Advice for early preparations, and two questions!

[pinksky]

Hi there,

I was really pleased to find this forum - I didn't know there were any dedicated forums outside of specialised websites, so sorry in advance for the long post

My husband (35) and I (30) would like to adopt in the future. Can anyone think of things that we could do now to get us as prepared as possible? We have found out about volunteering as 'independent visitors' for children in LA care, and thought that would be a good start. Aside from reading as much as possible and getting more experience of children, is there anything else that might help?

At the moment there are two things that are worrying me. Firstly that we don't have or want biological children. Will this stand against us? We would love children, but we have never felt that we need to have our own biological children. It's quite hard to articulate this and I worry that it seems odd.
Secondly, we plan on moving the year after next, out of the city to one of the outlying villages. We'll do this to give us the space to have children, but I wondered if this might hold things up? It would be within 10 miles of our current home, but possibly in a different LA. It already feels like a long wait before we move and I would hate to think we wouldn't be considered for a few years after this - it would definitely effect where we move to.

Thanks so much in advance

Oh well I guessed right then didn't I - more insults and misinterpretations. I thought you sounded such a lovely person Kewcumber and was like many other moved to tears when I read your thread, but it just shows how wrong you can be.

Chegirl - I give up - OK. I am weary of saying that I understand the feelings that adoptors have, but object to what I see as a judgemental mode of expression. For whatever reason you are refusing to accept this is what I am saying. You are clearly very angry with me and best to end the matter here.

Kewcumber is lovely, by the way.

Nana - your replies make you sound like the worst sort of social worker. Rigid in thinking. You 'manage' conversations in a very obvious way. Like you been on a course or something.

I can only go on what I see on MNs.

BTW I am not clearly angry with you. The thought is laughable. I dont know you. I am objecting to your highhanded attitude and the way you assume we know nothing of life.

We dont need you to point out the obvious. We know. Some of us clearly more than you do. You seem very heavy on theory and light on the real thing.

How do you manage that after 25 years?

The mind boggles.

But then as long as you are sure you are right thats ok.

Shockers - I think our posts crossed, and at least you describe me as a "menopausal mother and not a menopausal MIL" so I reckon that's progress! I think that you are right in what you say about MNs coming together to vent etc and I have been amazed at the compassion that I have seen on some of these threads and the way in which complete strangers can reach out to each other. Maybe I should not have intervened with my "social worker" hat as by definition that places me in a different position from adoptors and clearly people have taken exception to the tone of my posts. Ah well we are all but lines of text on a computer screen. I do actually get lots of posters who tell me my posts have been very helpful and informative. SO you can't win 'em all.

Dandylioness - I'm sorry but I have NOT suggested that it is a fait accompli that all children who have been abused will go on to abuse their own children. This is clearly not the case as you know only too well. I said that the vast majority of parents who abuse their children will have suffered abuse themselves as children. This is not the same as saying that all children who have been abused will go on to abuse. Medics agree that the vast majority of lung cancer is caused by smoking, but this doesn't mean that all smokers will suffer lung cancer.

And yes my comment to kewcumber was a bit low, but then I'm human too you know though if I didn't feel OK about myself I would be beginning to doubt it by now!

Chegirl - what you think of me as a social worker matters not as I am secure in the knowledge that I have enjoyed a rewarding and successful career over 30 years and through all that time have maintained good relationships with colleagues and service users alike.

I do believe that I'm right in what I am saying on this thread but then again all of my accusers believe they are right to, so what's the difference? Don't bother to answer as I am pretty sure I already know the answer.

Can't help wondering where Pinksy has gone ..............

What worries me here, Nana, is that posters here, who are representative of your service user group, are telling you that they find your tone judgemental and lecturing. And you don't seem to be reflecting at all on why they feel this way, you are defensive, and call their comments insults. Ask yourself why people are responding to you in this manner. Could you change your tone?

They are telling you that they need to vent their feelings about abusive birth parents, that theory is one thing, but the reality when its a child you love is very different. Could you not try to listen and understand that difficulty and need? I know you say you understand, but it doesn't come accross in your words. Maybe sometimes you need to take off the social work hat, and respond to people as humans, not theories. You offer a lot of understanding towards parents who abuse, and seek to understand their motivations, but don't seem to be offering that same understanding to those who adopt. These people are humans, not saints, and are telling you about the reality of their situations. A lecture, which is how you are being percieved, is not helpful.

I wonder if this is how you speak to your service users, and whether they feel the same way as posters here have done? How easy would it be for the people you meet professionally to challenge you about this? I would want to know if that's how I came accross, because if people feel this way about you, they will not listen to a word you say, and all your knowledge and experience will go to waste.

I hope that you will take this in the spirit it is intended, an honest critique of your communication, rather than an insult.

Dandylioness - OK I have to hold my hands up to the fact that I made the comment about generational abuse that you cut and posted. However I believe that I was engaging in hyperbole to try to illustrate my point and the comment was made in that context. However I do appreciate that it was misleading and would give rise to the notion that I do in fact believe that all children who have been abused become abusers, which of course I don't. I have known many people who have overcome their own disadvantaged and deprived childhoods and ensured that they did not make the same mistakes as their parents. SO my apologies for any offence I caused by that comment.

RE the "adopted" child issue - yes I stand by the fact that I should not have used that word. However the use of the word "own children" was just a shortand for "birth children" or as some adoptors say "homegrown children" I think this is nit picking.

Re your point about Shockers and the assessment. I think you are being a touch pedantic here. In my view, "casting doubt" on something does not imply that a positive recommendation would not be forthcoming. In my assessments I am often doubtful about certain issues that arise and this prompts a little further exploration to satisfy myself about whatever it is. Indeed assessors who never have doubts are a little worrying in my view.

I appreciate that no one on this thread has asked for my view as a social worker and I did "out" as one to the OP. I only mentioned it when someone told me that I had no idea about how birth parents abuse their children.

I think the fact that I am able to post with a knowledge SSD matters is often helpful because I have seen a lot of wholly inaccurate information and advice being given on some of these threads.

Anyway not sure why I am bothering to defend myself as by now I think I am likely to be held responsible for global poverty and the like.

I'm less interested in whether you think I'm lovely NanaN than in your response to my comments which you neatly avoided. Particularly I'd like to know why you have such a big issue with Hifi and I not knowing the ethnicity of our DC's.

I truly am baffled by why you think its such a big problem? More to the point DS will not know 100% either - do you think I should lie to him or hide the uncertainty and treat it as if its something to be ashamed of?

I have a lot of respect for all the social workers I have worked with, all of them have had something valuable to add and they have no idea that in fact I found most of them had a tendancy to lecture and condescend. I just decided that it goes with the territory in the same way that I tend to be rather officious in my role as finance director.

On a yahoo adoption group that I moderate we took a group decision not to allow social workers to join (I was specifically asked by one). All 70 plus members agreed that we wanted a place without social workers to be able to discuss what we wanted wihtout feeling our words were being measured and found wanting. Not one person dissented, not one. Every single member felt it was better to exclude social workers. I do see now that it was the right decision.

Adoptive paretns are judged for so long against much tougher criteria than any other parent, quite rightly in my opinion. But there is a point where we feel able to stand up and say "NO MORE". And that point it seems for most people it on an anonymous internet site.

So please, no more. You've had your say - we take on board that you disapprove of us voicing any opinions on birth parents that veer too far from what you consider acceptable, even if we all agree that we would never use such language to our DC's, nor in fact to anyone else.

In my experience adoptive parents form a cohesive and protective group because we bond over issues that few people ever have to deal with , not even social workers (hard though that seems for you to accept). I spent many years working with a homeless womens hostel but wouldn't dream of telling anyone homeless what I think they should or shouldn't feel or say because I learnt that working in the field and being homeless is very different, my job wasn't be be homeless my job was to use my skills to help them help themselves.

I wouldn't dream of being rude about DS's birth mother but thats because I think she did the best she could in the circumstances. However you won't find me being anything other than supportive of anyone's need to vent about their childs birth parents - I feel their pain and admire their ability to put that anger aside for the sake of their DC's.

So I can only say again - no more. You've made your point but we don't feel the need to toe your line. There is no where left to go with this argument except to call me unlovely a few more times perhaps and move on.

Grandhighpoohbear - no I don't take your post as an insult and yes I have to accept don't I people's perceptions of my posts but I think I have the same right to express my perceptions of their posts, do I not?

Please don't worry that I "speak like this" to the people with whom come into contact with via my work - somehow don't think I'd have managed 30 years in the job if that were the case.

Can I just say (as I have tried to do countless time on this thread) that I have spent a significant part of my working life championing the rights of foster carers and adoptors and re-assuring them that they are perfectly normal to have angry feelings towards the birth parents of their children. I have also explained how I have sought to explain to younger, inexperienced sws that foster carers and adoptors need to "sound off" about birth parents and have tried to encourage them to be more realistic in their expectations of foster carers and adoptors. I think anyone who knows me in RL would find it very ironic tbh that I am being told that I should be doing this, on an internet forum.

At the risk of repeating myself this whole controversy started because I was shocked at a derogatory term used about birth parents. Nothing more and nothing less.

Anyway this whole thing is becoming tedious and time to leave the thread methinks.

However the use of the word "own children" was just a shortand for "birth children" or as some adoptors say "homegrown children" I think this is nit picking

you really think its OK to use "own" instead of "birth" for a child that has only ever known one mother, only ever been held in the arms of one mother.

I'd be interested to know if you use that in the hearing of my DS how you are going to explain to him exactly whose he is if not mine.

Adoptive parents have the prerogative to call their children whatever they like - personally I call DS "mine" and nothing else - professionals in the field however I assume are expected to use the correct terminology.

I assume you didn;t feel the need here becasue it only an anonymous internet forum ... but then that applies to shockers too. So choose your side - are we allowed to use whatever language we like or not? Or are you allowed to say what you like but not us?

Kewcumber - think you've hit the nail on the head - no room for social workers on sites where adoptive parents are debating issues. In the same way there is no room for MILs on sites where DILs are voicing their grievances about their MILs.

I don't really understand why you have pitched yourself into this controversy and FWIW I know nothing of your situation (other than you adopted from overseas) and my comment about ethnicity was related to the fact that HIFi said that she did not know the ethnicity of her child and I assumed (maybe wrongly) that she had adopted via her la. in the Uk and the the ethnicity of the child (or at least the mother) would be known.

I think it quite ridiculous that you are asking me if you should lie to you child or treat it as something to be ashamed of. As I said I know nothing of your sitation nor do I want to.

Incidentally I commented on the thread above that I thought it was time I left the thread but this was before I read your post - they must have crossed. I WILL decide when I leave a thread thank you. You do not have the right to dictate to posters that they leave threads.

Oh lord - I was using the word "own" children to mean people who had their own birth children at the time they applied (and subsequently adopted) children. Please stop being ridiculous I am never going to see your child or have to explain anything and well you know it. I think you are just spoiling for a fight and so I am off the laptop to do something more constructive.

the ethnicity of the child (or at least the mother) would be known - but fairly obviously the father isn't or do you not think he counts?

I won't respond to your other comments.

Sorry - "no more" was my comment on the pointlessness of your repeating your point when we don't agree with you.

By all means keep on saying it.

Sorry ladies, I don't usually post in the adoption threads, but felt I had to say something on this one.
Nana - I have no experience of adoption or dealing with social workers. But I can see exactly why these ladies are offended. The tone of your posts is hectoring, sanctimonious, smug and didactic. What does it matter if they vent a little of their deepest feelings on here? Surely it is better for a mum to vent her frustrations on here than to bottle it all up? As numerous people have pointed out on numerous threads, DC pick up on emotional turmoil, whether anything is said or not. So surely if the mum is blowing off some steam on the internet that is a good thing? And as for being respectful to birth parents who, for whatever reason, had their children taken away, well I would find it incredibly hard. I don't usually post on these threads because I feel I have nothing constructive to add, nothing that would help the ladies who post here. If you can't be supportive, helpful and understanding maybe you should back off out of this topic? Just a thought.

Maybe it would be a good plan to get back to the poor OP's question?

I can't offer advice as [whispers] I am a social worker (in a different field)

But there are loads of experts here who can help.

What a fascinating thread! Without engaging in direct combat, or reviving it, I just want to comment on what has always intrigued me: the strange double message that adoptive parents get about their role in their child's life. Throughout prep and home study, it seems to me, you are told that adoption is incredibly hard, that the children are invariably very damaged, that you must expect to basically give up your quality of life without any expectation of being able to enjoy family life. All without any financial reward. And, of course, you are prepared to do this because that is what mothers do. Yet you are also told to not really consider yourself the child's mother - that 'adoption is parenting somebody else's child'.

Hell, I KNOW I will only be able to parent my adopted child with the love, passion and absolute commitment she needs and deserves if I see myself as 100% her mother. That doesn't mean I don't respect that she has a past, and a present with a birth mother somewhere else, and a future where she may be reunited with her birth family, and part of my job as her mum is to help her deal with and prepare for that.

I also know that, as a mother, I will want to rip the heads off anyone who ever hurts her. Including her birth parents. I am confident I can reconcile that with behaving appropriately because, again as her mum, I believe it is in her interests not to hear her birth mother disparaged. It's not rocket science: I'm against the death penalty but would be prepared to personally kill anyone that abused my child. That's motherhood for you - most of us can make sense of, and manage, these apparent contradictions.

The adoption system absolutely requires that there is a steady supply of prospective parents who are prepared to put in more than the average work of parenting while being told that they cannot expect the normal amount of social endorsement. It just strikes me as strange when social workers expect adoptive parents to think and feel like automatons out of a textbook - telling us that it is ok to feel angry, so long as we don't get judgemental and inappropriate. I truly believe, from my experience so far, that the system - and the individuals within it - need to develop a far deeper and more nuanced understanding of the human dynamics they are dealing with.

Hester... I think I love you.

"most of us can make sense of, and manage, these apparent contradictions"

I can't begin to articulate how much I personally appreciate what you have written, and it's all just common sense!

This is what I was talking about when I said a chord is struck.

I too have been following this thread with interest and have wanted to jump in several times along the way but resisted.

But I do want to say well done Hester, you are so right!

There are many mixed messages and opposing pieces of advice handed out in the adoption process, before, during and after placement.

In the end, as a parent, you just have to hold your own and move forward with the courage that you know your child/children best and knowing that you make your decisions holding their best interests at heart. Noone else can truely know what is best for your child. And, you know what? Sometimes we'll get it right and sometimes we will get it wrong. That's life.

now you see why can't I resist jumping in...

thoughtful post, hester

I love you too shockers