Sally Donovan's Blog, page 6

What it feels like to be an adopted child

Because i wasn’t cared for as a baby i find school difficult,lessons a lot harder and friendships harder to form.  The first day back at school is always the hardest because I’m used to relaxing and talking non-stop, I find R.S the hardest because we have to learn about the things I don’t believe in. I don’t believe god looks after children otherwise i wouldn’t be writing this and had to experience what i did, It could have been worse but I’m still affected by it. I was abused for 2 years but not as bad as the other children who were there longer i feel really sorry for what they are experiencing it must be really hard.   

I find friendships difficult because i don’t know what to talk about.  Other boys talk about violent games which i am not allowed because it makes me more aggressive towards other people.  I have played them before in front of my mum and she saw the slitting of throats and we got rid of it and my aggression improved.  I try to keep up with the latest football scores but i find it boring to watch.  Because i missed playing when i was younger Im just catching up and play instead of watching football like everyone else. It makes me calm when i play and i play in my room where no one can disturb me.

It makes me feel different and get special treatment at school which i don’t like having but i do like being different in a way because I’m not like everyone else.

It feels strange being with a adoptive family as they’re not your blood mum and dad.

Im glad I’m one on the lucky ones to have survived!

I get angry with Radio channels and posters (in my RS room) saying that ‘Neglected and abused children are more likely to commit crimes’  Which is in a way discriminatory. It isn’t our fault we were abused and neglected we had no choice as we were babies and couldn’t fight back. I will NEVER  meet my birth mum or dad because i would lash out and get in trouble.

When i was abused i got a scar on my face and my teeth bent when a metal pole was forced into my mouth all i can remember was there was a lot of blood. I now get teased for all sorts the names are wild like ‘rabbit’ ‘beaver’ loads more!

Having a bad past has made my life hell as I’m teased.

I feel stronger everyday of speaking out about me being adopted, in my second primary school i bring in my birth story book and told everyone i was adopted then the teasing stopped but we were about to leave for secondary school. I have a favourite T.A which i cannot name for privacy which understands everything and i can go to her with my problems most of the time.

In the future i dream of becoming a police man to help other people with problems. The life at home is amazing because comparing it against my birth home it is amazing, my mum is a special breed as she is funny and odd some times as i write she is sat next to me making and elastic band ball and my dad is funny as well but but can we grumpy when he has had a bad day at work so we give him love

This week is about finding homes for children who are ‘hard to place’, which i don’t like because   children who have been abused and neglected deserve to have safe and amazing families like mine.

35 Things I’ve Done Because of Adopting

As an adopter of two ‘harder to place’ children I would love to write, during National Adoption Week, about love hearts and happy endings but the truth is less marketable than that.  Parenting our children, loving them, has been the hardest, most brilliant, scariest, most wonderful thing I have ever done in my life.  If you think you may be up to the challenge of adopting children from local authority care then please make the first step and contact the adoption information gateway First4Adoption, or your local adoption charity or authority for information.

Parenting children who have suffered neglect and abuse is utterly life-changing. Here are 35 things that I’ve done as a result of adopting our brilliant children:

Become a mother
Met lots of very nice social workers
Learnt about brain development
Really understood what empathy is
Loved a cat called Ron
Been a school governor
Lost my temper over a broken biro
Been brave, taken risks
Met some really groovy people
Stumbled upon a writing career
Written a book, ‘No Matter What’
Been shortlisted for an award
Hugged a hoodie
Watched a Barbie film
Got really scared
Got nits
Got things into perspective
Changed my views; on parenting, on education, on lots of things
Made a website
Become a tweeter
Become a campaigner
Got nits
Apologised, a lot
Changed my measures of success
Made a bug hotel (not in my hair)
Made a salt dough tutankhamen
Got to know an awful lot about snails
Experienced anger I didn’t think possible
Experienced love I didn’t think possible
Found fortitude I never knew I had
Got nits
Become self-employed
Experienced the best and worst of myself
Taken some big leaps of faith
Really really got unconditional love.

 

A cat called Ron

Actually it is brain science

The Future: One Day at a Time

I have learnt not to look too far into the future.  One moment it looks sunny and bursting with promise, the next it looms like a cyclone threatening to sweep in gales and thrashing rains.  At the very moment I allow myself to bask in some relief that the trauma which stalks our family is starting to heal, something happens.  It is uncanny.  I dare to hope.  I jinx the future.  That’s what it feels like.

Heavier still is the feeling that all that prevents the cyclone from wrecking the future is my will and my energy.  I didn’t cause the trauma, I know that, but the trauma will play itself out unless I can continue to neutralise it bit by bit, therapeutic thought by therapeutic action.  There are no battalions of therapeutic warriors waiting in the wings to sweep across the battlefield and carry us all to victory.  It is me, holding a crappy umbrella.

Yesterday evening I was dealing with the slowly unravelling psychodrama which had started with a child taking a £20 note from my bag.  Half way through Act One I got the news that my Great Uncle had passed away.  I’d only met him a few times but we wrote to each other regularly.  He was my connection to a distant and complicated past.  The grief swallowed down, I continued with the delicate job of teasing out truth, holding back shame and nurturing emotional learning.  These are the times when the future is the most finely balanced and easily influenced, for good or ill.  If I pause to think about the responsibility for too long, the pressure can become overwhelming.

I pulled off a satisfactory conclusion to the psychodrama, I think.  It will be replayed again for sure, but next time it will be subtly different.  Different strategies will have to be employed, different lessons will have to be learnt.

The future is long, hard trek away from here.  For now I’ll take it one day at a time.  There may be the occasional breakdown along the way.

Innocence Lost

I wasn’t going to blog for this week’s ‘The Adoption Social’ theme ‘Loss’.  Debates in the media around loss and adoption have got rather clunky lately and are dominated by the impact of loss of birth family (for what greater loss is there than blood ties).  Adoption is coming to be equated with loss and I’m not sure where that leaves me and mine.  Frankly I’ve been feeling rather grumpy about it.

The loss that challenges our (adoptive) family every single day hasn’t been caused by the act of adoption itself but by the loss of innocence.  As a child, to know the fragility of life, to know invisibility, to have given up on being cared for and on being someone else’s number one consideration is the ultimate loss and it’s a game changer. In William Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence and Experience’ seventeenth century adult pre-occupations and beliefs stamp all over childhood.  Open any newspaper on any day for evidence of our century’s version of the loss of innocence.

No, for our family at least modern-day adoption isn’t the loss.  Adoption, if it done properly, is the repair: the careful and sometimes desperate process of reclaiming and nurturing what’s left of childhood.  It isn’t blind to blood and history (it can’t be) and it isn’t sacrificing childhood on the alter of blood and history either.

Nits

This piece didn’t quite make it into No Matter What, but you might like it.  It contains swearing.

I know I shouldn’t get lured in but I am tired and pissed off with my pissy life. The magazine entraps me with pictures of previously skinny women who have new curvy figures and wow everyone, don’t they look great!  There’s hope for me yet.  They are ‘glowing’ and ‘healthy’ and curves are marvellous because skinny is so last year. Except there is an undercurrent of patronising bitchiness about the piece.  Curves it seems are great on other (lesser) people.  Under each set of pictures is a diagram comparing the pre- and post-curve weights.  The curvy weight is way more than mine which makes me, at a size 12 one of nature’s giants.

Next, an actress has shrunk down from a gross size 10 to a superior size 6.  Although it must go unsaid she clearly looks more attractive in the ‘before’ pictures.  Nevertheless we are treated to a menu plan, so we have nothing (except willpower and a hired-wired tendency towards self-preservation) standing between our fat arses and the body of a pre-pubescent boy.  The diet consists of egg whites, grilled fish, lettuce and blueberry juice.  Lest this leave one feeling a little unsatisfied the occasional treat is permitted – four almonds.

Another page, another body story.  This body, belonging to a super A lister has an unusually high metabolism which enables her to eat anything she wants.  A grainy photograph of her scoffing a burger and fries in a downtown New York eatery rams the point home.  She eats the food of the common and yet maintains a constant weight of 8 stone. The only possible explanations are that she is very short (she isn’t) or is genetically superior to the rest of us.

The centre spread, a celebrity adoption story.  Six months on and the happy family aren’t on the brink of meltdown like we are, but flying across continents to spend time at their beach house.  The nanny carries the smallest child through the airport.  The parents, glistening with serenity, hold the hands of the older children.  They are all (apart from the nanny who is not blessed with a high metabolism) a picture of supreme gorgeousness despite the long flight.  Take that plebeians.

I look at the blank expressions of the children and wonder if they ever spit out ‘I fucking hate you, you’re not my real mum’ or ‘run off and die fat loser’.  Do they ever draw pictures in biro on their Armani chinos or refuse to wash?  And if there are bad days, do their parents ever feel tempted to spend the evenings wallowing in chocolate and watching Wife Swap? No, it appears they don’t.  They float above the masses like phantoms of unobtainable perfection reminding us why we can’t even manage three hours in a car on the M6 without looking and feeling like shit afterwards.

Overleaf are the ‘red carpet horrors’ where a cracked heel and a sweaty armpit serve to remind soap stars that they will never be permitted to forget their place in the celebrity pecking order.  I gaze at a picture of a bunion squeezed into a sparkly sandal, like a gorilla in a nightdress and something drops on to the page from above making a faint sound.  I pick up the speck on the pad of my index finger and look at it closely.  It has tiny legs.  It moves.  It dropped out of my hair. It’s a head louse.  A horrible, blood-sucking, egg laying, shitting head louse.

‘You just got owned.’

He gets off the school bus hands and face covered in ink, sure sign of a Bad Day.  Back home and an email from school, ‘blowing ink out of a biro’. I search for the pen amongst the crushed food at the bottom of the school bag.  Not only is there no pen, there is no pencil-case either.

I gather together a spare pencil, pen and ruler in a plastic bag.  He thanks me but the next morning it is left on the kitchen table.

This morning, Monday morning. ‘Shall we just make sure you’ve got what you need?’  In the pencil-case, now retrieved from school is a broken ruler, a broken yellow colouring pencil and a cheap felt tip pen.

‘I’ve got what I need,’ he says with a broad smile.

‘Except a pencil and a pen.’.

‘And what do you call this?’ he says holding up two inches of pencil shard, ‘and this pen is allowed’.

Then he cocks his head to one side, closes an eye, grins and says slowly, ‘you just got owned’.

‘Pardon?’

‘I.  Beat.  You.’

He raises a pistol shaped hand and fires it at my head.

‘I just so owned mum,’ he laughs.  The laughing goes on and on and on but is strange and forced.

‘Is it about winning?’

‘It so is.’

Review of ‘Why Can’t My Child Behave’, by Dr Amber Elliott

At the dog end of last term I was struggling to write a letter to my daughter’s school explaining just how badly their ‘minus points’ behaviour system had played out in our family, when Dr Amber Elliot’s new book ‘Why Can’t My Child Behave?’ fell through the letter box.  At first I thought ‘great, a distraction’, by a few pages in I felt I was in very safe hands.  After reading most of it, the letter wrote itself.

If like me you’ve fallen into the welcoming bosom of the super-parenting gurus (such a tempting and logical place for a while) and then committed atrocities in the name of good behaviour then Dr Elliot will first empathise with you for landing up there.  She then patiently explains why trauma is not something to be ‘fixed‘ or trained out.  We are invited to journey with our children into their pasts so we can understand at a deeper level why they do what they do, and what grows from this journey is empathy.  And in my own experience empathy is essential if therapeutic methods stand any chance of working.  A new kind of logic can be mastered, one that takes account of the landscape of the child and leads towards real human connection and healing.

Although I have been through the painful process of being reborn as a therapeutic parent I am not the finished article and there were many useful reminders and some lightbulb moments for me in ‘Why Can’t My Child Behave?’. I learnt to look at ‘attention-seeking’ behaviour as ‘attachment-seeking’ behaviour.  It’s much more than a rebranding exercise.    Talking about banishing a child who is craving human attachment, but who doesn’t know how to ask for it, suddenly looks like a terrible idea.  Likewise ignoring a child whose greatest fear is to be forgotten, removing things from someone who has experienced nothingness and loss, over-praising those who know for a fact they are bad and are out to prove it.  The problem is that behaviour systems can stop us from thinking.  This book gets us thinking again.

Often I find that training courses and books about therapeutic methods are heavy on the ‘why’ but flimsy on strategies that work.  This is not the case with Dr Elliott’s book which is full of strategies.  Not only that, the chapters allow easy access to the relevant information whether that’s related to lying, control issues or sibling relationships.  Dr Elliott doesn’t shirk from the difficult stuff either; sexualised behaviours and anger and aggression are covered too.

My only (very minor) comment (and quite honestly if I had not spent the past ten years sweating it out with traumatised children I would not have thought it a problem) is the title.  My daughter saw the book on my desk (my fault for leaving it out).  She was dismayed. ‘Did you buy it because of me, because I am naughty?’.  I tried to explain the irony and failed (irony doesn’t play well in our house).  But this is a tiny point and another reminder of how our children see themselves.

I would guess that most adopters and foster carers piece together the information which is so accessibly explained in Dr Elliott’s book.  We do it over years, much of it is learnt by experience and the trial and error process is played out at the cost of our children’s well-being.  I wish I’d had access to ‘Why Can’t My Child Behave?’ right from the start of our parenting journey. It is easy to read, accessible and thought-provoking and ideal for new adopters and foster carers as well as the more experienced.  I know it will become one of the texts I refer to as our journey continues.

Dr Elliott’s book is published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers and is available on their website and through Amazon.

 

Government Announces Adoption Support Funding

This week the Department for Education announced a £19.3 million fund for therapeutic services for adopted children and their families.  The news jostled with bigger stories and didn’t exactly grab the attention of the nation, but it’s something I’ve been waiting for a long time.

I occasionally blog for the online Social Work publication Community Care and for one article on post adoption support interviewed Hugh Thornbery, Chief Executive of Adoption UK.  Some weeks later I found myself in a waiting room in the Department of Education with Hugh and Erica Pennington (AUK), sat in front of a rather large photograph of Michael Gove.

Fixing post adoption support can on the face of it seem a simple matter, but as with many simple matters, what lies within the nuts and bolts is far more complex.

Firstly, adopters have a right to an assessment of their family’s needs by their Local Authority, but no right to the support which that assessment flags up.  It’s a fudge and a cruel one if you are on the receiving end.  Local Authorities say that they don’t have the money to pay for therapeutic support, but once an adoptive family breaks down and a child ends up back in the care system the vast sums required are suddenly, albeit from a different budget, available.  These costs dwarf what it might have cost to support that child within the adoptive family.

It would seem sensible to gather the costs of adoption breakdown and prove on a financial level that providing therapeutic support services is common sense.  But of course, none such records are kept currently.  So it’s all anecdote and hearsay and not enough to build a solid case on.

And lastly, just to really complicate matters, the NHS appears to have no obligation to treat traumatised children either.  Adopted children are like the hot potato that no one wants to catch.  The inequalities that the current status quo are built upon are astonishing and make creating any meaningful system of adoption support very difficult indeed.

However, despite the lack of data, the hearsay evidence and the lack of ownership, the government has listened to the experiences of many adoptive families and is taking steps to make real change.  It is easy to be cynical and following the press release many were.

The meeting I went to was a small glimpse into the work which has gone on, but I came away heartened by the depth of understanding of trauma shown by the civil servants working on the project at the DfE (deeper and more compassionate than some professionals I have faced across a desk).  I was struck by the impact that many personal accounts of adopters had clearly had and encouraged by the pressure being applied from above to get a sensible system of post adoption support in place.  Both the civil servants and Adoption UK appeared clear-sighted, tenacious and creative in their efforts to put together a scheme of real substance and benefit to adoptive families.

In response to views canvassed from adopters the fund will not sit within the bureaucracies that many of us have long struggled with but will instead be accessed directly.  As to how the fund will work in practicality, well the devil’s in the detail as they say and we will have to wait for the pilot schemes to work through.

Over the past ten years that I’ve been an adopter I’ve seen the narrative around adoption shift significantly.  Once upon a time I felt like a lone preacher of some bizarre belief system. Now government is openly talking about trauma and therapeutic support and where they go I hope others will follow.  Of course there is still plenty of work to do, not least for kinship carers and others caring for traumatised children, but credit where it’s due: this is a sea change and a big step forward.

Click here to read my press release.

My La Rosa Story :)

La Rosa Big Bench

On Wednesday I arrived at the campsite and met the “La Rosa crew”, they were all very nice to us. They made us a feast and we ate it outside on the new bench which was very big. I wasn’t sure what to expect because they had scary hair cuts, but I soon got to know them and they were all lovely people. After tea I helped soup up Amanda’s car with Jazz. We added green wheel rims (it was a really fun experience). We slept in the big barn called Swallow Barn, I slept on the sofa, Rose slept on the futon and mum slept on the double bed (it was a brill sleep).

Thursday – I woke up, poured myself some chocolate milk (which they gave to us), I used the loo with a view and brushed my teeth. We then got changed and met outside. In the morning we went to the beach with Amanda and Jazz but not mum. We went to the cafe where I had a coke, we then walked down to the beach where I skimmed lots of stones and caught plaice and sea eel. We walked back to the cafe and passed a very nice car. Me and Jazz asked the man if we could take a picture, he said fine. In the cafe we sat next to an old couple who had a lobster, the whole time me and Jazz laughed about him and the lobster (the lobster eating him). We had a lovely time! When I got back we had a look around the campsite with the dogs which was good fun until they got a bit too playful and decided to have a little fight with Rose and me. One of the dogs bit my leg. Mum and Amanda said I was very brave, Jazz was really sorry when she heard the news (it really wasn’t her fault but she thinks it is). The campsite was absolutely amazing! The interior of the caravans was stunning (blu-ray edition campsite)!! After that Amanda drove us to Whitby  to see our hotel which was immense (blu-ray wins again).

The three of us

Friday- We spent the whole day at the beach in our beach hut that someone kind lent to us. I caught 3 starfish. After that we went to a scampi shack and had “guess what” scampi! We went to the amusements as well. We finished the day by going to a “interesting” puppet show – a scary fake old man and a cleaner real lady. We went upstairs to the library and mum and Amanda talked about stuff, while me, Claudia and Rose played cards, we were then joined by a boy and girl Sunny and Lola. We went upstairs to bed at 12:15 (late night).

We woke, up Claudia drove us to the station and we went home (sadly)

I really miss the campsite and all the lovely people who work and run it.

The people who I spent most time with were Claudia, Amanda and Jazz. I think they are amazing people with really good and interesting lives!

My Paperback Child

During the slow, hot days before No Matter What was published I felt physically ill.  I had nightmares and daymares, cold sweats, hot sweats, strange dreads came out of nowhere and I developed an aversion to the telephone.  It was not how I had expected to feel.

I had been reading Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn for our book group.  The main character is a sociopath perhaps because her parents had selfishly mined her life for their writing.  ’It’s a sign!’ I panicked. I have mined not only my own life, but those of my children, my husband, our wider families, our friends, our social workers.  What was I thinking? What kind of monster am I?  I’ve ruined my children’s lives, my relationships, my friendships.  No one is going to speak to me again.

The day that Bella magazine published a piece about the book I dreamed I was on a TV reality programme. I was trapped inside a plastic bottle with a Chinese man and we had to starve ourselves thin enough to escape from the neck of the bottle. It was another sure sign that I’d sold my soul.

But then the book came out.  I started receiving emails, tweets, phone calls, all overwhelmingly supportive.  Many confirmed why I’d taken a chance and written it. ‘I no longer feel alone’ said one.  ’A must read for anyone involved in adoption’ said another.  Five star Amazon reviews appeared.  Readers kept saying that they couldn’t put it down, had read it in one or two sittings.  Close family members and friends read it and didn’t take offence (as far as I know) but felt sadness that they had not understood what we had all been going through at the time.  (It’s almost impossible to describe it at the time.)

Rob is very proud of the book and I am immensely grateful to him for giving me the permission (and the time) to write about some of the most personal aspects of his life.  Jamie and Rose’s reactions have been to want to tell their teachers about the book (yikes!).  I have read bits out loud to them and will read more as they get older.  Their responses have been interesting. ‘Why would you be so nervous about meeting US for the first time?’ was one of the questions, their perspective being that we would judge them, not the other way around.

Writing the book was never about notoriety or money (fortunately) but about doing something small to change perspectives on adoption, to challenge some of the myths and to get more empathy and support going for children who carry around the trauma of neglect and abuse.  I’ve been told that Michael Gove may add the book to his summer reading list.  If he reads it and this in some way helps to unstick the current stand-off with respect to the provision of post-adoption support then I will have achieved more than I set out to do.

Now I am left with a sense of relief that the labour pains have been worth it (a strange analogy for a book about infertility and adoption but that’s what it’s felt like).  My paperback child is out there and will make it’s own way in the world.