Like most families, there are days in our lives that we revisit and get nostalgic about regularly, but we have an extra day! It’s a day that gives us a fantastic excuse to celebrate – the day we finally adopted our two beautiful children, and they came home.
The road to the adoption was built from talks, meetings, discussions with social workers, both our side and the children’s side, courses, and even a time when we dressed up as characters from Toy Story on an adoption day!! The journey was tough, we won’t say anything different, but the joy you get at the end far outweighs any obstacles you encounter on the way. We moved backward and forward along a continuum, with frustration and elation as the bookends.
We had always said we would adopt; both my wife and uncle are adopted and now my younger brother has adopted two beautiful children. Our path to the adoption of our children (full siblings a boy (K) and a girl (L)) took two years, and the journey continues.
Like many children who go on to become adopted L and K had an extremely tough start to life. Their home life with birth parents was chaotic and featured both drug abuse by their parents and domestic violence. This meant over time they would become part of the foster care system. The foster carers they went to were amazing, they have helped us all the way, and continue to feature in our lives.
The children’s foster carers gave us wonderful insights into our children’s personalities, that allowed us to understand them and help them to become the individuals they are today.
L never gives up on anything and has always been determined to get to where she wants to be and as she gets older, she really understands where she wants to go! But she hates surprises – even to the point that she needs to know what she is having as a gift for either her birthday or Christmas. L took on a mothering role to K at a very young age, and although she has largely worked through this, you can still see that need to control elements of her environment.
K is a thrill seeker, always at the top of the tallest tree or jumping off the biggest BMX ramp…so much fun to be around but terrifying for us as his parents! He is amazingly physically fit and seeks thrills through doing either BMXing, Mountain Biking, scootering, skateboarding – anything with wheels. He continues to use screens as his escape from the world, maybe an echo from his toddlerhood when he used to watch TV and not have to worry about what was going on around him.
I could go on and on about our two children, they had it hard, but we are now a family and live in a home filled with love and laughter. We have some amazing friends who are a pillar of strength when it comes to adoption and of course, we have our families, both of which are amazing. My wife and I have always said this was the best thing to do, surround yourself with friends and family, they want to help and be there for you. Nothing phased them, we even had friends go on some of the adoption training for friends and family, so they could understand why the ways we parent might differ from the way they do it.
If you are thinking of adopting – DO IT – we think it is amazing.
One last thing; both L and K have a little picture up in their bedrooms which they cherish. It reads ‘We may not have given you the gift of life, but life gave us the gift of you’, this rings true every day.
Our thanks go to the adopter for this honest and open account of what adoption looks like for their family. For anyone considering adoption, we urge you to read as many true accounts of adoption as you can. All the stories are different, but the love for the children at the heart of them almost always shines through. And please remember, we are here to support you as best we can.
