emotions

[meplusone]

Hi , i would really like some thoughts from others who have adopted on our experience. Our adoptee is settled really well and its wonderful to watch the growing relationship with our born to us daughter. We couldnt wish for more really.
Except we are really struggling with foster carer / ss.
Our adoptee was clearly adored by the fc who considered adopting our child however didnt due to age. We got on really well with her and thought she had done a wonderful job.
But it became clear in meetings that she was struggling, would cry and need comforting , often by us . i asked for her to be given more support this hasnt happened due to her sw being on sick leave.

The week of introductions went well and we got on brilliantly, she thought we were perfect for the child. however she invited various people / family on different days of the intro week to say "goodbye" while we were there. had a "goodbye" party that was clearly a birthday party , banners , cake etc as our child would not be with them for first birthday as was moving in with us 10 days before turning 1.
I shared with the child and our sw that she was clearly very attached and seperating would be difficult and could she be supported more. this hasnt happened.
On the day our child moved in i had to fetch while my husband stayed with our other child and i honestly felt that i was removing a birth child from her parents , tears and holding on imo. i felt wretched and have shared all of this with sc.
Now i am recieving emails and text asking for updates every couple of days and a date when we can meet, her sw is till off. our sw and childs sw are telling us not to reply at all ( we did initially because i really did want contact but not with high emotions that upset me , never mind our children).
As it stands now the sw say they are going to meet with her to set bounderies , we have been told to try and ignore which i am finding really hard because i can see foster carer is grieving and desperate and having no help and i am feeling awful.
Has anyone else had a similiar experience and how did it end ?
thankyou for reading

Can't say how it will end but we have a pretty similar story x x x

Our boys were fc first and only placement. She was single carer and had them for 2 years. We have similar with calls and texts. She is very gushing... Love you.... Miss you.... Our boys are older and feel responsibility for her sadness. In the first couple of months we let the boys speak, text and email whenever they wanted but now if they don't mention her, nor do I. She still texts etc but I reply myself and only tell the boys when I feel it is appropriate. I feel guilty as I know she is hurting but have to do what us best for dc. She is keen for boys to visit but we are not even thinking about it until the summer and feel it's important for her to come to our hone, rather than us to hers or even somewhere neutral.

Obviously ur LO is much younger and so can't make the decisions herself but I do feel for you all. There seems to be a real lack of support for fc, who are struggling in thus way.

I could have written your post op- besides the bit about the farewell parties during introduces, that must have been extremely emotionally draining, confusing etc.
our AD was the same age as yours at placement, and we have birth children too.
We found that the texts eased off after the FC had another child in placement ( and so was distracted!)
We have had a few issues about what to disclose in further contact with FC as FC is an associate of BF. SW had to lay some ground rules down at one point.
We were keen and remain keen to maintain some contact.
We've limited this to letters this year, until recently we arranged to pop in on FC. There were tears, but these were happy tears. We've concluded that our Ac's FC are just very emotional people and that's okay ( not saying that your situation is the same there though).
We found meeting up really helpful for our BC as they're very young and were getting confused that the FC they remember were the BF of their adopted sibling! We had done a lot of explaining but like I say, they're all very young to work out who's who.
Bc enjoyed seeing FC again, and FC seemed to be very at peace / yet emotional seeing all our children together. Ac was clingy ( understandably) but warmed up when bc modelled happy at- ease behaviour.
I only wish adoption training covered relations with FC too. That hand over is really tough, for everyone.

We are in a similar boat, so can't really offer advice, but wanted to show support.
It is very hard - our FCs had our LO from birth to almost 2 and were understandably very attached. Similar situation with a leaving/birthday party, loads of goodbyes and presents. They are great people who we are happy to stay in touch with, but it has been messages every single day so far. DH is all for ignoring, but I can't bring myself!
We know that FC developed a relationship with BM too, but we found out recently that they have met a few times since LO was placed. I think I trust FC not to give too much away, or show any recent photos - but it's weighing heavily on mind at the moment.
I think we have to be guided by our gut instincts in situations like this. Yes, it's awful for the FCs - but at the same time we and our children have a hard enough job settling into our new family life without worrying about them too, it shouldn't be up to us.

Thankyou so much everyone , im in tears reading your replies and experiences, i really thought it was only us.

The hardest part for us is being told not to respond because sending an email just for reasurence would be ok with us but because of the meetings where fc has cried the childs sw has told us absolutely not to respond in any way. We are waiting to hear if a meeting is arranged and outcome but not sure when that will be.
Yes welovelego ( love that name!) explaining to our BC why we were at a birthday party and why we then had another 10 days later was difficult . the fc has another baby in place alraedy but she says in her messages that new baby is reminding her so much of our little one. Can i ask how long your LO has been with you now ?
Kazza the bit about making children responsible for fc happiness really struck me , our little one is still very young , but she did show some distress at fc being upset when saying goodbye.
Thankyou closer, im guessing , that your adoption is quite recent ? how long have you had your LO , i agree it is very draining to worry about them as well as adjusting , i think the sw is trying to protect us , but telling us to do nothing is just as bad , and we dont want to go against their advice in case it reflects badly on us , our LO has only been with us 4 weeks.
on a positive we cant believe how settled out LO and BC are , we are loving being a family of four and everything seems so as it should be, getting more and more cuddles everyday.

So glad i,ve found this thread , i havent been able to find anything online about managing fc distress , not that its my responsibilty although i obviously am wanting to do the right thing and i do want contact in the future when things have settled more.

Exactly the same with us. Our little ones have been home 6 weeks and fc text weekly. I don't mind, they were amazing people and did such a good job I can understand their grief. Its good to hear we are not alone!!

In answer to your question meplusone, our LO has been home a year, so we're roughly a year on exactly from you.
With regard to future contact with FC I would recommend going with the same advice that you get in adoption training about avoiding contact around significant dates, eg. birthdays, mothers day, the year to the day that the child left, etc, as then there's no expectation about when the contact might definitely happen again.
Another thing that worked quite well (just from our experience, others might disagree with this) in the beginning (when we were still texting) was to text about LO reaching milestones. So for example, we sent a message asking FC how they were and then gave a snippet about a milestone, something like, 'I just thought you'd like to know she took her first steps yesterday', and then we'd close with, 'we'll be in touch again with an update in a couple of weeks.' This seemed to reassure FC that we would maintain some contact. We always did make sure we text roughly two weeks later, but we varied the time lapse point saying for example 'I'll text again in a few weeks' etc, and then started to send the odd letter instead, eg. a postcard from our holiday.

If I could offer advice to anyone who might be reading this who is starting intros, I would strongly think about how you are going to 'manage' the emotions of the hand over, especially when existing children are involved. I know that sounds a bit strange, but what I mean is, we just weren't prepared at all for dealing with the Fc relationships/ emotions neither in training nor by our SW, and only when a friend who has adopted advised us not to bring our BC to the handover, did we realise we needed to consider this from everyone's perspective, so the transition was as easy as it could be. Our SW was advising the opposite and saying things like, 'oh the BC will get really excited in the car when they're riding home with their new sibling for the first time- it will be so lovely for you all!' So as the OP noted and was also the experience of my partner, who drove on his own to collect, he reports that it was one of the worst moments of his life. There was crying in the street, sobbing, wailing, holding on to LO ...but completely understandable too of course. FC really did love our LO and for that we'll always be so grateful to them. This wasn't a point in time we would have wanted our BC to remember though, so we're so pleased we organised the hand over as we did.

Again, general advice to all doing intros, I would also be very careful what you 'commit' to in intros week. So very early on FC were saying to us, 'will you keep in contact?' and found ourselves saying, 'yes, of course' while gazing longingly at our new LO and not really listening, as happens when you've become a parent (again). I realise we couldn't have said, 'no', especially as there's this power dynamic to contend with that FC have in intros week, eg. 'they like you- they report good things to the SW', but I think we could have been less gushing in the last two days when we found ourselves nodding and saying 'we absolutely promise to come over again soon.' This actually confused BC a bit as for a couple of weeks, they kept reminding us of this commitment, 'but you said we'd see them again soon!'

To return to your OP though meplusone, the involvement of the SW to set boundaries is a difficult one. So like I said, we had a similar situation, but we did find that involving SW left FC feeling a bit confused, trust between us was compromised somewhat I think, as we'd turned this personal relationship into a professional exchange again. For us, feeling in control ourselves about our future contact with FC felt right, as when SW started managing the situation, feelings felt a bit more fraught, as a middle man was causing confusion, not relaying info correctly, and setting new rules we felt uncomfortable with eg. the 'no replying to texts at all' rule that you've described being advised.

Well, I am seriously rabbiting on now, but I'll just close on adding that it's great to hear your BC and Ac are getting on so beautifully mePlusOne. we have very close age gaps between our three and people warned us of huge fall outs, honeymoon periods ending, delayed jealously, etc, but I'm happy to report that none of that happened (yet!!), and ours got on well from the off too, and continue to do so.