AIBU to think if this is a genuine reason to not adopt....

[Janoschi]

.... then really you'd be a shit parent?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2140586/Scandal-babies-parents-wont-adopt-theyre-called-Chrystal-Chardonnay.html

I mean, SURELY you can nickname anything to make it bearable? Chardonnay could be Charlie, or Donnie...

I think the openness should be optional, not compulsory.

hmm. daily mail tripe.

however some swtuff to clarify. birth names are very meaningful. i work with a yp whose adoption broke down. he changed his name back to his birth name - i dont blame him - what the name was is irrespective.

i have an adult friend with an ordinary name creatively spelled. her adoptive parents didnt change it and she wears it like a badge of individuality - she is actually quite snobby!

remember chanelle hayes is adopted - no name change there either by the looks

re the contact post adpotion. i work with a yp whose siblingis being adpoted at present (daft name but thats an aside) my yp is a teenager and wants to retain contact with their sibling they helped to raise. no one has mentioned sibling contact as far as i can see yet - its not just parents. parents who cant manage never have just one kid :-( my yp deserves contact and its important for the adoptee to know their real family too. in the end though its usually the psychologists report for court which determines contact/letterbox contact but this can be overruled by the adotpive parents anyway. however siblings can get section 8 orders if they are not a risk and in a lot of cases so they should!

this articel really is shite though. wrt the rest of my case load i dont have any daft names - people who name their children john and emily arnt immune from child abuse!

I'm adopted, My new parents changed my name, I always used the new name, hate the other name. I had no contact with birth family as a child and still have no urge to. My adoptive parents are amazing people who have done an amazing job, why would I want to meet other people who i don't know and to whom I owe nothing.
I strongly believe that SW insistence on contact with birth families is a really bad idea- let the child decide if they want contact or not when they are old enough to make a decision. And you want to feel part of your new family, not to stick out like a sore thumb with a bloody stupid name that sounds like a Labrador. Why can't SW give the adoption a decent chance to work and let the kids truly belong to their new family, like I do. In fact My dd did something really advance the other day, and my uncle joked, " are you sure she's not adopted, " I pointed out that it was me that's adopted and he said, " Oh yeah you are- I'd forgotten about that", and laughed about it. That is real belonging!

SW insistence

Once again i would like to point out that it isn't SW's it is written into the children Act 1989. It isn't SW's that decide contact it is the court and the plan post removal from the birth family is constructed by numerous professionals.

Whipping- i brought up siblings.

There seems to be a misconception that a SW wrote that article, it was a member of an adoption panel, who isn't a SW.

This is a bullshit article. As if the name is going to be the main thing you think about when you've waited years to be given a child.
When my mum and dad adopted my brother they actually did change his name, but only very gradually once he was settled into our home, and he was only six months old. He still has the birth name as a middle name, but my mum had always had this lovely name she wanted to give her child if it was a boy, and it seemed silly not to. He really suits his name now. My mum changed it by calling him Birth Name-Adopted Name all the time and eventually just switching the order.
To be honest I don't think my mum would have coped very well with open adoptions, and I wouldn't want it for myself either. My mum is my mum.

Adoption is just so hard, I am always very impressed by the people I know who have done it.

I am ashamed to say that we looked into adoption before having our children and it really was just so hard. I understand why it needs to be difficult but we just couldn't bring ourselves to sign up.

So complicated.

Sounds like rubbish as you can change the name on adoption, and most names can be changed to something similar that sounds more normal eg Chardonnay could by Dony or Charlie, Champayne could be Penny etc, and the mis-spellings totally irrelevant as they can be "corrected" on adoption unless children over 5 and have started school. Smaller children (under 2) can have name changed, and even older children can have new nickname - most kids have various nicknames that come and go over time.

My friend adopted a baby aged 9 months, and kept the given name (which was something totally normal/neutral) as the middle name but called him something totally different.

However I understand the concern about adopting a child with ongoing meetings with birth parents.

I read some of this thread, but my eyes are really aching/headache so have not managed to read all of it.

I was just wondering, would it be possible to adopt the child, but to call her the name you prefer. Then have it legally changed?

I just googled it, for my area, you can't do it if there is a court order or legal agreement that stops you from changing the childs name.

I have friends that adopted 2 siblings. And yes their names fall into this territory plus 10. The children still go by their birth names but I Imagine nearly everyone raises an eyebrow when hearing the children's names for the first time, they are beautiful children of course. That's why this article struck a chord.

Ah see I had no idea that it depended on area/council/whatever. It was really very easy to change my brother's name.

What a horrible piece of journalism.

We looked into adoption too. I really wanted to go that route but our jobs drag us all over the place at a moment's notice and at the meeting we attended, they were saying prospective adopters needed to be stable for several years.

I was absolutely gutted. DD came along and I love her to bits, but every now and then I think about it and wonder which little kid we let down. Is that a bit daft?

No, I think the same Janoschi my boys have a great life, they have two parents who adore them, all of their physical needs met easily, a lovely home, safety and security and every advantage there is to have really, and it would have been awesome to have given that to someone who got dealt a shit hand originally.

But like you we move around the world so that was an automatic mark against us, I was very overweight when we first started our family so that was another. All in all it was just easier to make our own babies.

I also would have struggled deeply to having a court order or something where I had to expose my children to people I thought were unsuitable, but then I understand that that is what can be best for the kids as well.

As I said, so so complicated.

I think there may well be prospective parents who are put off by the name: basically, naive people for whom this is their first confrontation with the fact that their adopted child won't come with a clean slate and they won't be able to pretend their earlier life didn't happen. But then they are the kind of people who wouldn't have lasted 5 minutes of the adoption process- and a good thing too. Not everybody who could adopt should adopt.

I think this is typical DM shit really! Children aren't cats! They should keep their names, if appropriate and as for the child shouldn't be named after a mental health worker, that's pretty insulting really. That is a reflection on how people with mental health problems are treated. My sister has mental health problems and had a child, Social Services wanted to adopt him at birth, my father overheard their plans as they walked back to the car (lurking behind wall) and so my mother stepped in before things went pear shaped and we kept him. At least he knows his mother. The mental health worker could have done so much for the mother, no one would bat an eyelid if the child was called after a midwife.

Even if the 'child' to be adopted is a baby and thus does come with a 'clean slate', as such, they will mostly have sibling contact, it is very rare that a baby would be placed early enough tomake the change, unless other children have been removed.

When i have handled cases were the baby is almost guareenteed to go into the adoption system i have thought on hearing the name chosen (one bm wanted to call what was to be her last baby after the breed of dogs that she bred).

I have thought that they shouldn't be allowed, but how you would get round that without carring out discriminatory practice, would be a minefield.

My name was changed when I was adopted. My name was the same as my adopted sister. So, my parents couldn't really have two children named the same lol.
Names can be changed, this is a non story.

It sounds like nonsense to me. Adoptive parents, like any other parents, can change their child's name if they want to. Friends of ours adopted a little girl and chose to keep her birth name (even though it wasn't one they would have chosen themselves, they felt it was the right thing to keep that 'gift' from her birth mother) but they could have changed it if they'd wanted to.

I can believe some prospective parents might be put off by a child having a 'difficult' background, but really that's something that anyone wanting to adopt has to come to terms with. It's rare that a child is in need of adoption, unless something has gone disastrously wrong or being very lacking in their family of origin.

Rubbish article. Typical DM snobbery.

Anyone who chooses to forgo adopting a child because they're named Chardonnay, or Krystal is going into adoption with the wrong motivation. Too many people see adoption as a directly corresponding replacement for giving birth to their own child. Adoption is not the same. Nor should it be.

When you adopt, you are rescuing a whole child from a blighted future as well as gaining a child of your own. The child already has a history, and whilst it is desirable to create distance between the present and future from that past, the past is still a part of that child. Open adoption is, in my opinion, a good thing, and I cannot understand the difficulty with allowing a couple of supervised visits a year with birth family providing we are not talking sexual or serious physical abuse.

In the programme about Social Services earlier this year, I was quite stunned to see how little opportunity was given to the birth parents to have anything to do with their children once they were adopted. I thought it was a travesty.

I agree fabulous darling, my sister is lovely but wasn't capable due to her mental health. She happily watched my nephew grow up but not with her (with me) My nephew is in his twenties now and somedays has two dinners, one at his mums and one at his grannies. the cheeky tyke

I know a little boy who was called Jayedinn. The adoptive parents changed his name legally to James but just call him Jay.