebook. There was a drive by the local council to find prospective adopters for the thousands of children in care who are awaiting homes. After a long discussion we decided to go along to the open evening. What we heard was extremely positive and we booked a visit from a council social worker.

The meeting went well and we were sure that the journey to our family was starting now. Our excitement quickly turned to despair. Despite the positivity at the meeting and despite the fact that we were exactly the sort of people they were looking for to adopt they decided that we couldn't because we were both overweight. They believed that somehow affected our ability to care for children. It certainly looked like our journey had ended before it had even begun.

It was probably one of the biggest kicks in the teeth I've ever had in my life. Bigger even than finding out we couldn't have children in the first place, because that was merely an accident of biology, but to have it suggested that we were unfit to be parents, however wrong that may have been, was painful.

I should point out at this point that although we are both overweight we are both fit and very active and are in excellent health!

We were in limbo for nearly a year until the Mrs again saw an advert on Facebook (she does more than read Facebook, honestly!) for an independent adoption agency. In their advert they said that they were looking for people who could provide a loving environment for children and that they would consider all circumstances. Although we felt like pariahs who had been rejected as parents we knew we could offer the very things these children needed, and so after another long and tearful discussion (the tears were mine!) we decided to give it another go, which is how we found ourselves in another adoption presentation almost a full year after the first. Again we signed up for interest and booked a visit.

Filled with understandable trepidation we awaited the social worker. The meeting went very well and the social worker told us that we were exactly the sort of people their agency was looking for. Looking at each other, the Mrs asked the dreaded question, would our weight be a barrier to us adopting? The social worker looked us like we'd just asked her if breathing was compulsory. Of course not, was the reply. We were on our way.

Stage 1 of the adoption process is one of the most intrusive things that you will ever have done to you (apart from possibly certain procedures performed in private by medical professionals, and trust me, it feels like that at times). Every single facet of your life is discussed. My one piece of advice at this point is "Be Honest". With the social worker, and if you're adopting as part of a couple, with each other.

I had to write in depth about how I felt when I divorced my first wife and how I felt when I lost my mum and the age of 28 (awful and worse) and the Mrs had to explain, in depth, why she doesn't really have a relationship with her father.

They requested references from half of the people we know (or at least that's what it felt like) including my ex-wife (who was a superstar and wrote us a glowing reference). It felt like the interrogation would never end! All of this is necessary, of course. The last thing they want to do is move a child from an uncertain living situation to another.

After all of that, and after a wait that seemed to never end, we were told that they were putting us forward to Stage 2, which is when they go in depth about what it means to be an adopter, prepare for your first adoption panel (scary) and you truly see what it means to have strange little people invade your life with very little preparation!

But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

If you have read this blog and are considering adoption as an option (hey, that rhymes) and want to discuss with someone privately feel free to message me, or contact your local council or an independent adoption agency.

10 Ways To Deal With A Meltdown

Every child has meltdowns. However, some are more prone than others. Looked after children and children who have been adopted can often struggle to keep their emotions in check. Over the last few months we've had a good opportunity to see what works and what doesn't. Please remember that all children are different and what works for us may not work for everyone.

1) Separation: When a child is acting out they will often be playing to an audience, even if they don't realise it themselves. The simple way to limit the effect of a meltdown is to remove the child from prying eyes, whether you are at home or out in public. At home, take the child to their room but outside try to take them somewhere away from further disruption.
2) Calmness: unless the meltdown is putting the child in immediate danger of harming themselves you should appear calm at all times. Anger feeds on anger and often a child will provoke you in order to make you as angry as they are. If you get angry the situation is likely to spital out of control. Have you ever tried shouting at a wall? It's hard to stay angry when you are getting nothing back. Try your best not to react. It's hard though because disrupted children can do and say some pretty horrible things.
3) Do not engage: as mentioned before a disrupted child will try to engage you in order to pull you into confrontation. It's what they want. Don't give it to them. Answer questions if you must but avoid lengthy conversation. The child will pretty quickly realise that if they want your interaction they will need to calm down.
4) Keep them company: do not leave a disrupted child on their own. They need to know that no matter their behaviour you are still emotionally available to them. Cutting them off will only breed resentment. Time outs are fashionable at the moment and work for a lot of people but if the child is already feeling a disconnect from you as a parent leaving them on their own will only deepen the fissure between you. Stay with them but remember numbers 2 and 3.
5) Contact: as soon as it is safe to do so make physical contact with the child. This is about judgement but you know your child best. Hold a hand, pat their back, stroke their hair. You are letting them know that you are still there. Nothing they have done will stop you loving them.
6) Separate a child from their behaviour: try not to tell the child they are naughty or bad. A child who thinks they are bad will see no reason to be good. Tell the child that you love them and let them know that you do not like their behaviour. It gives a child something to focus on that is not just them being bad, but more importantly it let's them know that their behaviour has no effect on how you feel about them.
7) Don't ask why: it's second nature to ascribe meaning to why something is happening but a child, especially a disrupted one, can no more tell you why they are misbehaving than they can tell you the science behind time travel. Demanding explanations will only lead to frustration, which will only prolong the problem.
8) Wait it out: When a child is disrupted they will not listen to you. They will shout, scream and twist your words around. The more you speak to them during the meltdown the longer it will last and the less likely you are to get anything even resembling sense. Wait until they're calm and then speak to them. Keep your voice light and free from accusation. Ask them if there is anything they want to talk about.
9) Consequences: poor behaviour should always have consistent consequences. Once all is calm again talk through with them what the consequences are. Minutes off bedtime, toys going into timeout and no tv time are always useful in our house but you will have your own preference. Never take away rewards that have been earned and never take away something the child uses for comfort (favourite blanket for example).
10) Forget about it: you may think that staying calm in the face of angry abuse was hard but trust me, this is the tough one. Once the meltdown has been dealt with and the consequences have been put in place, forget about it. Don't bring it up again and don't keep reminding the child about it. Shame is a massive aftereffect of poor behaviour and can leave the door open for repeats of the behaviour.

So, in a nutshell... stay calm, stay with them, stay quiet, wait it out, deal with it and then forget.

Penny For Your Thoughts

Every now and again Little Miss gets a faraway look in her eyes and she will go very quiet. Her whole demeanour will move inwards and she will be very hard to communicate with. It's quite a shock as it can (and often does) come out of nowhere with little or no warning. It's such a change as she is normally such a happy, cheery little girl.

I wish she would talk to me and tell me what is going on inside, but I'm fairly sure she doesn't know either. It may have been something she has seen or heard that has sparked a repressed memory or simply she has thought about something and has retreated into herself.

I wish I could hold her hand and take her inside her head and hunt out those bits of memory that are causing her pain and take them away, but for better or worse they are part of her and forgetting painful memories is probably just as damaging as burying them.

As much as we would like to change it we need to be ready to discuss some very painful memories with her (Mister Man is unlikely to remember any truly painful things given his age) and deal with them in a comforting but honest way, all of this without vilifying the birth family who allowed these things to happen. The connection with the birth family and the anxiety of separation from them will only become more detrimental to her mental health if we don't deal with this properly.

So, penny for her thoughts? I'm not sure I actually want to know it will just make me angry but I will give everything I have to make those thoughts hurt her less and to fill her head with happy thoughts and happy memories so that when she goes inside her head it's not the dark but the light that she is lost in; and maybe we'll get a little smile.