A Mother Like Alex

[monstermansmum]

On Sky Wednesday night. Just letting you all know.

bet its on past my bedtime. Really want to watch this.

not got sky - grrr!

9pm Sky real lives I think NMC.

Not got sky either!! Bought the book though.

watched it and kept prodding dd to stay awake
amazing but I did think the birth families who stayed in touch were having their cake and eating it. And I did meet Alex at Hop Skip and Jump once in Bristol. They must of been down seeing the birth mum of what of the kids.

Very interesting- especially the comments at the end about Alex leading the way for the future. I wonder how she manages financially - I hope the local SS realise how lucky they are and support her properly.
NMC I hear your point but the whole point about open adoption is it is in the dcs best interest (it is the children who have their cake and eat it!).

I agree with needmorecoffe,felt that the Birth families were very serene and smug almost while Alex looked very care worn,even if she does love what she does.Also there might be parents who feel that this is an option for them,whereas I think the emotional price might be too high.It was interesting that one family in fact didnt want to sign their child over for adoption.Also,it would be very hard to disagree with anything Alex did,the depth of gratitude would be too much for me to bear,Id rather put up with the hardship.

Yes the family from Bristol who had given up child as a baby did seem very serene and the siblings really did have the best of both worlds (contact, love and fun with their much loved birth brother but had grown up in an otherwise average family). The family that seemed utterly destroyed were the couple who had struggled on till son (DS + undiagnosed autism) was age 10. I could not help thinking that if that couple had had support early on and the ASD Dxed earlier perhaps they may not have reached braking point.
Alex did seem pretty amazing - so knowledgable and organised - I thought she looked supprisingly young and well considering she was caring for 8-9 sn children/adults !!

The teenagers who seemed to adore their DS brother must wonder sometimes that if they had been born with DS they too would have been handed over.It leaves a bit of a nasty taste.

The advantage of adoption over fostering is permanance for the child ie to know where family and home is. The disadvantage is the financial side - adoptive parents are not paid!

I enjoyed this programme a lot. I thought Alex came across as very modest who just sees herself as a mum first and foremost and as a carer second.

I liked the fact that all the young people were portrayed in turn with a profile of their respective abilities, interests and areas of difficulty.

I thought the part where Alex described rocking up at the offices of SS with her most severely disabled child to get him the day services that he needed but then having to sit for 4hrs and eat a picnic lunch until somebody senior enough took her seriously, was both tragic and comic in equal measure. Tragic because she had obviously already been denied those vital services and comic because of the manner in which she had had to take the fight to SS in order to get what her child needed. It seems even somebody like Alex was not exempt from the vagaries of our wonderful social services.