Not as good at this as we expected

This is a great insight into the realities of parenting adoptive children. Such an honest account that is great for preadoptive parents like us. We have so much to learn and so many preconceived ideas…

wearefamily

We went into Adoption with many preconceived notions, not least of which was that we would find the whole parent thing pretty straight forward and well…kinda easy.

After all we have decades of being favourite uncles having been involved in the lives of our nieces and nephews and more importantly lots of experience of looking after children – often taking them away for weekends or even full holidays – not to mention some hands-on parenting experience for  me after moving in with an uncle and young cousins to help out when he left my aunt and also being with a close friend on a daily basis raising her two youngest for a number of years.  Then on top of that at the suggestion of our social worker my partner became a teachers assistant, he has an amazing way with children, so much time and patience for them and he loved…

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One thought on “Not as good at this as we expected

  1. Hi
    Thank you for reposting ‘Not as good…’ it is getting a really positive response.
    Although we are a gay couple we had originally tried to have a birth child with a female friend, but I have to say now that regardless of the challenges of parenting an adopted child we would not change a single thing.
    On the whole we are SO very happy with our wonderful sons, I realise that ‘Not as good….’ is focussing on the negatives, but trust me they are way outweighed by the positives.
    We are not perfect parents – who is? – but in fact I do think we are ‘good enough’.
    I wrote this after being asked to talk at a prep course and the final question was ‘what is most different about the reality of being an adoptive parent to what you were expecting?’, after some thought I answered that we were ‘not as good at is as expected’. the answer was well received by the perspective adopters and indeed the social workers and I figured it held some value to people on their way to being an adoptive parent.
    I’m honoured that you seem to agree.
    Thank you
    M

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