In adoption training there’s this notion of “claiming”. You want to show your child, from day one, that they are your child now, and you are their parent. They are your child just as much as their friend is their biological parents’ child. This is meant to help the child feel that the adoption is […]
I Love You
Do you ever wonder if your child will ever say “I love you” to you, or ever hug you back? It is still really early days, I know. Less than three months in. still, I wish she would. Every time I think about it, I end up feeling bad. “You’re not in this for yourself”, […]
Memory Pancakes
Saturday morning, I’m having a little chat with D while making her breakfast. We talk about the adoption order again – there’s still time before we go through it but we’re mentioning it every now and again. I explain that after it’s all finalised, her last name will change to our last name. “But what […]
Somewhere Out There
One of the things we need to learn to live with is the romanticising of birth parents by our daughter. You sometimes ache to just tell her everything you know, but obviously don’t. We struggle with the fact that even at final contact they put themselves first and said some manipulative things to her that […]
“When Can I Go Back?”
Throughout the adoption process, we kept hearing about the “honeymoon period” that families usually experience shortly after little one has moved in. This essentially means that neither parents nor child know each other very well, so everyone are trying to be on their best behaviour to make the best impression. For the child there is […]
Hand in Hand 