Still a massive mess

[Runner31]

Our adoption journey has been a mess of changed transition plans, LO had no social work contact in the 6 months prior to him being told about us, seperated from siblings without his view being heard and not even having a sibling assessment with one. He also had no birth father info prior to placement and has spent the last year (he's been with us 14 months) waiting for his birth father to appear or for him to be able to go and live with his siblings. He's now 8 and a half and has no desire for a new family at all. We've raised this repeatedly with SW and are now at crisis. The legal order hasn't yet gone through and honestly.....I don't think we can adopt him.
He isn't angry about not wanting us as his family. He's very matter of fact and calm about it. He wants to stay with us but he has no desire for a new mum and dad. He wants to be happy and safe and live a normal life but he's never had two parents (he had a single foster carer and his mum was a single parent). For him a family us full of children. He's our only child and we're such a disappointment to him.

Sorry for the moan. We have some big decisions to make and I'm at a loss what to do. He just doesn't seem anywhere near ready for adoption.

I think you are too bogged down in terminology.

He wants to stay with you and be parented by you.

Questions for you are can you parent him, can you meet his needs, can you help him come to terms with his past, can you help him cope with the present and future, can you help him thrive, reach his potential, teach him life skills to enable him to live a good life, and can you all be happy for the next decade? Can you enable appropriate relationships with his birth family and navigate through all the difficult emotions which will arise? If yes, that is what being a parent is about.

The significance of the adoption is legal, it will affect things from a legal point of view (just like being married is different from cohabiting from a legal consequences point of view) so try to see is as that, and work out what might happen over the coming years and whether adoption will offer him better protection, and then discuss that with him.

I would move away from the "new mum and dad" thinking and instead see it as parenting and the practicalities around that.

Does he understand what adoption means legally and does he want that, even though he doesn't want to see you as mum and dad (yet)?

Whether you will become mum and dad to him over time will depend on whether you meet his needs over time. Not on a piece of paper.

yes its a mess, you have all been massively let down.

I think waitingfornews has some good points. It could potentially still work, but it will probably mean reframing your expectations of parenthood.
The story of a friend of mine share some similarities, an older child, ambivilant about adoption, siblings in FC who found it hard to let go. He didnt call her mum for several years. They are settled, happy enough but its not what she expected it to like.

I suppose the key questions for me are
how far are you prepared to compromise on your vision of family life
how would you feel if he wasnt there

No easy answer to any of this, sending hugs

You’ve had a very hard time here and agencies haven’t helped.

I would say though he’s very young, how does he understand adoption and what that means in terms of him and his future. The legality of adoption is something hard for many adults to understand much less young children dealing with all the trauma and loss they’ve experienced.

Would you disrupt the placement if you didn’t formalise the adoption or would you continue under a permanent foster placement? Does he think that if he’s not adopted he’ll return to his birth family - which wouldn’t be the case. Or does he fear that adoption will mean the loss of contact with his siblings? These are things you can explore with him.

In terms of decision making, if this was a serious health condition would you leave the choice of treatment up to him, or would you as parents listen to his views and then make the best decision for him even if that wasn’t what he wanted? The reason I ask is that you seem to be basing your decision purely on what he wants, we don’t leave life changing decisions to children, we listen and make the best choice in their interests. At 7 I wouldn’t expect him to decide about being placed with siblings, or whether he wanted to be adopted. I expect him to have the situation explained to him, and to have been asked his view but the decision making rests elsewhere - it’s too much responsibility to place on a child.

He may not want a new family out of loyalty to his own family, or because siblings don’t have a “new” family if they have remained in care, his understanding of what it means to be a family may be skewed by previous experiences, he may also be very scared of being part of a family given his first family wasn’t a safe place for him and then broke down. The reality is you’re caring for him, loving him and parenting him which makes you “family” regardless of legal status, how does he see his relationship with you and your partner?

It’s very difficult to know what to do for the best. What are social work saying?

Is he having sibling contact? It seems literally barbaric to have separated a 7 year old from his siblings.

@Wannakisstheteacher

Decisions to separare children are not taken lightly, its been badly handled in this case, but the reasons why children are separated are usually very complex.
My son is one of 5, none of them live with a sibling, sadly its not that unusual but children can not always be kept together

It sounds as if you have all been let down very badly by the agencies involved. What does your social worker say now?
I agree with Jellycat, there seems to be a lot of responsibility/power being given intentionally or otherwise on what is still a very young child. My eldest was 8 when she was placed in my care and her awareness complicated and in many ways made worse what was already a awful situation. It was a different situation in that she was placed under a SGO, but she needed me to take over completely for many years and underwent years of therapy to help her deal with everything.
Is there any sibling contact at all?
Would you consider a permanent foster arrangement rather than adoption necessarily, that might be a better 'fit' for you all?

You have all been let down- especially your little boy. I wonder if you're feeling grief for the family you'd envisaged- being a mum, having a son- and his rejection of that, the worry that you'll never get there, that hurts. That's hard. You didn't sign up for (and I bet aren't paid like!) long term fostering. You signed up to be mum and dad, I'm not surprised you're struggling, and have lots of emotions.

Have the social workers not commented that you haven't applied for the AO? You don't have to. What're you thinking- remaining as foster carers, or disruption? I think you all, possibly together, and individually, need space to talk out the complex feelings here, do you have, could you have, therapy set up via the social worker?

I'm not sure a child is ever 'ready for adoption'- adoption is a complex thing, it comes with huge loss, and big feelings, I don't know if any child is ever 'ready' for. But the actual adoption order for us made us ready- once the order was passed, and you're in it forever, then some old worries pass away, and new ones appear, but we started to feel like a 'real family'. Obviously, that might not be the case for everyone.

Runner31 I have no advice at the moment but I am thinking of all of you.

It all sounds very tough.

I just wanted to ask ... "He's our only child and we're such a disappointment to him." Has he said that you are disappointment to him and how does this platy out for all of you.

I am hoping for the best for all of you. Whatever that will be.

It sounds a terrible situation to be in.

I wonder whether a SGO would give permanence without the adoption? I think I would find it hard to adopt a child of that age who was so clear they didn't want to be adopted (our elder one was nearly 8 when placed, and 9 when we went to court, but was clear they wanted the adoption)

You have all been very badly let down. I'm so sorry.

But the bottom line is this; at the centre is a confused , misinformed 8 yr old who is not emotionally or socially equipped to be the decision-maker in his situation. He literally does not understand the social roles called family, parent, home, adoption, social worker which control his past, his present AND his future .

So, don't let his childish blind confusion blinker your adult decision making. He cannot take responsibility for deciding whether to live with you.

All children (not just foster/adopted) think and (these days) openly say their parents are a bit of a disappointment on many counts, btw. It's only when they become adults they recognise the duffers were sometimes quite good at some bits of parenting.

 Don't make the mistake of thinking that because you haven't been supported and helped , DS's  issues are   because you are failing as parents .      It sounds to me as if you're doing extraordinarily well  DESPITE the lack of support.

I am so sorry to hear you're still struggling, Runner. I think

I wonder if this can be boiled down to:

He cannot take responsibility for deciding whether to live with you.

And also Ted's two questions:

how far are you prepared to compromise on your vision of family life
how would you feel if he wasnt there

I think for the time being you need to shift your analysis/thinking to your own feelings and what you feel you are able to cope with/offer, probably with the support of a counsellor. Once you pin that down, you'll be able to make a decision about what to do next. It's not unkind to focus on yourself - the alternative is a situation where you may think focusing on his reactions is also focusing on his needs. But in fact it results in putting him at the centre of the responsibility for your decision making too. I am sure you mean well and this is not the intention.

It may FEEL selfish to say, I'm going spend my resources (time and money) addressing my own needs. But that isn't the case. Because as the adult you need to be fighting fit to make the best call here.

Sorry for not replying to comments, I will try and reply to some of the points....
He has actually said to us he's dissapointed with us as a family. It's really complicated but his psychologist did say that his strong attachment to siblings means he is very likely never going to settle or attach to us because to him, she believes that would mean rejecting his birth family. We feel removing the pressure of adoption will give him a chance to settle without feeling he is rejecting them.
I have to stress he isn't making any decisions about his future but he regularly gives his opinion. He didn't have any (I'm not exaggerating, that has been confirmed) adoption prep, he was just told, this is your new mum and dad, you're going to live with them now.
We really gave up on a 'family' quite a few months ago. We're a different type of unit and we have now moved to organising our set up as permanent foster carers. As a social chameleon he is stuck in trying to perform for us as the perfect son and his new name label and we really believe we have to strip all that back or he will explode. All though to be fair, we're expecting explosions soon anyway.
He is incredibly kind and seriously messed up. He hates himself and desperately misses his siblings. There are good reasons he can't live with some of them but opportunities for him to live with others have been missed and it is heartbreaking. It makes it hard to explain to him why they aren't together.