windfalls
June 16, 2020 15:55
Hi Bonnie,
Excellent advice, as usual, from Safia. I think counselling in your situation is an absolute must because I think you really need to explore your own childhood experiences and this will be absolutely crucial if you do go onto adopt. Adopted children are all affected, to some degree or another, by their childhood experiences eg abuse/neglect and by genetic factors and so their behaviour can be very challenging at times (to say the least). You and indeed social services, will want to be sure that this does not trigger something in you or re-traumatise you, which could affect your ability to deal with that type of behaviour. Also exploring why you want to adopt is also a good idea - eg is it because you feel the need to somehow "save" a child from going through what you went through?
Please also bear in mind that parenting an adopted child is very very hard and is nothing like parenting a securely attached birth child ( and I have both). So both you and your husband really need to be on the same page on this - you both need to be 110% committed to it because it can put enormous stress and strain on a marriage. Also if you do decided to have both birth and adopted children then my advice would be to have your birth children first, have a big age gap and then adopt. This is because the needs of an adopted child can be so extreme that you may find it impossible to have any more children.
best wishesxxx
windfalls
June 17, 2020 21:50
Hi Bonnie,
safia gave me the name of a lady called Esther Ina-Egbe who might be of help to you. If you look on the adopters board under the subject "Life story work" i asked for recommendations for life story work for my AD - safia has kindly put the link to this lady there (sorry but my tech skills are not that great and so i could not post the link here). If Esther cannot help because she is not in your area then she may be able to help with other recommendations. My only other suggestion would be to go through your GP.
best wishes xx