Supporting You Throughout Adoption
Things have been quiet on the blog since the start of the year… as well as running AdoptResources, I’ve recently been appointed to a new post so we’re juggling and managing lots of things at home and at work, and settling into our new routine.
I’m busy hatching plans and working on new things to offer in 2012, not least some work-life balance/survival tips! Let me know what you’d like to see more of…
Catch up soon 
The festive season can be a magical time but sometimes the expectations and excitement can be hard to manage, especially for children who find managing emotions difficult at the best of times.
Here are a few things that can help…
Essentially, it’s all about understanding the potential triggers and things going on behind the scenes, and finding ways to manage expectations and feelings.
Best wishes for a fun time over the festive season
Leave a comment with your tips for the holidays…
Following on from the success of our ebook Boosting Self Esteem in Adoption, Naomi Richards, The Kid’s Coach, and I have joined forces again to bring you… “Dealing with Anger in Adoption”.
In the ebook we look at why anger can be an issue for some adopted children, how we as parents can work with our child to make sense of anger, and valuable strategies for dealing with anger. We’ve also included suggestions for activities that will help boost your child’s emotional understanding in the longer term.
You can download Dealing with Anger in Adoption for FREE until 10th November 2011 (from 11th November cost per individual download will be £2.50 and for agency download for distribution £10)
Although written from the perspective of adoption, this ebook will also be helpful for foster carers.
When you’re thinking about adoption it can often be difficult to know where to start and how the process works. Aside from all the practical steps to find out about, the emotional aspects of getting to this stage and imagining yourself as a parent through adoption can be difficult to get your head around.
There are a lot of myths around about adoption – who can adopt, how old children are when they are placed with a family etc etc. It’s important not to be influenced by out of date or incorrect information.
Here are some tips to help get you started…
Making the decision to adopt is something unique to you and your situation. For some, it can be a relatively straightforward or even easy decision to make, for others it can mean leaving behind hopes and dreams of giving birth to your baby. It’s important to recognise any loss or grief and again give yourself time before taking the next steps.
Other resources
Is Adoption for Me? is a free report with a bit more info that you can download here
National Adoption Week in the UK and National Adoption Month in the US have great information pages that you can access all year round.
Like last year, I have been amazed at the generosity of people willing to share their view of adoption for this year’s Blogging Carnival. There are accounts of what it’s like to be adopted and what it’s like to adopt.
Being adopted… I’m fascinated by family likeness and resemblance and by issues around identity and birth family. I love reading about adoption from the perspective of someone who is adopted. I suppose it’s part of my adoption jigsaw and it helps me when I try to figure out how to respond to questions from my kids and how to deal with contact. Jo’s post Who am I anyway and Confessions of a single mum’s posts about growing up knowing you’re adopted help build up a picture of what it’s like to be adopted. I liked this quote from Jo:
“Adoption is a hugely complex issue and the way people respond to it cannot be summed up in one neat sentence.”
Adopting… Jennifer at Lions Whiskers gives a lovely account of meeting her daughter for the first time and about courage and taking that step towards each other and a new family life.
Last year Tami wrote about the waiting stage in adoption-which proved to be very lengthy in her case. This year, Tami’s post has some fab at home yoga tips for new mamas! Taking care of ourselves emotionally and physically is important no matter what stage we’re at in the process so at home yoga is maybe something we should all have a think about.
As parents in adoption, we all come into the process wanting to do the best for children who have not had the best start in life and sometimes it can be difficult to be the parent we wanted to be. Nicola at Braveheart Adoption wrote a great post To judge or not to judge on finding our way as parents… It took me a while to feel like a real mum and my post for the carnival is Being a Mum…
I enjoyed reading the posts and hope you do too – a massive thanks to everyone who contributed.
Leave a comment or send me a link if you’ve got anything you’d like to add.
PS
Jo has a fab new site TheMeInside for anyone affected by adoption
Confessions of a single mum has grouped her adoption posts here – lots on search and reunion that I can’t do justice to in this post.
Related posts
Adoption Stories
Last year I hosted a blogging carnival for National Adoption Week and was amazed at the response. I’m hosting one again this year and would love to hear from anyone who’d like to submit a post related to adoption.
I’m looking for posts from all perspectives in adoption – adoptee, adoptive parent, birth parent, prospective adopter, relative through adoption, practitioner… and from all viewpoints-good/bad/indifferent…
If you’d like to contribute, email details of your post to fiona@adoptresources.co.uk by October 28th. You don’t have to write a post specifically for the carnival. You don’t even have to have your own blog and if you’d like to submit something but don’t want to post it on your usual blog, email me the post and I can include it as a guest blog.
Looking forward to hearing from you…
Related posts
Adoption stories
Adoption Blog carnival
Be my guest
New figures on the number of adoptions in England and Wales are reported in the media today with the general message that there needs to be more adoptions and the process needs to be speeded up.
I’m always wary of these calls to action. Adoption figures can be related in so many emotive ways… “languishing in care” or the contrast “forced adoption… child snatchers”, leading to calls to increase or decrease the numbers of adoptions.
Focussing solely on numbers means you miss the factors that create those numbers. More exploration of the figures is needed to see where the bottlenecks are and what part of the process can be improved to address these.
There are faults with the adoption process and care system and these need to be addressed by improving systems and processes and offering the right support to professionals and families. But a rush to change everything and speed things up could lead to important steps being missed.
Myths about who can and can’t adopt need to be debunked and the process of adoption demystified.
Most importantly for me, the support of families and children is paramount. The ongoing impact of early abuse and neglect on children who go on to adoption is not given the same recognition as that of the looked after child, with some families opting for a long term foster care arrangement rather than adoption so that they don’t lose specialist services for their child.
Regardless of the numbers, the end result of all these processes should be that a child is living in the family setting that is best for them and that they are given the best chance to thrive.
Related posts
It’s not about the numbers
The title of this post didn’t mean much to me until last week when I listened to a presentation from Laura Steckley at a Scottish Attachment in Action conference. Laura talked about the concept of containment and how it relates to the regulation of emotions from early infancy and beyond…
Containment in this context describes the process where an infant seeks out emotional regulation from their carer by projecting their unmanageable feelings to their carer to manage. The carer absorbs the feelings and reflects them back in a more manageable form. It is an important part of the infant, caregiver relationship and links closely with the attachment process.
I really liked this way of thinking about emotional regulation, especially in adoption and fostering where children might not have had much emotional containtment in their early years and could still be projecting what’s unmanageable for them and chucking it your way to process. It helps make sense of those situations where ‘emotions run high’...
Another important point that was made is that carers can become ‘uncontained’ in trying to contain the emotions of children in their care…
All of this got me thinking about ‘containment for containers’. For practitioners that can be in the form of professional supervision, for parents and carers it might be one-to-one support, a chat with a social worker, support groups, online forums, friends and family, or a book and a cup of tea. Whatever works for you, it’s important to recognise that you’ll need to find ways to help you feel supported and ready to deal with whatever emotions might be thrown at you.
On a professional level, I have regular supervision, and on a personal level I rely on my network of friends and family, and lots and lots of tea… What works for you?
I listened to a feature on packed lunches vs school lunches on the radio this morning. I’ve started off this school year with packed lunches for everyone – in previous year’s my initial enthusiasm for packed lunches has been replaced with the convenience of what my kids like to call a ‘pay lunch’.
What’s your preference? I can see the benefits of both – the school lunches can offer a hot and healthy alternative, but they can also present children with choices they’re not ready to make. On the other hand, packed lunches can contain carefully selected healthy options, but if you’re anything like me, the repertoire of offerings can get a bit boring.
Nutrition is so important both in terms of long term health and wellbeing and also on a day to day basis to keep energy levels matched with the physical and mental requirements of the school day. Trying to get the right balance can be a struggle some days, especially if there are any food fads on the go!
I’m going to stick with the packed lunches for now and throw in the odd ‘pay lunch’ for a bit of variety. What do you like about packed lunches or school lunches? Do you have any tips on keeping lunch boxes healthy and interesting?
Related posts
If you’re looking for ideas, Netmums have a good feature on lunchbox ideas.
We learn about emotions from our earliest interactions as babies with our parents and carers. For lots of children who have experienced early trauma or neglect, understanding and expressing their own emotions and reading others’ facial expressions can be difficult.
Not knowing how you feel, how to say how you feel or how to work out how others feel leads to misunderstandings in lots of areas including at home, with friends and at school.
We used to play a game when the kids were younger to help with naming and understanding emotions and facial expressions. It’s really easy – you just need a mirror, you and your child…
Step 1 name an emotion – happy/excited/sad/angry etc
Step 2 both look into the mirror and make the face!
Step 3 back to step 1, taking it in turns to name the emotion…
Dead easy and lots of fun. I still do it with the kids now that they are older – we don’t need the mirror, we just make faces at each other!
Other things that can help are naming emotions for your child… ‘it seems to me like you’re angry about that…’, it helps them name what they are feeling and build their vocabulary of emotions.
What things have you found help make sense of emotions?
This post was inspired by Misreading Facial Expressions written by my friend, Naomi Richards aka The Kids’ Coach
Related posts:
Noticing
