can anyone offer advice?

[ritarose]

My dh and I have been considering adoption for a few weeks now; we have a bc, dd aged 7.
I have been looking at adoption sites and understand that even if we are able to get through the likely 2 year process things may not be smooth running.
Due to our own circumstances, which I don't really want to go into, we are not able to care for a child with a disability or very physically active child.
We are very happy and feel that we have a lot to offer a child (have varying degrees of experince of working with children with serious attachment disorders)as well as a fantastic family life. Dd is very in favour and has some reasonable expectations.
What I'm concerned about is the likelyhood of being matched with a child with serious problems, (like the ones the children I worked with had I guess) am not meaning to sound heartless but know we couldn't manage as a family with an extremley controlling, quite seriously physically abusive child. I think better not to go ahead than be yet another let down to a child.
I expect any adopted child to have quite serious issues that require grit, stability and love to address, but I'm apprehensive that we might bight off more than we could chew; how do you make sure that this won't happen, or is it a gamble?
Are we being deluded in even considering adoption as an idea?
Thank you to anyone who has read this far....

Best idea is to get in touch with an adoption agency and ask - they will probably invite you to an open evening - so you can just talk with other prospective adopters (you'll probably find all of them have similar worries).

Good for you for considering it - I contacted some agencies before we conceived naturally and we had some restrictions due to our house - put simply, we could only take one child, we could not take a child who had physical disabilities because we live in a higgledy piggedly house with uneven levels etc in the middle of no-where miles from medical support. They didn't bat an eyelid at any of this.

Contact your local authority and they will send you a pack.

You have absolutly no need to justify (to us) yourselves for not wanting to adopt a disabled child.

IMO it would be much better for all involved if everyone was as honest in the beginning.

The process is long and you will pretty soon know if adoption is for you or not. All the children will have suffered trauma but not all are disturbed.

At the end of this gruelling journey you will be put forward for matching with a child. If you are unhappy with any match, for any reason, you are able to put a halt to the process.

We tend to only see the extreams of adoption - the perfect fantasy or the horrible tragedy. There are lots of points inbetween

I use adoption sites and they can be brilliant for support but people often post on them when they are having difficulties. You can get an alarming view of adoption from them sometimes.

Good luck.

bight?? bite
Thank you, your posts are heartening.

a short answer to your long and heart felt post - no, there is no way of ensuring that you dont end up with a child with RAD or similar. it sounds like you know quite a bit about attachment issues, probably far more than your average adoption SW.

the best advice i can give is to look at the known risk factors and eliminate/ reduce as many as you can.this isn't easy as you often have no knowledge of things such as history of mental health problems and pre natal drug/alcohol misuse. so it always is a gamble, with pretty poor odds.you are not deluded, just realistic.

it also depends on supply/demand factors, like where you live in the country, your age, work status and ethnicity.

i think the rule of thumb is that about 20% of children by age 7-8 have serious issues, 60% less serious and 20% seem relatively unscathed. This is for baby/toddler adoption and excludes the "normal" adoption issues.

for older school age children the prognosis is much much poorer. i dont know of many which which work out in the long term .(this is for adoptions over the last 20 years or so, not those in the 1960 and 70s and not relative adoption)

IMO it really boils down to how desperate you are. if you are not really really desperate to add to your family then i woudl say don't adopt. your DD will probably be 9 or 10 anyway and you will be moving on to a different phase of your lives

sorry i cant be more positive but you seem to be looking for an honest opinion

Thanks KristinaM you are right, I was seeking an honest opinion. I think your answer addresses my concerns. We are pretty keen to expand our family but I don't want this to be at the cost of the happy family that we are.
I have read your posts before and value your opinion; would you recommend going along to an introduction evening and other posters comments that we could halt things (presuming we get anywhere with assessment process). This is like a niggly tooth that I can't leave alone.

do you mind if I ask - why are you thinking of adoption? and how have your views been shaped by your work experience with children with attachment issues?

Why? Well I can't have any more naturally. I think if I don't have any more it will be a constant regret. (This feels selfesh but I know that is just how it is, maybe I have to learn to live with it; no one has everything). I would ideally very much like dd not to be an only (don't flame me - if she is she is and she will have a grand life, I'd just rather not if possible).
Work - well, very mixed feelings, some children I have worked with I believe (at that moment in time anyway) could not successfully be looked after in any family environment - very harsh, but I believe true.
Other children that I have worked with - I think yes, I could care for, indeed if honest regretful that I couldn't.
I do often feel stuck in my job in that to make a real difference to a childs life you need to be able to stick with them; they need soemone/somepoeple that won't give up, and no paid position will grant that role.
We are a happy family and we function well, there feels like there is a lot of goodstuff to goaround, we have more than we need if that makes sense. Sometimes I worry that too much good stuff will go bad if there arn't anymore children.
Blimey therapy by internet, but this is useful because I need to make sure that we are thinking about this for the right reasons; dh very inagreement/ insupport in same line of work as me - but I know I am driving force.

I hope you will forgive my writing so directly. You are asking very direct and searching questions, which I believe, deserve honest answers.

First of all, I don?t think you are selfish at all ? I think we all become parent for selfish reasons ? adopters are no different! I also think its just fine to want a sibling for your DD. I guess you know that SS will expect you to have finished any assisted conception treatment that you plan to have? You don?t have to have had trementn for infertility - its fine to decide not to do that if that?s what you want. Its just SS will discuss this with you in some detail and will want confirmation from your GP.

You sound as if you know quite a lot about attachment issues and I think you are right - some children are simply so troubled that they need a therapeutic environment. I guess if you are thinking of caring for a child with RAD you need to be realistic about the resources you might need. E.g. one of you at home full time, appropriate specialist educational and psychological services nearby, excellent post placement support

I think you would also have to accept that you will never be ?normal? family again, in that you will be a family affected by a disability, albeit a psychological / behavioural / psychiatric one. Its one thing to work with damaged children 40 hours a week, with every weekend of and 35 days holiday a year. It?s to care for one 168 hours a week with 10 days respite a year.

I guess the biggest consideration is how adopting a troubled child will affect your DD?s life. So, for example, if your new child cant cope with family holidays or days out, there will be implication for your her Do you have family members who could care for your Dd while you remain at home with your other child? How would you feel about this? If your new child is excluded from school, will your Dd cope?

?I do often feel stuck in my job in that to make a real difference to a child?s life you need to be able to stick with them; they need soemone/somepoeple that won't give up, and no paid position will grant that role.?

I appreciate that you want to make a positive difference in a child?s life. But please be aware that children with RAD will form superficial attachments very quickly with therapists/ workers and not all or with great difficulty with parent figures, especially mothers. Parenting such a child will not be the same kind of relationship, only deeper and longer term. These children CAN relate to workers for the very reason that are superficial / short term/ only do it because they are paid/ not parents figures. That?s why traditional psychotherapy etc doesn?t work for them.

?We are a happy family and we function well, there feels like there is a lot of good stuff to goaround, we have more than we need if that makes sense. Sometimes I worry that too much good stuff will go bad if there arn't anymore children.?

I understand that motivation; of feeling blessed in some way by the good things you have and motivated to share that with another child. It?s a very common feeling in prospective adopters ? they are mostly good people . I think it can be hard to accept that what you consider to be ?good ? things are often not seen the same way by a child. It can feel very different and threatening and they can put a lot of energy into changing things to make them more familiar. So if they are used to chaos, lack of routine, not attending school, arguing, adults fighting, police and social workers around etc they will seek to re create that in your home

I suspect that you are prepared to adopt a troubled and disturbed child, who has known loss, neglect, chaos and abuse. You are hoping that when you take them into your loving functional family they will change to be like you. In fact they are hoping (unconsciously of course) that the opposite will occur ? that your family will become like their own.

You said that you are thinking about your reasons for doing this. I am not worried that you will do it for the ? wrong? reasons ? I am worried that your hopes and expectations will not be fulfilled and your family life will be altered in ways that you do not want.

I would not normally be so blunt, but I sense that you are asking searching questions of yourself here and i want to honour that

thank you for your very thoughtful reply you have given me a lot to think about.
I am not really sure that we could or would really want to care for a child with RAD, and the chances of avoiding this are slim it seems, what I think I was hoping for was an answer wherby it would seem that this was possible, but the chances of RAD/type behaviour presenting in an adoptive child seem high and thus probably not a gamble that is worth taking.
I have been talking to others too but it has been very useful to hear your views as they are are impartial to me and my circumstances, friends don't want to point out serious pitfalls when they know how much you want to have another child, sometimes I think we must count our blessings; thankyou.

i dont know exactly what the odds are, only the very general figures that I quoted earlier. you will appreciate that long term follow up studies of adoptive families are very rare and fraught with difficulties.

as we have a general idea of the risk factors you can try to avoid these where known. so if you would be eligible to adopt a baby or toddler you could specify that you would only accept a match in certain circumstances. but that depends on other factors such as your location, family circumstances, age and ethnicity.

so if you are a black or mixed race family in your 30s with one of you at home full time then it might be possible for you to find a child to match your criteria, thus reducing the risk.

if you are a white middle class family in your 40s living in the SE of England then you will be lucky to find an agency to assess you for a baby or toddler, let alone one with a very low risk background

if you are affluent and live in the US you could privately adopt a new born, although there is a risk of the BM changing her mind

there are other countries abroad where residents can adopt young babies

if you have the money and are prepared for a very long wait ( about 5 years) you could consider adopting from abroad

however, if, as i think you were implying, you would be considering adopting an older child in the UK, then yes, the risk of attachment issues are high. the placements of school age children frequently disrupt

but if this is what you want them please go further down the journey. you have nothing to lose by contacting all the agencies which cover your area. go to open days and have frank discussions with them about the children they place and what they would consider approving you for.

i am sorry, i wish i could be more positive. i do have a heart for waiting children but i have also seen many marraiges break down and families implode because of the unsuitable placement of children

Thanks for your further comments KristinaM - no am not in States, nor do I have lots of money!

We were thinking of a preschool age child, possibly about four, for many reasons but significantly beacuse I could probably wangle a year off of work before needing a small amount of childcare but I imagine one can't be too prescriptive!!

I think that we will probably go to information sessions and see what happens, but I am not sure that this will transpire to be more than a pipe dream beacuse as you point out the risks are very great.

i would encourage you to contact ALL the adoption agencies that cover your area and not just your local authority. its fine to do this simultaneously, as many are very slow in responding to enquiries. typically, if you make contact tomorrow I would not expect them to start a home study until after the summer at the earliest.

often you have to go to an information meeting, then wait for a place on a preparation course, then wait for them to decide if they will assess you, then allocate you a SW

if you are clear about the type of child that you want then you will be able to ask how many children like this they have placed recently and how many families they have approved and waiting

if you are an employee you are entitled to adoption leave

We took a different route and wonder if you could do something similar?

We started by doing respite foster are (whilst still doing fertility treatment) and not necessarily expecting to adopt. Whilst doing this we got to know a special family of three children and in time they were looking for a new family and we decided to put ourselves forward and have now adopted them.

We are lucky as despite a very traumatic early life, all three are relatively unscathed and have made remarkable progress over the past year since they've been here permanently. They are now 9,7 &5, so most issues should be apparent by now. By spending numerous weekends together we were all able to decide that we were a good match for each other and it has worked well. We fostered several children and we didn't feel the same way about any of the others.

Not sure that helps. but it might be something to consider.

MBop

I just wanted to say consider adopting a siblings group preferable quite a bit younger than your dd. I know a family that were foster carers for 3 siblings and are now long term foster carers for them and the dc have absolute minimal contact with their parents.

Thanks for further replies; there is a lot to think about; we have started looking at agencies and are going to take a step at a time.
mummmyBop that is a great story it is lovely to hear that you have a happy family