Wanting to adopt but ...

[Pegs11]

Hi, my husband and I are in our 40s, we spent our late 30s trying to conceive but couldn’t. We are now looking to adopt.

I understand the adoption organisations look very closely at your past, and at your current circumstances and personality. I am a bit concerned about a few aspects of my “being”, that I worry won’t be looked kindly on.

On the positive side, I am a very loving, supportive and nurturing person,. I have lots of sympathy, empathy, patience and understanding. I am fun, I engage well with children, but I am also sensible and good with boundaries. I think these things will work in my favour.

However, one thing I definitely do not have is boundless energy. Due to a medical condition, I can have days or sometimes weeks when I get very fatigued (although this is improving steadily thanks to new treatment I’m on).

Also, I am very emotional and easily moved to tears, always have been... I think this is because I’m an empath, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage in life!

Furthermore, I can suffer from anxiety at times, this can make me a bit withdrawn and tired, and sometimes I find it difficult to make decisions.

So... not the perfect parent. I do have a very good support network around me, and there are always family members who can help out. And I have a husband of course... although he works full time.

What do you think... how concerned will the panel be about my energy levels, my tendency to be emotional, and my occasional bouts of anxiety..?!

Is there a way I can frame these things as a positive?!

What do you mean by "I'm an empath"? How do you feel this makes you different to "the norm"?

@gordongrumpy What I mean is two-fold... First, and perhaps something I worry may be viewed in a negative light, I’m very strongly affected by the stories and emotional states of other people. Some people aren’t all that fazed by other people’s sad or moving or beautiful or otherwise emotional stories or circumstances. Whereas I sometimes (often?) can find myself being very affected in this way and often am moved to tears and get very upset and emotional myself. More so than most other people.

On the upside, I can relate very well to people and I am very supportive and understanding when they have problems... I’m a good listener, and it’s something that I’m valued for among my friends and family members.

Do you mean you struggle with emotional regulation? That could be a challenge.

You need to consider how each of these issues would impact your ability to care for a traumatised child.

Your energy levels need to be sufficient enough and consistent enough to provide care day by day, to deal with the physical demands of caring. You also need the energy and motivation to argue for your child’s needs to be met by others - I spend huge amounts of time and emotional energy negotiating with schools, health care providers, specialist supports to make sure things are in place for my child. You need to have enough stamina to do that and have good supports in place for yourself. What contingencies can you put in place, how much warning do you have of falling energy levels etc and what happens if you need to do something essential for your child on days you’re struggling?

In terms of being an empath, you need to consider whether you’re robust enough. By that I mean you’ll hear very difficult things - your child will likely have a very sad story i their background, so will their birth family, so may the foster carers who have cared for your child pre-adoption. You need to be resilient enough to be able to hear and understand, without becoming overly upset or those stories getting in the way of you being able to set clear boundaries for yourself and your child, to not be manipulated by the challenges of others. I’d respectfully suggest that what you’re describing is emotional fragility, as empathy is being able to see the world from another’s point of view while recognising their pain as being theirs.

In terms of anxiety again this is something you need to think about in terms of becoming a parent. You’ll need to be able to cope with your child’s fear and anxiety post placement, to hold them steady and support them without becoming overwhelmed yourself. The adoption process is demanding and can be very anxiety provoking in itself so you need to think about supports and coping strategies.

None of these issues are insurmountable but you really need to think about how they impact your parenting and not just think you’ll be able to get on with it. It’s not so much about presenting the issues positively but more about how you understand yourself and the strengths you bring, and how you acknowledge the challenges and plan to support yourself in the process.

I don’t say any of this to put you off, but to help you think about what you need to put in place now to help you go through the process and realistically think about you as a parent.

Yes I can struggle with emotional regulation. Not all the time... my ability to regulate my emotions is strongly linked to my energy levels and to things that are going on in my life. If my energy dips, then I can get very emotional, and problems can feel more difficult to cope with than during the times when I feel well physically. My physical health is improving, the treatment is helping, my medical team is still making adjustments to get it exactly right for me... but I’m certainly having more peaks than troughs now. But hmm... I’m feeling like maybe I need to have been more stable physically for a longer period of time, to really get a grip on the emotional resilience thing, and give me the confidence to know I can be a calm and collected parent. If emotional regulation is going to be a big deal in being an adoptive parent, then I’m probably not going to pass muster, at the moment 😔

It's good to be self aware. Emotional regulation is a massive thing, often adopted children really struggle with this, and need us to be experts at it, to help regulate them.

Better to address this now, than not be able to meet a child's needs.

It's not a flaw to have issues that mean adoption is not for you at the moment.

@Jellycatspyjamas thank you for your very helpful reply. I wrote a fairly long reply to you but something went wrong and I accidentally deleted it somehow! So for now, I will just thank you, your points are all really good ones and the questions you put to me are things I will give careful consideration to.

@Pegs11

I don’t have anything much to add to jellys excellent reply

other than try not to be despondent about it. Many people have things to address before they start the adoption process. I had some financial issues to sort out, my job also wasn’t compatible with being a single parent. It took me a few years to sort out. But I got there in the end.

@ted27 thank you for replying. I thought maybe I was ready but I don’t think I am.

I don’t think my husband is either, to be honest. He can struggle with emotional regulation too... we are, unfortunately, very similar in this regard!

He feels SO sad and lost without a child to raise... We both are...

I don’t know what you’ll think of this but.... you know how people say you can’t fix a problem at home by having a child? But honestly, the big problem at home and a big reason why we both get so emotional at times is not having kids to give us the challenge and responsibility that we were born to have ... and we are really missing that sense of purpose. It’s all we have ever wanted, and all the other things we fill our lives with don’t come close.

We looked after a teenager for a few months in 2018. We were so happy during those months, didn’t fight or cry, it felt so good helping this kid and we felt so at home doing it. We felt like a family. Even though he was effectively just our lodger!! We were a bit bereft when he moved on, missed him a lot.

We are over not having our own biological child. But we are still devastated about not having a child at all. We would definitely be better together if we had this shared sense of purpose and responsibility to someone other than ourselves. This has been proven. But how to explain this to an adoption agency... I’m not sure they would see it the way we do.

Have you thought about training to be foster parents and offering respite care?

Do you have any childcare experience?
Maybe you can start testing out your abilities by volunteering for children's groups etc?

If you are not over not being able to have your own children, then yes, you are not yet ready to apply to adopt, but I think you could do the above in the meantime?

@Pegs11

We all understand that urge to be parents, we wouldnt be here if we didnt.
But to be honest I think thats an awful lot of responsiblity to place on a child.
I’m not sure you can take the experience of looking after a teen for a few months to living with a traumatised child for years.
And what will you do when they grow up and leave home - what will glue you together then ?
It will test you and your relationship like you have never been tested. before. Its as likely to drive you apart as pull you closer.

There was a time when I didnt think adoption wasn’t going to work out for me. If it hadn’t I would have made some significant other life changes but a child couldnt have been the be all and end all of my life

@lightitup2 we are over not being able to have our own children (indeed this is why our thoughts have turned to adoption) but we are still devastated at the idea of not having any children at all. We really feel very sad and lost without kids in our life. And the thought of perhaps never being able to adopt, perhaps because we aren’t strong or resilient enough, is awful for us.

(I know that adoption will bring a new set of challenges, but at least it won’t be this pervading sense of lack of purpose... 🙁)

Hmm, these suggestions of fostering have given me food for thought... We did actually look into fostering a while back, had a couple of meetings with agencies... but we decided it’s not for us, because what we really want is to adopt. To have a child join our family on a permanent basis, who we can raise as our own, and to not risk getting attached to a child who could at any point be whipped away, as that could potentially be devastating.

Another reason for deciding against fostering is that it’s not the same as parenting... it’s more like a job (this is what the foster agencies themselves told us). And we aren’t looking for a job. We are looking to be parents.

...HOWEVER, if it is a means to an end... if it will ultimately help us on our journey to adoption - and help a foster kid along the way too - then I guess it may be worth giving it some further consideration.

I do worry about time... and getting older.... Fostering itself is quite a long journey, and we don’t relish the thought of being in our mid to late forties before we can finally adopt and have a child to call our own. Being 41 is bad enough... we are slower and get tired quicker than when we were in our 20s/30s ... and let’s face it, ageing is always a downward slope! We want to take advantage of our relative youth while we can. And I guess I saw fostering as just delaying the adoption process by several years... and we both feel we are already of a fairly ripe age to begin parenting!

...But then I guess I have to consider that as it stands, and given our issues, adopting could be years away anyway, depending on how long it takes me (and my husband) to build up the resilience we need to adopt.

... And in fact perhaps fostering could provide the best opportunity to build up that skill.

Hmm, lots to think about ...

On a related note, there is a government scheme whereby you can offer lodgings to young people just coming out of care, aged around 16/17 and who are trying to establish their independence. It would be our job to provide a kind of supported lodgings type thing, while they start work or continue their education or whatever. I quite like the idea of that, but I’m not sure if it would be the most useful experience, given that the child is almost an adult by that point... what do you reckon? Could it still be a useful thing to help us in our adoption journey? Or would we really need to be looking at fostering younger children?

Fostering might be a worthwhile road to look at, however I’d be inclined to use the time to work on yourself. Therapy would absolutely help you get to the root of whatever is underlying your emotional regulation. Health issues and infertility really take their toll psychologically and can utterly undermine your capacity for self regulation.

For example, often when I find myself having an overly strong emotional response to something it’s because it’s touched on an issue that I’m trying to push through - the emotional response feels like it relates to the sad story I’ve heard, but it’s my own stuff finding a way to come to the surface. Therapy gives you a safe space to unpick all of the feelings you might have about your health, not having a child, what’s happening in your relationship and can really set you on a good path for adoption.

Getting your medical treatment right is really important - if you don’t already it might be worth just keeping a log of your energy levels day by day and your emotional state and see if you can identify any patterns. You can then put strategies in place to ward off those very low energy days which again will stand you in good stead coming to adoption. A good humanistic therapist would help you get to the bottom of it, while CBT would give you useful tools and strategies for coping day by day.

Also think about the age of children you might be interested in, relative to your age and energy levels. Things like them being in school would provide respite on days you’re feeling more fatigued, although older children have their own demands.

You’re right to approach adoption thoughtfully, and there are things you can practically do to put yourself in the best place possible.

Being 41 is bad enough... we are slower and get tired quicker than when we were in our 20s/30s ... and let’s face it, ageing is always a downward slope!

In your shoes I’d do the work on myself rather than look to go through the fostering process - the issues you’ve mentioned would still be very relevant in any fostering assessment so you might not find yourself any further forward. I was 46 when I was placed with a 4 and 6 year old. It’s tiring but also the best thing ever. I had a long assessment process with many bumps along the way - mostly out of my control - but I’m a better parent for sorting myself out properly first.

my ability to regulate my emotions is strongly linked to my energy levels and to things that are going on in my life. If my energy dips, then I can get very emotional, and problems can feel more difficult to cope with than during the times when I feel well physically

Are you aware that this works the other way too? If you were able to learn to work through emotions, work out the root cause, learn to manage and regulate, you may well find that your energy levels increase. This may well have a positive affect on your medical condition too.

You are aware that your sadness about children is affecting you and this is something you could start to work through, but it is likely that there will be other things too. You mention fighting with your partner which got better when you temporarily looked after a child. Fighting does not sound ideal, and it is quite possibly linked to a lack of skills around emotional regulation for both of you. This is also something you could explore, together and indevidually.

I would try to move away from thinking about yourself as an empath and think more about reading up on emotional intelligence in the direction of understanding, processing and regulating emotions and build new skills and awareness in these directions as others have said. You may well find that your life improves in other ways and other doors open too.

*individually

Lots of excellent points made already. I agree that a bit of therapy could be really helpful to you and will later help to show that you understand the importance of maintaining your own mental health and building emotional resilience. If it helps you with your anxiety that is going to have a positive affect on you physical health too. When you start the process you really want to be in a good place, not for the adoption agency but for you (and your future child!)

I myself have a life-long condition which means I experience fatigue and the key words I think are a)management and b)support. If your medical condition is improving with treatment then that is brilliant and a little more time might help to ensure you are in the best position you can be. Having a good support network is going to be important to you but it sounds like you have that covered.

Whilst you wait to begin the process, if you haven't already, you could start reading around childhood trauma and therapeutic parenting to give you an idea of backgrounds and behaviours you will likely face later. Perhaps researching together could be a nice thing to do with your partner and a way to funnel your energy/enthusiasm for now?

@Jellycatspyjamas thank you again for engaging with me on this.

Ah, therapy... yes... I’ve actually had really bad experiences with therapy in the past... I’m left feeling it’s done me more harm than good. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky.

The only thing that has really helped me with day-to-day coping is the treatment I’ve been having for my chronic fatigue. Being physically ok goes a long way to helping me emotionally regulate.

...Bit of a relapse at the moment though, after months of feeling pretty good... so I’m clearly not as well-recovered as I thought.

And yes... there are definitely still some issues to work on. My husband and I don’t always interact in a healthy way, we tend to feed each other’s anxiety and sometimes this can escalate to something that becomes emotionally unmanageable. I think this is the main thing we need to conquer before trying to adopt, because from the sounds of it, this is clearly not the right dynamic to expose a traumatised child to.

@JL1141

my ability to regulate my emotions is strongly linked to my energy levels and to things that are going on in my life. If my energy dips, then I can get very emotional, and problems can feel more difficult to cope with than during the times when I feel well physically

Are you aware that this works the other way too? If you were able to learn to work through emotions, work out the root cause, learn to manage and regulate, you may well find that your energy levels increase. This may well have a positive affect on your medical condition too.

You are aware that your sadness about children is affecting you and this is something you could start to work through, but it is likely that there will be other things too. You mention fighting with your partner which got better when you temporarily looked after a child. Fighting does not sound ideal, and it is quite possibly linked to a lack of skills around emotional regulation for both of you. This is also something you could explore, together and indevidually.

I would try to move away from thinking about yourself as an empath and think more about reading up on emotional intelligence in the direction of understanding, processing and regulating emotions and build new skills and awareness in these directions as others have said. You may well find that your life improves in other ways and other doors open too.

Thank you @JL1141 . Excellent advice. My husband and I definitely need to get more skilled at emotional regulation, particularly when it comes to our various anxieties feeding off each other. I actually think this - and not my individual issues - would be the main problem for the family unit, should we adopt. But you’re quite right, perhaps this is the perfect opportunity for us to work this out properly, once and for all.

Yes i agree that the physical-emotional thing can work the other way around too. What I would say is, the particular type of fatigue I have is caused by a very specific, physical medical condition. It took us years to get to the bottom of it, and for a long time I thought it might all be psychosomatic. Turns out it’s not, it’s much more simple than that and is treatable just with medication. Woo!!! But getting the medication right - type, dose, frequency - can take some time and although I’ve made HUGE progress and feel absolutely f*ing delighted to have my life back, there is still occasional ironing-of-blips that needs doing. I would say I’m around... hmm... 93 per cent better, compared to this time last year! I think I should aim for at least 98 per cent better before adopting though. My support network is good but it only goes so far.

@Kindee

Lots of excellent points made already. I agree that a bit of therapy could be really helpful to you and will later help to show that you understand the importance of maintaining your own mental health and building emotional resilience. If it helps you with your anxiety that is going to have a positive affect on you physical health too. When you start the process you really want to be in a good place, not for the adoption agency but for you (and your future child!)

I myself have a life-long condition which means I experience fatigue and the key words I think are a)management and b)support. If your medical condition is improving with treatment then that is brilliant and a little more time might help to ensure you are in the best position you can be. Having a good support network is going to be important to you but it sounds like you have that covered.

Whilst you wait to begin the process, if you haven't already, you could start reading around childhood trauma and therapeutic parenting to give you an idea of backgrounds and behaviours you will likely face later. Perhaps researching together could be a nice thing to do with your partner and a way to funnel your energy/enthusiasm for now?

@Kindee more excellent advice, thank you.

My husband ordered a book on therapeutic parenting yesterday! I’m pleased that he’s being proactive and I think that he will be open to working on his/our issues.

One other thing that is making me reconsider whether now is the right time to be looking to adopt is that my husbands parents are very old, and very sick. I can foresee the next few months, or maybe even the next couple of years, needing to be given over to managing that. It’s certainly not helping my husband’s (and in turn, my own) anxiety levels right now.

I’ve actually had really bad experiences with therapy in the past... I’m left feeling it’s done me more harm than good. Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky I read somewhere that the right therapist can see where you should be going, and know how to get you there!! In the meantime, reading all your posts I think you might find reading "Emotional Intelligence" by Daniel Goleman really helpful?

I just wanted to make it clear that I was NOT referring to psychosomatic illnesses. I was referring to emotional wellbeing affecting the immune system and how well the body functions but not removing the need for medication where medication is needed. I am interested though, in what your condition is, but only because I am just generally interested, not for any other reason.

@JL1141 Don’t worry, I didn’t think you were referring to psychosomatic illnesses. And yes, absolutely the physical and emotional are linked and can impact on each another.
My health condition had terrible psychological consequences for me... But in my case, the root cause was physical. I discovered (eventually) that I had a severe hormonal deficiency. I went through surgical menopause aged 32 and did not receive the proper aftercare. I was put on completely the wrong kind of HRT which contained only a minuscule amount of oestrogen. The oestrogen hormone is absolutely vital for women’s health... and I had virtually none in my body! The lack of oestrogen gradually sapped me of my life force... I had zero energy, couldn’t think straight or remember things, I had constant headaches and eye pain, sore muscles, sore joints, sore throat, sore glands... I basically felt like I had the flu and a hangover.... constantly. This made me anxious and depressed and I struggled to cope with my relationship and responsibilities ... and also to process the whole infertility thing, because all those things take energy, and I had none at all. It kept getting worse and worse to the point I had to leave my job and then worse again to the point I could hardly get up the stairs most days. I thought my life was going to be like that forever, I thought I was f*ed. But I refused to accept that and, with the little energy I had, I fought to get help and support. In the end I finally found the cause of it all, and got myself the right help which set me on the road to recovery. Like I said, I’m more than 90 per cent of the way there now, physically. The emotional scars run deeper, and the anxiety still rears its head from time to time. But the stronger I feel physically, the more energy I have to process and regulate my emotions. My current relapse has been disheartening, but it’s only happened because the form of my treatment was changed to something that was easier for me to use. However, the new form of treatment was simply not as effective as the old one, so I have restarted on the old one now. Hopefully I should start to feel better again in a week or so. I won’t be changing my meds again as I want to stay well!

Anyway, having basically got my life back at last, we can finally start making plans and getting on with life again. Hence why we are beginning to look at adopting. But perhaps it is just a little too soon, still. It’s difficult when you’ve been ill for so long, and then finally you can do normal stuff again... you want to crack on with things, make up for lost time, do all those things you’d spent so long dreaming of doing and thought you’d never be able to. You don’t want any more of your life to just drain away. But after chatting to you guys I think I could slow down a little bit. There is still too much work to do.... my relationship is still on the journey to finding a “new normal” after years of being plagued by severe ill health. So I think for now, the best thing to do is to work on myself and my marriage, while at the same time researching everything about adoption and therapeutic parenting, maybe volunteering at a children’s centre or something... so when we are ready, we already have a decent grounding.

I’m definitely going to get that book on Emotional Intelligence 😊

I’m so grateful to you all on here for your input and thoughtful responses, it takes time and energy to support others and I really appreciate you all giving me some of yours 😊

I agree with Jellycatspyjamas "Fostering might be a worthwhile road to look at, however I’d be inclined to use the time to work on yourself."

I am very empathetic and in the past this was most unhelpful to me personally. In some ways I had to become more desensitised to some situations.

We adopted when I was 48, our boy was 3 and we have a birth daughter who was 9 at the time.

I desperately wanted a family and it has very much not all been easy.

I think working on your own personal resilience and energy levels is a very good idea.

My advice would be, read up about traumatised children, save as much money as you can (it might help make things easier), declutter your house while working on your resilience.

In terms of your husband's elderly parents my strong advice is do not put your plans on hold for anyone else. Fine to slow things down because you want to but I would not defer having children because of older relatives.

When our son joined us my mum had gone into a care home the year before. I was very lucky my sister was able to do the bulk of visiting etc. I would not have been able to bring my young son into the care home on a regular basis.

I am saying this because I think it is important when you are considering adoption that you do not over-committ to other people.

Ps I wrote this before I read your last comment.