Adoption Breakdown

I was brought over all funny by the Post Adoption Support Fund Survey that came through the post. I knew it was coming and I've answered enough of this type of Strengths and Difficulties forms over the years so I'm a dab hand at it all by now.

I have to take a deep breadth as I usually have an existential crisis over the nuances and philosophical differences between 'agree' and 'strongly agree'. I can get a little Fawlty Dad over the issue but I try to be a grown up.

Anyway, I was rattling through the form and passed the tricky bit and was into the final section.

On a scale of 1 to 10 

Do you find it difficult to care for you child then? 

Followed by........

Do you feel your child responds to you attempts to help them?

Finally.............

Do you feel there's a risk of your adoption breaking down?

That question just stopped me in my tracks, like a slap. All the others I had to think about and then give a considered answer, weighing up the evidence and analysing the facts.
All the others questions I was prepared to give some headspace too, not that one though.

I was really shocked, then I was surprised at being shocked. I know adoptions breakdown happens but it is a taboo and we're not meant to talk about taboos. It seemed odd to see it written down I felt a little offended that I'd even been asked.

'Adoption breaking down'

A simple phrase that encapsulates a cataclysmic and prolonged disaster in a families lives. I can't imagine the events, circumstances that lead to it. The stats say about 3% of adoptions breakdown but up to a third struggle. I'm not sure about what struggle means, we struggle but the leap from struggle to breakdown is a big one. Also, having I've had a daughter move out before 18. That was surrounded by difficult circumstances but in no way was it an adoption breakdown. I have unending empathy for those that have experienced a breakdown.

I'm not happy with the phrase it's a big blunt phrase that encapsulates a whole range of circumstance, systemic and personal failings, heartbreak and broken dreams. I'm really searching this week to make sense of what point I'm trying to make, I'm not even sure that I've got a point. I'm just dancing around this phrase and event that some families experience. The feeling that I got lingers and I'm not sure why.

Anyway, I just put a 'one', I have no idea what the future holds.

Dysregulation Hangover

I had a hangover once when I was 15. I remember vividly the subtle blend of seasickness, feeling like I'd been  hit in the face with a frying pan and of someone using my mouth as an ashtray.

It was a profound moment, I thought this is hellish I'm not doing that again.
So I haven't been drunk or had a hangover since and I have no intention of ever feeling like that again. Mrs Cs happy I'm always the designated driver. You could say I'm a control freak I prefer to think of myself as dull.

To be honest I was feeling quite optimistic and hopeful about 2016.  Lots of plans and schemes for the new year. Then like a rolling storm it all unraveled in glorious widescreen technicolor with dolby surround sound.

It arrived like a Catherine wheel of emotions, arms and legs flailing, insults spewed and threats made. The whole house kicked in the emotional teeth, things broke, threats made and bags packed, we were all impacted by the magnitude, if you weren't directly involved you heard it. The blue touch paper had smouldered for a day in the lead up,  then this Catherine wheel went off and lasted a couple of hours at it's height.

Mrs C tag teamed me after a few hours and brought it down,  it was over, wailing, sobbing, shower and bed. I say over though the sparks and fire had gone the dysregulation hangover was left.

We're emotionally and physically drained. Then we have an enquiry, what was the cause, could we, should we have seen it coming. But what had lit the touch paper and set off the raaaaaagh? It could have been the build up to Christmas, the lack of routine, the Xbox, the sugar overdose, the lack of exercise, the present jealousy, the this and the that.
I'm tired of trying to work it out, overanalysing.

Who said what and who did what. The scuffle, the kicking, the punching,  the argy bargy. I'd rather not talk about it, I'd rather not think about it but Mrs C and I did. I'm tired of trying to make sense of the senseless.

So, the next the dysregulation hangover remains, we move delicately around the house. I've put work back a day, it's raining outside and a delicate peace hovers inside.

I choose my first words and tone carefully.

'Get lost' is the reply.

I walk away, to tired to fight, nervous, are we going to play this out again?

My body aches from the argy bargy, the tension, the raaaagh, my heart aches from the argy bargy, the tension and the raaaaagh. I think about the future the whats and ifs. It's ok now but what about in a year or five or ten? The hope and expectation I'd had for the year have dissolved and worry and tension lays like a blanket over us all, we become a one narrative family.

We get through the day without incident.

Like all hangovers, it lifts, slowly but surely, 12, 24, 36 hours and we dare to feel better.
I have no intention of ever doing that again but I'm afraid this one is out of my control.

Adoption Sunday

#adoptionsunday

I wholeheartedly believe that the Church has within it's DNA the mandate to care for children and young people in the looked after system as well as those on the fringes those going into the system and leaving. Not exclusively of course but within the context of all the other 'stuff' we should be up to, we've even got a bible verse for it. However, and it's a big however, I'm also aware that we have totally screwed this up. I choose my words carefully, but I look back and within living memory I see that the church's actions reflect a complicated history, yes meeting a need but also perpetuating that need through moral policing. As late as 1970 the church was complicit in sending British 'orphans' to the far side of the world. Other actions have taken place and having watched Philomena recently I am  shamed at what was done in God's name, children removed from parents in the name of I don't know what. That legacy remains very much alive.

The biblical adoption narrative and stories in the bible feel, to me at least, as almost irrelevant to contemporary adoption. The systems and legal routes that we have built are not relevant to that narrative. Of course we are called to love and accept children but there was no Social Worker for Moses or Jesus adoption stories. When I see the adverts in my twitter feed for Adoption Sunday I get nervous. Nervous as for every child that 'needs' adoption there is a family that probably want their child back. I'm under no illusion that unspeakable acts are committed and some parents cannot and don't want to care for their children. But the context of adoption is shifting before our very eyes and that picture is ever more complex with less support for families, injustice and wrong decisions remain a possibility. The church's mandate is to protect and support the vulnerable  regardless of where they find themselves and with at least 30% of mothers with children in care system living with mental ill health it's time that the church made amends to the families that lost their children.

What am I proposing? Do we need to repent? Is that enough? I don't know, I'm just making this up as I go.

But on this Adoption Sunday my mind is with my children's 'other' family members, grandparents that never saw grandchildren again, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters that lost their children. Morally and ethically complex, murky situations, they challenge my notions of forgiveness, redemption and who is right or wrong. I can't help but consider how they may feel on Adoption Sunday.
 

For the first time since records began we have more adopters approved than children waiting to adopt (that's another blog). So where do we look this adoption Sunday? Of course we pray for the children, but what else do we pray?

Shame game

I was prepping for a thing I am doing this week and was considering the influence of shame and came across some thought provoking quotes*.

                 Shame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behaviour.

                 ‘Shame is a soul eating emotion.’  ― C.G. Jung

                 ‘The difference between guilt and shame is very clear—in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.’ - LEWIS B. SMEDES, Shame and Grace

Shame in our house is an easy target to hit for some of our children, in fact the real trick is not hitting it for them.

‘Don’t do that, don’t do this, why have you put that there, why did you say that, where have you been, what are you doing?’ Regardless of the intonation or innocence of the questioner these words, like arrows, score direct hits on feelings of shame. Understandably this precipitates a reaction, pushing back and fighting. It’s a well worn path that we often try to avoid but seem to find ourselves travelling.

Appropriate parenting uses tiny drops of shame to moderate behaviour with immediate restoration. Though I confess that Peanut seems impervious to this approach after cutting a chunk of hair off her head this weekend she was given an appropriate stern talking too. She was then given the love, restored to the fold and all was well, though her hair was hacked it was redeemable. Peanut then slinked off and and removed 50% of her fringe to the hairline giving herself a semi mullet. Mrs C, an ex hairdresser, was mortified/devastated, I suggested that Peanut is to only be allowed out of the house in a balaclava for the next six months while it grows out.

Not helpful.

Peanut though without remorse or shame noted in her defence ‘it’s dad’s fault, he says I look like Dora the Explorer, so now I don’t’. In my defence I wasn’t in the house. The more astute will be wondering how a three year old got her hands on a pair of razor sharp professional hairdressing scissor not once but twice. As the qualified Health and Safety Officer/Social Worker of the home I’d like to claim ignorance.

I digress.

In light of the stuff I’d read and pondered on shame I started to think about the ‘why’ questions that I hear myself ask Flossy.

Each 'why' seems like an accusation directed to the core of her being and punch straight into that shame.

‘You are bad’ is what is being heard. Frequently we are mopping up the aftermath of overwhelming shame. Teachers, friends, wider family members passers by in the street set it off and we mop it up.

I’d never given it much thought as to why ‘why’ questions don’t work. Maybe this is part of the answer.

Oh, and we compromised and found a headband for Peanut.

*I didn’t get where I am today by not knowing how to Google stuff

Therapeutic

Sometimes I imagine casting off the shackles of ‘therapeutic parenting’.

My ‘no’ being a ‘no’ and my ‘yes’ a ‘yes’.

No dancing with words around delicate issues.

No emergency self care

No fear, anxiety and pain wrapped up in angry words and actions to tidy up.

No pre-emptive discussions with school, coaches, family, doctors, SWs and friends.

No pre event and post event debriefs.

No protracted and unending negotiations.

No knot in my stomach when I know I have to take a stand over some minor issue that is pretty major.

No wishy washy compromises that leave me feeling that I’ve let down all parents everywhere.

Not sticking endlessly to the ‘tried and tested’ places, foods, people and events.

Not worrying.

I’m pretty sure that the kids feel the same.

On the upside the Sky man came and we've now got telly, or as I like to think of it 'daddy's little helper'.

No broadband yet. 

It's not personal.

Violence:

1. Behavior or treatment in which physical force is exerted for the purpose of causing damage or injury.
2. Intense force or great power, as in natural phenomena.
3. Extreme or powerful emotion or expression
4. Distortion of meaning or intent.

With the Adoption Social's week of focus on Child to Parent Violence #CPV I've been mulling over my own thoughts and experiences. I often unpick events in minute detail trying to fathom what's happened, what was said, what set us on a path to an incidence of violence. Sometimes I can see plainly and sometimes it's veiled by my lack of insight or understanding.

But really what I'd like to say is how it feels for me. All the books I read and the professionals I speak to. All the still voices of reason and voices of friends and family tell me the same thing. 

It’s not personal.

After we've had a 'incident', when the dust has settled, reconciliation is made and the delicate peace that we live in is restored. 

Then, I know it’s not personal.

I know the violence is born of inexpressible fear and anxiety at the loss of control. 
I know it's the overflow of emotion that cannot be stemmed.
I know it's and the inability to moderate and reason alI routed in a distant experience but bearing fruit in my today. 
I know it's not personal.

When spiders of disassociated fear, anxiety and pain creep closer to my child she lashes out to keep them at bay.

So, it's not personal.

But in truth it often feels it.

It's my body that gets hurt and it's me that is insulted. 

I sometimes wonder if  I'm slowly being eroded by the force of this violent wind. 

This is the paragraph at the end where I tie it up nicely, with a warm sentiment and tell of how love overcomes and parents do what they have to do cos that what we do. But I'm not going to patronise you today.
Fear not, I will keep on and I will refuse to take it personally.