Adoption Tearoom - open for business

[MediumPretty]

or maybe a place for me to talk to myself . Not as glamorous as the One Child Families tearoom, just somewhere to have a cyber cuppa and chat.

I went to pick DD (adopted from China) up from school yesterday. Whilst waiting in the playground I got chatting to the grandma of one of her classmates. I find playground chitchat hard work sometimes and I made a lighthearted remark about life since we adopted DD. The perfectly nice Grandma said "it's hard bringing up a child who isn't your own". She said that 30 odd years ago she had fostered two boys for what should have been a few weeks but they stayed with her until adulthood - one was still living at home.

I told her that we think of DD as "our own".

Silence followed then (as the bloody school bell still hadn't gone), I said something inane about enjoying having a daughter and Grandma said "I feel closer to my daughter, than my two sons who are not mine".

She didn't mean any harm with her remarks but it was an insight into how some people view adopted children as somehow less than a birth child and I felt a bit deflated

Just wanted to offload - will nip to M&S for some scones in case any one pops into the tearoom.

I agree with Mary! I'm also a nosy bod about other people's adopted children I suspect she rarely meets adopted children and decided to point them out because of that. Although I do find it odd why adoption is treated so publicly by some people?? Is it really that interesting to them?

Hope you had a good time anyway :)

I have started doing a bit of holiday packing. DD decided to pick apart my neatly stacked pile of clothes and steal some of it, and it took an hour to get her to give them back.. sigh Still, I feel extrememly organised and prepared, which is pretty unusual for me

Oh its not annoying Kristina and yes I know she meant well - I hve known her since she was 2 and she's a lovely girl. It was the repeated references to these two boys being adopted (I wasn't actually introduced to them!) and the look of expectation on her face (I think I was meant to congratulate her ability to rustle up some adopted childrne).

I wasn;t annoyed at all just more than a little bemused especially as DS wasn;t even with me and I wasn;t introduced to them. TBH I felt a little embarrased on their behalf as she wasn;t quiet in her gesticulations and they were certainly of an age to have an opinion about it!

I was at a friend's (M) house today and another friend (J) was there. I admired the skirt J wore and she said that M had given it to her. M said it was hers years ago and she had rooted it out when she was clearing things out after her mother died and couldn't throw it out. It didn't fit her any more (it's a maxi-type skit ITKWIM) so she gave it to J.

To which I said:

" It's gorgeous, J, it suits you, it's really for someone tall and slim" (which J is and M is not) but I'm also neither tall nor slim and I was thinking wistfully how I'd love to be able to wear a skirt like that, not that M would not be able to wear a skirt like that.

I could kick myself. That's the kind of thing I would get upset about. I wish you could edit things in real life.

At least twice a day I wish I could bite my tongue right off, lettinggo. It definitely runs ahead of my brain.

Afternoon all. It's all been a bit of a panic around our house in the last few weeks. I'll explain what I mean.
I got offered a new job instead of doing the adoption leave thing for a year. 2.5 times my current salary didn't take me long to try and work out how to get the wife to take adoption leave and for me to resign.
That all done last Tuesday we started introductions to DS and DD on Friday last week. It's been one amazing week and tomorrow we will become a 'forever family' when the kids are placed with us. I'm so excited I can't wait to see them again tomorrow. They are back with the FC tonight for a farewell party.
Thanks for all your support in the past couple of months. I really could not of contemplated taking this on without having read loads of stuff on MN. I am much more confident around the children and I'm pleased to say that lots of the strategies on here work just fine in practise.
Lots of Love and speak to you all again after the first weekend with DD and DS.
TimsterC ;o)
btw not sure if I ever mentioned it before. 2kids1home.wordpress.com

Good luck good luck good luck!

And congratulations on the new job.

Can't wait to hear how you all get on. Come back once the dust has settled

Ah, Timster, your blog is gorgeous. It sounds like the introductions have been great, you're all off to a great start. Tomorrow is the start of a whole new stage of your life, enjoy every minute

Hi Timster, I've been following your blog. I'm so glad you're all settling into your new family.

Hi everyone, been a while since I posted on these threads

Bit of back story,

Matched with a little girl last year, she came to stay with us (me and birth daughter) in sept and it's been great

She has totally came out of her shell and we have all bonded well

The only thorn in our side is she still has contact with birth parents every month but we have coped with that

Adoption petition went to court a few months ago and bm contested it, fast forward to today and back at court.

Giving my evidence was nerve wracking but got through that bm had already kicked off prior to me getting there. Main social worker was in for 4 hrs then sw who supervises contact and her old link worker, upshot court not very happy in the way it's all been dealt with and now on waiting game again for judges ruling.

Basically she wants adotion to be denied but if it is agreed then contact to continue.

Not sure what I want, maybe just a bit of hand holding

If you got through all that, thanks and well done

Oh purple, that sounds horrible for you. What an ordeal! I do hope you gte the result you want. When will you get a judgement?

It does seem a bit unusual to place a child in a permanent placelemt ( i assume fostering with a view to adoption) while she still has monthly comtcat. This should have been tailed off once it was agreed that returning home was not an option. The birth family have obviouspy been getting mixed messgaes

Your poor dd, it must be so confusing for her

Thanks KristinaM

Yes it has been a bit shitty but prior to introductions the contact had only just been reduced from 5 days to 3.

Typical sw doing things at their speed certainly not in dd2's interest!

Not sure when we'll get judgement could take up to 4 weeks (but praying for early decision) and meanwhile I have the added stress of moving house

You mean she spends 3 days a month at her birth parenst house? She sleeps there?

Bonkers

Sorry for confusion, no as we were getting to know her she had contact with them for 3 days a week, supervised, but once she came to live with us it was reduced to once a month.

How bizarre, and how difficult for you PP. Remind me how old your daughters are? What was the justification for continuing that level of direct contact?

DD1 is 11 now and dd2 just turned 4, and they get on like they have always been sisters

She does seem happy to go to contact but is very clingy when she comes home and doesn't seem bothered if bp don't turn up, she's happy just to play with sw, I think contact is more for bp than for her

The childrens hearings wouldn't stop the contact, that has to be down to the judge as I think they did it in an earlier adoption and got their knuckles wrapped for it from the judge.

Tbh it's been like this since I started the whole process, I would get near to the finish line but then they would move it, but we finally got dd2

It has been worth it and sw have said she is not going anywhere but if adoption is not granted they will go for long term residency, not what I want for her but......

Just wish judge would give his ruling so we can get out of limbo, oh well monday isn't that far away [hopeful emoticon]

Hello all, will anybody be about tonight?

I have steam coming out of my ears and feel the need for a rant coming on...

NanaNina, it's about social workers so you may prefer to look the other way, whistling loudly

Hi bran What you cookin'?

OK, I'm just humongously pissed off with dd's social worker. She is not a bad person, but she is completely out of her depth and the last 15 months has been a catalogue of mistakes and delays. She didn't assess the security risk from the birth family (just gossiped about it). She assured us birth mother was about to have a new baby and did we want it, then months later - after much chasing - told us airily there was no baby after all, no she doesn't know what happened to it, not her job to find out. She let fc hold our dd's memory box hostage. When we finally got it, none of the items in it were itemised so we can't tell dd who gave her what. She handed us a stack of inappropriate letters from birth father, without going through Letterbox. She only turned up to see us 3 times in 12 months. Oh, I could go on and on.

Anyway, I've been emailing her for a couple of weeks to try to get answers to some questions, including: where where where is life story book? I see my name has been included on court paperwork even though it says on the form not to name the adoptive parents - is this a risk? dd has been with us 12 months but we've had no word from the letterbox co-ordinator - what should we do? How do we get our details on dd's Child Trust Fund?

This is basically what I get back: "Oh hi, sorry it's short notice but I'm leaving my job tomorrow. One of my colleagues will come to the court hearing. I did write the life story book but my manager says it isn't good enough or long enough but that's the birth mother's fault because I did ask her last year to send me some birth photos. Anyway, I'll drop off what I've done to you sometime when I'm in your part of the country. I don't know where birth parents are so don't worry about letterbox - just write a letter and hang on to it. I don't know who is handling the CTF but you could try ringing round to find out. I asked a colleague about the court papers and she said don't worry you'll be ok."

And that was it. She didn't even say goodbye or good wishes. I feel particularly upset because she is our dd's one link to her early days and to her birth family. We will never be able to recover the information she is holding in her head.

Our social worker is lovely but has never wanted to challenge (sw solidarity I guess). But right now I feel like ringing the head of the adoption team and Having Words. Do you think I should do so, or wait till after the final hearing?

If you have read this far, many thanks and I hope you haven't burnt dinner.

Thanks, bran. It doesn't sound as though there will be a new social worker allocated, though I am going to fight for that because we still have a few months to go and no point of contact up there.

SW kept just telling me it wasn't her job to find out about the baby. Best case scenario is that she got it wrong - there was no pregnancy - and she won't admit to that. That would be consistent with her other behaviours.

You are so right about M&S sausages. What is that all about?

I've reread the email and she says she will 'try' to drop off the life story book when she is in my part of the country (she lives a long way away). But she also says she has been told it is not good enough, but doesn't say she is going to do any more work on it.

It isn't good enough, is it? I need her to either post it or give it to a colleague to hand over BEFORE she goes, surely?

Oh, and she continues to call the birth mother 'mum' throughout, which really pisses me off. There is one 'mum' here and it is ME.

hester i have Pmed you