Well it's been a long while for me to write something. In fact everything changed once Raina walked in permanently through our home. That's right Mummy has been penning my part of the blog. I have had no time to think, no space to think and I think that will be the pattern until Raina is about 4 years old or maybe if lucky January 2013 when she starts nursery. Our parents obviously made this child rearing thing look easy!
I mean adoption criteria aside there is a lot of playing with body excrements, repetition, dancing, building blocks, pretending to write or draw, chopping banana (eewwhhh), saying what you said you were doing or going to do over and over but also finding new ways of saying something you would have just stated straight up in previous life. All the jobs I have had in my life have always had to include a day never the same and now this one great permanent job can only work on the foundation of repetition and routine.
I am grateful that my job before Raina gave me opportunities to do parenting with clients and attending courses that not only helped me with my job but for life as a new parent. I think parenting courses should become compulsory for everyone. All that humans know to do in life is taught to us first and then we build on it. So our first call of reference for parenting our children is how we were parented but who is to say that it was the best parenting. One would not know or question it. There are many parenting courses out there but I recommend:
@ Family Links
@ Triple P (Positive Parenting Programme)
@ Incredible Years
Top up the parenting with the following if you ever get the chance:
@ Anger Management (Mike Fisher)
@ Solution Focus Brief Therapy (SfBT)
@ Ties and Trauma that Bind (Norma Hinds)
This parenting thing is tiring, no matter how much rest you take. Add adoption to it and you will never understand until you are there how huge an impact (the looking for an agency, prep group, home assessment, approval panel, searching and waiting, home visit by the potential child’s social worker, being linked, matching panel, shopping, DIY, making a DVD etc, waiting for introductions, introductions itself, being watched by social worker, foster carer, new child, first day at your home with foster carer in tow, final review, moving in) this process is before you have even become a forever family.
But it is still not real when the child moves in. You are still a puppet on a string and dancing to a fakish tune as the Local Authority, Foster Carer are still in your life due to Looked After Reviews and Looked After visits first weekly then monthly until you are granted to apply for an Adoption Order. This can not be for about 10 weeks after your child moves in. We are sure that Raina can sense it too but there is no room to manoeuvre and we have to be over protective and not completely relaxed. She is still someone else's child and we share parental responsibility with her birth parents and Local Authority. For example, the ends of her hair was very dry and split, I had to speak to her social worker first.
Don't get me wrong I wouldn't change the time we have spent (2 years) in finding our daughter for anything. It's been a learning curve with a long journey to come especially when she starts to understand how babies are made for that is when the meaning of adoption truly kicks in for the adopted. All we can do for now is talk about adoption in the terms she can repeat (tummy mummy, daddy live in Manchester Raina lives here etc) so that it becomes a natural part of her like always knowing she is a girl or that she loves peas.
Well I am off to the hairdressers this afternoon for the first time in a very long time and poor Raina is going to have to tag along wish us luck.
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