Changing first name

[mollymollymoo]

Hi
It's looking really likely that we've been matched with a little girl - very excited! However - her current name is so identifying and ridiculous that even our social worker has said they can work with us to change it.
She'll be nearly 2 when she comes home.

Does anyone have any experience of this, the practicalities etc?

This is our 2nd adoption and we would have been more than happy to keep her name otherwise.. but really it is awful and not fair on her to have to grow up with it!!

How much of an actual risk is it? No one tried to find my siblings and I. In my experience people are more interested in having more babies rather than searching and in reality what percentage of siblings are adopted together? From my experience the majority of siblings are separated. I am part of group and there and 100s of us. There isn’t any contact post adoption other than letterbox usually 2 or 3 times a year which is often not followed through by the birth parents. I would have rather kept my name, been adopted with my siblings and ‘taken my chances’ whatever this risk is people speak of. My parents never looked for us and I was not a relinquished baby. We were removed and my birth father eventually ended up in prison. I think the people who abuse their children are being compared by people who adopt to themselves. They are not the same. We are looking at balancing risk, the first to your mental health of being called one thing for three or four years etc then the next day after the most extreme trauma of losing your siblings, as in reality sib adoption are more rare (I know someone will know post we adopted three but that’s not the norm) ,which is not helped by the lack of financial support versus the risk of people often with very serious addiction issues having the wherewithal to forget about heroine addiction in order to search for their children. The threshold for removal is now so high the people losing their children to adoption are very broken people. So, on balance is the risk so real or is it the fear people have which I understand; you have adopted an abused child which you want to protect. But these days we are all so much more risk averse. Don’t let them walk to school someone will jump out of the bushes but in reality stranger danger is something which we have blown out of proportion child abduction is as rare as it’s always been but not in our eyes. Has that element of fear crept into this argument when what we should focus on is the mental health implications of the multi layered loss and trauma that comes with adoption.

"judicial comment" not "jurisdictional comment"

I note you say that in only a “ small minority of cases” is the birth family considered to be a risk to the child or its parents. Could you please link to these figures ?
Good question Kristina. I would like to know this too. We get a lot of generalisations on this page about 'birth' families and I would like to have a better understanding of how reasonable they are. I remember reading a statistic once that 27% of children were adopted because of mothers having disabilities.
This article shows some statistics about care orders rather than adoption, so presumably there is data about adoption orders somewhere:

www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/14/number-of-children-in-care-for-emotional-abuse-soars?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I know that there is a lot of concern about transparency in the family court system, so perhaps the ratio is harder to find find for adoption orders.
Can anyone help with these statistics?

Can I suggest you go and actually read that book I mentioned? It has a whole section on direct contact that explains why it's only a benefit in a very small number of situations (and is so far from appropriate as a means to mitigate risk it's laughable) where there is extensive support (and I really do mean extensive; an independent therapist for every single person involved for months before and after etc) and the birth family are able to be honest and open about the circumstances leading to the child(ten)s adoption - that means accepting blame and fault, openly and truthfully. Very, very few birth parents/family members are capable of doing that - they generally have low emotional intelligence, addiction issues, are more often than not completely unsupported by anyone not in the same chaotic circumstances as themselves and don't understand that their parenting/behaviour was at fault. They also often have an ingrained mistrust of any professional claiming to be there to 'help'. Direct contact is essentially retraumatising an already traumatised child so there have to be concrete benefits for the child, and the child has to want it; it can't be about soothing birth families. If a birth family are able to tick all the requirement boxes for the above, the chances of the risk being assessed as high enough to warrant a name change is virtually nil, so the name change argument is moot. An anecdotal figure mentioned in the book for the percentages of birth families felt to fit the profile are 2% (that was based on feedback from a whole variety of backgrounds).

The posts you're refusing to quote are here on a public forum. I don't think there's any issue in actually quoting from them rather than pussy-footing around. If you're using them as proof of something, use them. You can't expect everyone to either believe you or go and plough through 200+ posts. The only mention I can see is someone says they know of someone who told them they'd changed a name where there was no risk; which in my book is worthless as evidence. I've said various things regarding my DC's adoption that paint a very simplistic version of the truth because the truth is private. I can well imagine if asked why I had changed a name I'd also say because we preferred it; but that wouldn't be the truth.

This whole discussion is very difficult to have when you refuse to say what your interest in adoption is. You clearly have little knowledge or understanding of modern adoption and most of your references appear to be from things you've read on MN. I'm sure you'll appreciate that there's an awful lot more to adoption than the bits people feel safe enough to write on a public forum and that unless you can be honest about why you've got such an issue/obsessive interest with all this, people are going to take what you say with a pinch of salt and an eye roll. What you're talking about is our lives and our children's lives; it is not for amateur discussion and pontificating.

Thank you for posting that, evergreen - it is an amazing insight.

Has that element of fear crept into this argument when what we should focus on is the mental health implications of the multi layered loss and trauma that comes with adoption.

Firstly, Evergreen, its great to hear that you are able to bond and get peer support in your group.
I think that you are correct in your statement above. However, I think that it's perfectly understandable that it happens in this group. The majority here expect this group to be a support group for prospective and early stage adoptive parents. Mumsnet seems to have endorsed this. When those of us who perceive the long term effects of adoption post, it can seem both threatening and patronising. We're not easy to listen to sometimes.
To be fair, when my children were young, I found it really difficult to visualise and predict the long term effects of their childhood experiences, so how much more difficult it must be if you have adopted.
In my journey, I have learned the most from listening to those who were adopted, and I believe that my family has benefitted, including my child who was lost to adoption. Many thanks for posting

Can I suggest you go and actually read that book I mentioned? it is written by an adopter and "life coach". It deals with complex psychological issues yet the author has literally no qualifications or professional experience.

Direct contact is essentially retraumatising an already traumatised child so there have to be concrete benefits for the child, and the child has to want it; it can't be about soothing birth families this is dangerously just not true. If that comes from the book there is NO PEER REVIEWED PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH AT ALL ANYWHERE IN ANY JURISDICTION to support it - if I am wrong, link it.

Yes, you have one of the quotes re situation A. It is from a regular adopter poster - you don't regard that as good testimony???!!! Well, I do.

Basically it makes me really, really angry that the same mistakes are made now as were made decades ago. It makes me angry that you recommend books written by psychologists with YEARS of experience with proven outcomes which are ignored by adopters (this has happened on another thread) and yet you recommend the sort of books you have recommended by people who have NO relevant qualifications or experience. Does that clarify my interest? We are seeing adoptees and children in care failed over and over again. What will their lives be live in 20 years time? It is all unnecessary. This is not the time to be complacent and say "what is going on now works" because it doesn't.

Sorry, I meant to respond to Direct contact is essentially retraumatising an already traumatised child so there have to be concrete benefits for the child, and the child has to want it; as being dangerously unfounded. When you say it can't be about soothing birth families all the recommendations i have seen in favour of direct contact are to do with the needs of the child, not to do with soothing birth families. This has been said over and over.

henrik just as a caveat to that - when you are talking about retraumatising, if you are thinking of where there is a risk of harm then that is the situation where you may be advised to keep the child away, but that is also the situation where changes of name etc be appropriate. I was talking about direct contact with the bio families where there is no risk of harm, and I am told that this is the majority.

I am an adoptee, relinquished as a baby a very long time ago. Thinking back to my childhood, which I remember clearly, I suspect I would have felt confused and distressed had there been contact with my birth family. Foremost in my mind would have been the possibility that I might be given back to this 'other mother'. I'm glad there was no direct contact, glad that I had such a sense of security with my adoptive family. I can never be too grateful to them. I know that the situation with adoption is very different nowadays, but, now that I have an adopted grandchild, I can only breathe a huge sigh of relief that LO will not have to face their chaotic, disastrous birth family during their childhood. I'm afraid I don't have much trust in the 'experts', the psychologists, professors, the writers of papers who sit and theorise about us and our lives. Old fashioned I may be, but I'm looking at these issues from both ends of the spectrum and I have to say that sometimes simple common sense (as in 'keep the children well away from harmful people) is the way to go.

I have a good friend who, on adopting, changed the spelling/prononciation of the child's name, as it was essentially a 'unique' ridiculous version of a classic name. The child was almost three and took to the 'new' name easily. I wish you LUCK and happiness with your new DD

henrik I am sorry about dribs and drabs - just one last thing is that you listed off all the boxes a birth family has to tick. I think it is more to do with how the adoptive parent manages the situation. EG as adoptive parent I would want a proper understanding of the point of view of the bio parent, but it wouldn't matter whether they accepted and understood why children were removed. The bio family's views or lack of understanding or lack of emotional intelligence is not binding on the adoptive parent or the child, is the other way of looking at it, a part of our role as parents is to interpret the world and other people's behaviour for the child when needed. I would say building up an awareness for the child as the years went by, as the child matured, as well as the other known positives of contact (assessed on a case by case basis) would very much mitigate the risks posed by a child being contacted and told a different story by bio family and being upset or traumatised or swayed by that in their teens. This is in cases where there is no risk, ie the majority is what i have been told. These are just personal opinions.

brightsunshine I am not sure that direct contact would do much to increase adoptive parents understanding of birth parents point of view. These days, when children are mostly removed from their birth families who are unable to keep them safe, the birth families are often 'all over the place'. They may be deep into addictive lifestyles, serving prison sentences, struggling with severe mental ill health. I doubt if they are even clear about their own point of view, let alone able to convey it to anyone else. And how likely are they to turn up to contact meetings? I'm aware of more than one birth mother who couldn't turn up to meetings when their child, whom they professed to love, was in foster care. How are the children supposed to cope with that? Please don't tell me the professionals will be there to give support.. I take that with a very big pinch of salt. Anyway, I've said my piece on this thread- over and out from me.

mrsmatty I absolutely validate your views about your own childhood, but I don't agree with what you said about direct contact generally but it is just my opinion and your opinion and mine equally valid on this thread.

henrik quite frankly, I think you should look at why you feel the need to hurl personal insults at someone who disagrees with you. I won't take it personally, even if was meant personally. Good luck to you.

I have stayed out of this for various reasons.

However, we had direct contact with a birth parent. It is no picnic. I believe it would have been beneficial to my son. However the birth parent couldn't keep up his end of the bargain.

The stress of it all nearly pushed me over the edge, will he, won't he turn up. My son's crushing disappointment when he didnt show up. The time my son phoned him one early Friday evening to confirm the arrangement the following day, dad said call me back I'm driving. But he never answered the phone, did not reply to texts, did not show up the next day. I spent a week convinced he'd been in a car accident, I scoured the news sites for information about traffic incidents. I couldn't ley our lives be dominated by this.
Its a fine idea, I agree in principle, the reality is another matter.

Sadly I think Teds experience is very common. So many times direct contact stops because either BP don’t turn up or when they do it’s inappropriate and distressing to the child. Other time, the child refuses to continue contact.

Direct contact should only be done if it’s in the child’s best interest. Not as some way of “managing risk “ and therefore not allowing name changes. That’s not a child centred approach.

Kristina has asked me to provide more evidence to support why I think it might be quite common. We don't have exact numbers so it is impossible to say for sure obviously. The article I mentioned is at www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/29/should-adoptive-parents-change-their-children-s-first-

You are kidding me , right ? An opinion article in a newspaper isn’t evidence . Neither is a blog or what a counsellor once said to you in a pub.

You are insulting my intelligence and that of the adopters on this board.

I’m not sure if you are here in good faith TBH. You keep making dogmatic and controversial statements and then refuse to provide anything to back it up.

I think you are here for fun and to wind us up. This it’s a joke to us you know, it’s our lives and our children’s lives.

Thank you Offre I really appreciate your post. I actually hate posting of these adoption thread as an adopted adult as people are always very critical of anything I say but this thread caught my eye as I have lived this and just wanted to offer what happened to me and it’s impact on me as an adult years after my name change. I agree with your perspective that the adoption threads are used by people going through the adoption process. I do think adopted adults would benefit from having a space as adopted children grow up and adoption is something that is a lifelong experience which affects you differently at different life stages. I don’t know your story but I am really sorry for any pain you have gone through and your loss.

ted27 I am sorry about your experiences. I agree that it would almost always be really difficult for the adopter, but there are some positive stories out there too.

Kristina Direct contact should only be done if it’s in the child’s best interest. Not as some way of “managing risk “ and therefore not allowing name changes. That’s not a child centred approach Direct contact would be considered for the benefit of the child generally it wouldn't be to "manage risk" but if managed properly it would also have the benefit of lessening the chance of unsolicited contact later on, I think.

Other than that, Kristina, your post is just personal attack. Try to challenge the post not the poster.

Referring to Evergreen’s post, does anybody know what the statistics are for how often sibling groups are separated? Our social worker told us that it’s very unusual to separate siblings these days, and it’s usually only considered if it’s thought that keeping them together would be detrimental - for example, with trauma bonds etc. When we visited the National exchange days, we met the social worker for sibling group of five and they said in no uncertain terms that the children would not be separated.

It would be interesting to know if my social worker’s comment referred to our (very large) local authority, or this is also true more widely.

I don’t know if there are any figures for splitting Large sibling groups, is suspect there are none as the numbers will be small and therefore possibly identifiable.

The problem usually is that it’s very difficult to find an adoptive family for 3,4 and 5 children. Most people don’t have the space or the money as 4-5 kids much need two parents at home full time. I only know one family who adopted 5 at once and they have two FT parents .

Larger groups of children are often half siblings and have not Lived together recently or at all. Often one or more have some significant SN. Their needs might be very different . Sometime they are of different ethnicities which brings complications.

It’s a balance between waiting for years for the right family to come along or splitting them up.

I admire the determination of the SW who wants to place the 5 kids together but I suspect she will need a big adoption allowance to make that possible.

From what I can gather, policies vary hugely authority to authority, and also the information you are given may vary sw to sw. It might be worth asking this on threads where the posters are going through the approval process now to see what other posters are being told about sibling groups?

We have only been approved recently so the info is up-to-date, but obviously not generalisable.

Try to challenge the post not the poster

Oh this really makes me chuckle! The post is from the poster. To challenge the post is to challenge the poster. I know it is your favourite comeback but really, it makes absolutely no sense. Also, you have a very strange idea about what personal attacks are. I have read the whole thread and cannot see any. Is this post a PA to you I wonder? Such a shame you have spent the whole thread with that condescending tone. I think some of your points might have been considered more by people if you learnt how to phrase things. I’m challenging your posts by the way, not you (although that makes no sense as I am also challenging you but hey ho).

Just for future reference, I believe a personal attack to be something like:

“F off you motherf*cker”
Or
“You bloody btch, get lost with your shtty opinions” (NOT ACTUALLY AIMED AT YOU JUST EXAMPLES)

Not the reasoned , although sometimes passionate, responses you have been given. Try reporting some of the “attacks” and perhaps MNHQ can explain to you what a personal attack actually is

Again- this post is not a personal attack, just an example of what I believe a personal attack to be.