Author Archives: Emma Sutton

Shrunk In A Hot Wash

I am imprisoned. Trapped in a tiny triangle of land, no more than a mile on the longest side. The corners are my house, school/ nursery and the supermarket.

My Life Has Shrunk

My days involve walking from home to school/ nursery, and back again. Twice a week, I go beyond that short line with a trip to the supermarket for more cucumber and washing powder, then it’s back to school again. Five days a week, three times a day, I walk along the same route, and it’s a miracle there isn’t a dip in the pavement where I’ve worn it thin.

Whilst the journey rarely varies, every day it’s different, due to the inventive minds of my children. Yesterday we all rode invisible unicorns to school until mine became lame and couldn’t gallop any more (I was too tired to keep up the pace).

I Have Shrunk

But this house-school-supermarket-arrest preys on my mind – I fear I’ll be infected with village mentality, because this patch of land is an island of little significance in the ‘grand scheme of things’ whose centre (in the UK) is the chaotic metropolis of London.

This tract of land is both nothing (a teeny dot on a map) and everything (my entire universe) and my mind struggles with that paradox.

Every so often I strap the kids into the car and make it all the way across town, celebrating that I have escaped the well-worn rut that is my life. Over the invisible fence by – another mile. Woo hoo! I feel like a different woman to the chemical engineer who delivered complex training to big name companies in places like Oslo, Lisbon, Kalamazoo and Dublin.

A New Richness

It’s over a decade since Andy and I moved into this street. Ten years of nodding or saying hello and that was the sum of our acquaintance with the people in this street.

Yet this repetition creates a richness, a new depth to my experience. My neighbourhood has come alive again. I notice the subtle changes from month to month: where the snowdrops grow, the slipperiest corner to avoid if the ground is icy, where the cat with no tail lives and which gates hide barking dogs.

Memories Ingrained in the Pavement

“That’s a fire station” declared Nibbles confidently one morning. As I look to where he’s pointing, I admit that the red double garage looks a bit like a fire station. Now I can’t walk past without smiling at the memory. Over there’s a hole where Nibbles and Bubbles stuffed all the twigs they could find until it was fit to bursting and I had to convince them to find another. Here’s the spot they lay down protesting they couldn’t walk another step.

But it’s more than just familiarity and memories. There are new faces, new names, new connections. Its the people who bring it this triangle to life.

People Make a Neighbourhood

There’s grandma Dee in her downstairs flat. We wave to Dee, and talk to her if the window is open, or mime shivering when the weather is cold. Sometimes we see her at the bus stop on her way to the shops, or sneak a peek at the new wallpaper in her lounge once she has her flat redecorated. Once she invited me in and we talked about our families.

There’s a couple who sit on their front step with steaming cups of tea and cigarettes. One day, when we saw them both on the way to nursery and on the way back, Nibbles stated with wide-eyed astonishment “they’re still there!” I laughed and suggested that they had maybe gone inside in the interim.

Karl tells us about his model airplanes, sharing tales of broken wings or tail pieces and things I know nothing about, with his friendly wagging dog who is stocky and almost never jumps up. When the kids aren’t with me, we talk about his legs and the son he hasn’t heard from in over a decade.

Lydia once shouted at Nibbles for treading on the pebbles on her drive (and I frowned with a harrumph and a ‘what’s her problem?’). But since her initial outburst, she softened. Now she waves, remarks how well behaved the children are, as she tends the flowers in her pots and dusts her china.

New Roots

For years I just lived here. My house is here. That was about it. I introduced myself to my neighbours when I moved in, or they did, then promptly forgot their names.

But the children kept asking “what he called?” about the man next door, until I gave in and asked (on their behalf). He’s Charlie, but the children call him “Mr Charlie” which gives a sense of grandeur and respect I really like. Until they shout and scream “Mr Charlie” incessantly through the window at him as he’s leaving his house, which I like a lot less.

And in peopling the walk, I have found new roots, a new sense of belonging, a new sense of camaraderie with the streets in which I live and walk.

Get To Know Your Neighbours

Try it. Walk to the shop every day to get a paper or a pint of milk, and you’ll discover a whole new world, right on your doorstep. Full of stories, people, smiles, friendships and community. Stop once in a while and say more than just “hello” and you can unearth stories that will stay with you for a lifetime.

I am so glad I have my children, because through them, I have found a new me. A connected me. A me with roots. Something I haven’t felt since I was a child myself, falling into the pond at Mr Moon’s house and playing with the Blocks next door.

In shrinking the fibres of my life in a hot wash, I have found a new warmth, a new hygge that was here all along. A felted mesh of memories, imbued with cosy familiarity, inhabited by people I know. Who knew that shrinking could be so enriching?

The Day I Met My Children

1 Reply

What if they don’t like me?

We’re sat in the parked car, fidgeting, having arrived ridiculously early for this Important Day. It’s 915 a.m. and we have a vast expanse of forty-five minutes to kill. So. Much. Time. Today we get to meet our children for the first time. And I’m bricking it.

My stomach can’t decide if the sharks or the butterflies are winning. I can’t sit here fidgeting for that long, but what else can we do? Why not go for a drive? I suggest What if we get lost? And my brain decides to catastrophise — what if we drive off the edge of the known universe into a not-on-the-map black hole from which even a GPS signal and Google Maps cannot rescue us?

What if we’re late?

We drive just a few streets away. We sit. And fidget. And check our phones. And post on social media. And wait. Out of sight. We get out of the car and go for one of the most bland, pointless walks ever. Well, not entirely pointless, because there are now ten fewer minutes to burn.

Today we will meet our children

Our children. They don’t feel like our children at all. They aren’t really our children, except they are, but then they’re wards of the adoption agency, so they’re not, but we’ll be looking after them, so they are, and it’s all quite confusing.

I can’t stop thinking about the moment we’ll see them for the first time.

What if all my dreams and hopes come crashing down around me and I think, ‘I can’t do this?’
What if they’re crying and whining and awful?
What if they ignore us?
What if they don’t like us?
What if they run and scream and hide and refuse to come out?
What if they hate us?
Worse still, what if they like him and not me?

I have no idea what to expect

It’s now 10 a.m. (turns out you can kill time — just worry incessantly) and we drive up to the house. Their foster carer Ken opens the door and welcomes us in with a twinkling smile.

‘Take a seat in the lounge. I think they’ve something planned,’ he says.

That sounds promising or ominous or something (the sharks and butterflies cannot agree). My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry. I perch nervously on the edge of the sofa, waiting for I don’t know what; I’m a child waiting outside the headmaster’s door.

The lounge door opens and in tumbles a huge bunch of flowers — a pink riot of colour and petals and leaves that’s moving all of its own accord. Then I spy her. Beneath this colossal display, wobbling in her efforts to hold it, is a tiny girl with cascades of curls. The flowers drown her, yet she bravely carries them straight to me. She shyly hands them over and in her sing-song voice says four incredible words that I will never forget:

‘Flowers for my mummy’

She looks at me, and I break out a smile before my hand flies to my mouth in shock and surprise. A lifetime of tears well up in my eyes, and despite my promise that I would not cry, tears pour silently down my cheeks. It’s far from the first impression I wanted to make.

Happy tears

A tear for all the times that I went to bed despondent.
A tear for all the times that my period came and I lost faith I’d ever be a mummy.
A tear for all the times I wondered why I couldn’t grow a child.
A tear for a child who never made it past the few cells.
And a tear of utter relief that a child has finally said that word to me.

The word I have wanted to hear and thought I might never hear. The word I do not own despite all the preparation.

Mummy

The most amazing word in the whole dictionary. I thought it would take weeks or months for them to utter it, and it was the fourth word she said. Even better, she used ‘my’ before it, binding me to her in a relationship. I feel complete in a whole new way. I stutter a broken ‘thank you’, but she’s already gone.

She and her brother follow Ken back to the kitchen, where he’s making tea.

Andy sits on the floor, and when they return, these two tiny children are crawling all over him, hugging him and talking to him, tugging at his shirt, smearing dirty fingerprints over his glasses, asking questions but not waiting for the answers, bringing him books to read and toys to play with. I sit back, dabbing my tears and drinking everything in. They take to Andy like pandas to bamboo, and I feel that his idea of sitting on the floor was far better than my bursting into tears.

I dry my face and take a deep breath: we have fifty-seven minutes left to start getting to know these miniature people who are our little boy and little girl.

Our children.

I still can’t believe it

This is an extract from the book “and then there were four” available via Amazon in ebook (Kindle) and paperback versions. It’s an unputdownable, unforgettable rollercoaster through infertility, adoption and parenting.

What happened the day you met you children? Share your experiences below.

I Am Not The Mum I Thought I’d Be

Leave a Reply

As I sit on the loo, my teeth grinding with frustration, my head shaking at what I’ve become, my ears shrink from the sounds wafting up from downstairs. Her sister is consoling him, hugging him, there-there-ing him. She asks tenderly ‘what’s wrong?’ and his answer puts my head in my hands.

‘Mummy made me cry’

This morning, after a director’s-cut-extended-version of the normal ‘hurry-up’ mantra that increases in urgency and volume, today I reached decibels even my neighbours would have heard, the pent-up frustration of chivying two children into shoes and coats boiling over like milk on the hob. Yet had I overheard someone else remonstrating so manically, I would’ve raised my eyebrow and muttered ‘how could anyone could be so melodramatic about getting to school on time?’

What Has Got Into Me?

I am not proud of myself. My head hangs in weary shame as I go downstairs and apologise – I aim for unreservedly but am unable to resist saying that I wouldn’t have needed to shout if only he’d have hurried up in the first place. Humble is not my middle name.

I used to be fun, mischievous, curious, creative and fun (again). Yet recently I’ve become a shadow of my former self – a grey-washed version devoid of fun or cheeriness or that joie-de-vivre that surprised and annoyed colleagues who fervently believed that being at work and singing in corridors were mutually exclusive.

Who Am I?

I am not the mum I thought I’d be. Not the mum I dreamed I’d be. Not the mum I told the adoption agency I would be.

I naively thought that being intelligent, organised, a bit of a neat-freak, a creative problem solver and – let’s not forget – fun would magically make me into an awesome mum. The sort of mum who never-shouts, breaks spontaneously into a chorus of ‘she’ll be coming around the mountain’ in the checkout queue, has a permanent powder-puff of flour on her nose from all that hilarious baking, hilarious-fun-mum that has other mothers jabbing their fingers down their throat in jealousy.

I am not even close. And that hurts.

I can’t help feeling a bit of a failure as a mum – all because I judge myself against an unrealistic ideal of SuperMum.

Why Am I Not The Mum I Dreamed Of Being?

I am tired. When I wrote about the skipping-through-the-meadow fantasy of forever family life, I hadn’t bargained on being this tired all the time. I’ve never experienced such a protracted period of dead-in-my-slippers tiredness, so I failed to predict the impact of this on my personality. Turns out, mega-tired Emma has little reserves left for being some let’s-make-a-tree-house-now-fairy-cakes mummy.
I am tired. I can’t remember the last time I woke up in the morning and felt refreshed – that kind of jump-out-of-bed-and-annoy-your-still-asleep husband as you fling open the curtains, declare “Hello World, You Gorgeous Thing, I’m He-ere”, then gleefully sing in the shower as I prepare myself for a day of gadding about, laughing, pottering, walking and more. Instead, the kids cry my eyelids open, or the alarm shatters my dreams, I fight the impulse to take a baseball bat to the alarm and crawl back under the duvet whilst hanging a sign on the door telling my family that I am on strike.
I am tired. I feel like a bomb disposal expert whose scissors are hovering over blue and red wires, the music winding to fever pitch as I go to either save the world or get blown to smithereens whilst screaming “should’ve cut the red one.” When they are awake, my vigilance-o-meter is constantly in the ‘danger’ zone, alert for sharp corners, their siblings biting their ear off or snatching the toy they weren’t interested in two seconds ago, hot stuff, cold stuff, things they can climb onto and hence fall off, other people (all assigned potential kidnapper status), coughs, coughs that are choking, shouting, that eerie lack of shouting that indicates mischief of YouTube fame and any noise that is out of the ordinary (which is every single thing in this surreal experience of becoming a family overnight). And at night, it’s not as if I can simply fall into a pit of dreams only to wake in the morning. Every thump wakes me up as my ears strain to discover if they’ve fallen out of bed… wait… no cries? Just them thwacking their mattress with their leg then. False alarm. But since you’re awake (says my brain) why don’t we plan what you can make for tea a week next Friday, or better style, analyse all the ways you failed to be a great mum yesterday? Argghhhh!
I am tired. There are so many tiny things to cram into every day, things that take up little time individually, but like writing a Christmas card, when you pile them all together into a single day, they take your will to live and wring it through a mangle, until the tasks takes on epic proportions that deserve a Nordic song, and you wish you could put it off until the last day of posting, but you can’t because tomorrow there will be another enormous list to complete. If I drank it, I’d just want a cup of tea that doesn’t go cold before I even get a sip.
I am tired. My children are emotional – their life is a rollercoaster of extremes but who knew I had tickets to ride alongside? When they scream and cry from pain, injustice, or that minuscule sprig of cauliflower on their plate with which I am clearly hell-bent on poisoning them, I wish I could watch them with disinterest and distance. Like shrugging with confusion at how anyone in the audience thought that weak pun deserved anything more than a wry smile during a bad sitcom. It’s not as if I get to join in the laughter and giggles, for my adrenaline response seems to think that when they scream I need to remain stressed for at least another 3 hours, or until the kids kick off again, whichever is soonest, so that even their giggles fail to penetrate the taught muscles of my nervous system.

No wonder I am grumpy.

The Anti-Grumpy (aka Sleep) Plan

There is of course a solution to all this. I go to bed at 7.30pm and catch up on some sleep – which is the night they wake up every forty-five minutes, coughing their little lungs inside out, until they are so pumped full of Calpol I wonder if they will ever wake up.

But I am nothing if not persistent, so the next night I put my ear plugs in, go to bed at 7.45pm and tell my husband in no uncertain terms that tonight he is on coughing-Calpol duty.

I am not promising that tomorrow I will wake up and be the mum of my dreams, but maybe, with a following wind, a decent breakfast and without anyone being sick or wetting themselves before we’ve even made it to school, I won’t make my son cry.

SuperMum? Gah

Is it just me who shouts and struggles and feels like I am not good enough?

Share your experiences of your struggles against the ridiculous ideology of the “supermum” in the comments below…

Would You Read It?

Leave a Reply

These words are for the back cover of my book – but would they entice you to read it?

“Now married, we threw caution and condoms to the wind – not literally, that’d be littering – expecting the magic baby to appear. You know, the one that rocks up the first time you have unprotected sex, carried by the optimism stork. We were excited and waited, patiently…

Then impatiently…

Later somewhat forlornly…

We tried pillows and pee sticks, fertility experts and dousing (we didn’t), then arrived in the Land of Adoption. After years of going nowhere, two toddlers made us four practically overnight and we had to pedal faster than Bradley Wiggins to catch up.

And Then There Were Four is an unforgettable, unputdownable rollercoaster through the hilarious highs and pass-the-gin-now-the-tissues lows of infertility, adoption and parenting.

“One of the most beautiful love stories I’ve ever read. Emma dumps you right into her emotional experience, yet writes with such lightness as to keep your spirits up. This book is like your favourite pastime; time flies by unnoticed because you are so engrossed by the story. Delightful. Heart-filled.” Pam Burrows

“The bittersweet ambiance of this book grabs you very, very quickly: it’s hard not to get caught up in the moment, in the flow, in the too-painful-to-bear beauty of it. It’s written from the heart, raw and chatty . . . and what a heart!” Simon Raybould

“This book will strike a chord with any parent. It’s utterly compelling, witty and beautiful, achingly sad, and packed full of love.” Sarah Fox

“That’s not how I remember it.” Andy Sutton (husband)”

If you read these words on the back of a book, as you rifled through the bestsellers in a bookshop or on Amazon, would you want to read more?

These are the umpty-eighth draft of the back cover of my book “and then there were four” and I would love to know what you think of them…

Did it grab you? Make you laugh? Give you a hint of the stories within?

Let me know in the comments section below…

Letter From Their Foster Carers

Leave a Reply

(in response to http://nibblesandbubbles.co.uk/letter-to-their-foster-carers)

Dear Emma and Andy

Your letter described the events so well, just as we felt and experienced them, it took us back to those moments, as we relived the memories and now we’re in floods of tears.

Parting with the children was the hardest thing we have ever had to do as a couple and we will always love them, yet knowing that they had the best parents they could have had, eased our pain. Thank you for promising we would see them again, even if none of us were sure we ever would. We couldn’t be happier that Nibbles and Bubbles love and are loved by their mummy and daddy. As you have found for yourselves, they are so easy to love, they’re simply adorable.

Finding you two was the best thing that happened to these children; you are amazing parents. We are more than happy; we are privileged and honoured to have been a part of their lives and we wouldn’t have changed a thing.

We sincerely thank you from the bottom of our hearts for allowing us to be in their lives, you will always be our special family.

Thank you Emma, for your honesty and for writing this story so beautifully.

With much love

Ken and Mary

xxxx

‘And Then There Were Four’ Comes To Life

Leave a Reply

Her email came through on Saturday evening and as I went to bed, I noticed it in my inbox on my phone. I saw the title and glanced away, scared.

What If I Hated It?

As much as I knew these were just the first versions and that everything could be changed, I wanted to love them so much it hurt. I dare not open the email because one glance could shock me, creasing my forehead into deep canyons no botox could smooth out, leaving me muttering furiously under my breath, lying awake windmilling, wondering how things could have gone so wrong. I wasn’t prepared to be hashtag gutted at this time of night.

What If I Loved It?

Yet what if the opposite was true? I was optimistic – I knew she did great work, the reviews on her website were fabulous and I’d been pretty clear (I thought) about what I liked or did not like for my book cover. Yet even tending on hopeful, I could not open the email. For if I fell in love, then the rush of feelgood hormones would keep me awake all night, sharing it madly on every social media outlet known to woman, whilst silently wanting to poke the world awake so they could congratulate me at 1am on Sunday morning.

I Slept On It

And in the morning, once my brain was awake (about an hour after the kids had poked me awake, too early again), I opened the email and stole a glance at the three versions Tanja had created.

Oh.

There it was. My book. With my name on it. I could almost reach out and pick it up (how I wanted to pick it up, to feel its weight, to fondle the cover, to stroke the words, to flick through the creamy yellow pages, to see my words in all their 3D brilliance).

And I knew then that everything was going to be okay. Not just okay, but brilliant.

Even these first versions had my heart pounding and spread a grin over my face that took hours to wear off (well, until the kids started squealing and fighting). One step closer to my book.

Letter To Their Foster Carers

Leave a Reply

Dear Ken and Mary (not your real names).

You gave our children a home, when they needed it most. You kept them together, letting them stay with each other and stay connected to the only family they had left. You helped her to recognise that she had a brother until they became inseparable (as they still are). Thank you.

You held her, when she arched her back and threw her head back and didn’t let her ironing board of a body dampen your love for her or desire to cuddle her. You loved her, unreservedly, however difficult her behaviour, however little she knew how to be loved, until she softened and yielded to love. Thank you.

You gave them structure and routine, love and fun, stories and bathtime, even when you’d only just left hospital and your shoulder was mending. You parented them with love and joy and kisses and hugs until they became touchy-feely-giggly-happy children. Thank you.

You took photos from the day they arrived to the day they left, charting their history, their lifestory, creating amazing books that meant we almost felt that we were there, stories we share with them and remind them of their past before us. Thank you.

You took those photos. The photos that tugged at my heart, as the Universe yelled “these” in my soul, the photos that had me falling in love with these little lives with their mischievous smiles and looks of contentment. I knew that these were my children the moment I saw those photos. Thank you.

You shot that video. Where he potters around, surprisingly trouser-less, playing with bracelets that she in her tutu kept stealing back for her cart, then they’re bouncing on the sofa until she says ‘that’s my bobble’ in her squeaky voice and my heart melted and I knew I was hooked for life. Thank you.

You came to our house, with a tower of photos, and the tears in your eyes Ken, told me how much you loved and would miss these precious lives. And if I could have done anything to save you from your tears, I would. Thank you.

You created a magical moment on the first day we met them, where those four incredible words “flowers for my mummy” shocked, surprised and delighted me, and tears flowed because for years I never thought I would hear those words said to me. You helped me bond with them, get to know them, by leaving the room and making space in your home for us to nudge you out and take over. Thank you.

Every day, despite your grief at losing them, you got them excited, peering through the window, waiting for our car to arrive – I can still see their cute little faces and feel my heart leap at that look. Thank you.

You helped me believe that I could do it, Mary, when you saw the doubt in my eyes, as you described their routines and I saw how effortlessly you parented them and knew I hadn’t a clue what I was doing. Hearing you say that I’d be an amazing mummy, when I felt like a fraud, was just the cheer-leading and encouragement I needed to save myself falling into a pit of doubt. Thank you.

You stepped in when needed, when the children struggled to cope with the confusion and different faces and feelings and more, calming them, even when you were struggling with the separation on the horizon. Thank you.

You were brave and courageous throughout this process, as you stepped aside and let go of our children until they became part of our family. Thank you.

You are the heroes of this story, their story, our story as a family.

Words are not enough

I cried as I wrote and read this back, because I mean every word from the depth of my heart.

With huge love, respect and more.

Emma

The Biggest Challenge In Adopting Was RSI

Leave a Reply

What’s the process like? How long does it take? Isn’t it intrusive? I remember pondering these questions (and more) myself as I considered if I wanted to adopt, so let me tell you my version of events.

What’s The Process Like?

There are bursts of activity and then frustrating periods of waiting – it can seem all “hurry, hurry, hurry! Wait… wait…. wait……… now, now, NOW!” There are meetings, interviews, training courses, research, forms to fill in, questions to answer (again and again it seemed). When I typed my first batch of answers to the 27 questions our social worker emailed us, I excelled – typing 11, 468 words, or 13 pages of close-typed text. I was hoping for an ‘A* – very thorough’, but my social worker was not impressed and asked me to precis it (my beautiful words, cut to the core, how very dare she?).

Yes I was impatient, but that’s a character flaw of mine, so hardly their fault. The hardest part for me was hours spent hunched over a keyboard typing answers to the endless questions about our lives, history, past relationships, finances, parenting experiences, culture, beliefs and more, hence the risk of RSI.

How Long Does It Take?

Ah the ‘piece of string’ question. The process to be approved as potential adopters (stages 1 and 2) takes around six months. But matching you to a child can take longer. Our process was slightly different and we were both matched and approved as adopter on the same day, so we took less than 12 months from picking up the phone to enquire about adoption to bringing our children home for good. Sometimes it’s quicker, sometimes it takes a couple of years.

Even if it had taken two years (which given my impatience would have had me huffing and pacing until the floorboards were worn through) it would still have taken far less time than all the years we tried to conceive and attended fertility clinics.

I know you’re impatient and you want a child or children now, but believe me, it’s worth the wait.

Isn’t It Intrusive?

Yes, it’s intrusive. It has to be. If it wasn’t, it would be superficial and the social workers then run the risk of ending up on the front pages of tabloid newspapers whose journalists declare how deplorable the system is that gives vulnerable children to just anyone. Wouldn’t you want them to be thorough if these were your children they were finding homes for?

Personally I found it liberating. I reflected for hours (and thousands of words) on my childhood, my relationship with my parents, and how I imagined myself as a mum. My husband and I discussed and debated our approaches to boundaries, who does what and the nitty gritty of what it was going to be like as parents in far more detail that we’d have never delved into if I had been pregnant.

It’s Just Hoops

Yet the moment we saw the faces of the children we were destined to adopt (a moment that even four years’ later still brings tears of joy), I realised that it was all just hoops to jump through – none of which were flaming. It was annoying at times, frustrating in the extreme when our first social worker went off sick and we had to start again, and tenuous because it was never certain or real until the panel said yes to the match.

But at the end of it all, when I fell in love with my children, I knew that they could have asked me to strip naked and run across a football pitch on national TV and I would’ve done it. I would have anything they asked of me, however much I rolled my eyes at the time, because being a mum, being their mum, being called mummy, that was what really mattered.

While you’re going through the adoption process, you can choose to focus on the frustrations, the delays, the form filling and the things that drive you bonkers. Or you can remember the dream – holding hands with your little boy or girl, and them looking up at you with love in their eyes and calling you mummy or daddy.

What wouldn’t you do to have that moment, not just once, but over and over again?

What was your experience of adopting? How quickly did you go from deciding to adopt to bringing a child home to join your family? Please share your experiences below…

Is It Because They’re Adopted?

Leave a Reply

I only popped out for milk….

Andy had arrived home to the usual fanfare of whoops from my kids, and in the post-daddy-comes-home invisibility of ‘Mummy? Who she?‘ I’d chosen to bank their inattention and pop to the shop for milk.

An Unexpected Reaction

The minute she’d heard me go, my 3YO little girl started crying, her hands dragging forlornly down the window pane, begging me silently to come back, whilst I obliviously skipped to the car and shop, unaware of the reaction I’d unwittingly created. It was only when I returned a few minutes later with milk and wine (it just lept into my basket) that I noticed her distraught features, all blotchy and puckered. I dashed in to comfort her.

Yet my ‘I’m home now, sweetie’ repetition, my kissing away her tears and the evidence before her eyes were krill to the whale of her fear. I hugged her and consoled her and told her that ‘I will always come back’ but my popping to the shops had triggered a secret fear inside her that no amount of logic would redress. Where did it come from?

The Scapegoat

Later that evening, as Andy and I talk about her tears, we ponder what might’ve caused it. And we start a round-robin of blame that heavily features the birth parents, her foster family and us, as reserves. And we hit straight into the conundrum of what causes a child to behave a certain way.

Is it because she is adopted?
Is it because of something that happened (that we do or don’t know about) in her backstory?
Is it because she’s a toddler?
Is it because she’s tired? Or we’re tired? Or because she missed Peppa Pig earlier?
Is it because the sun rose in the east, or because there’s a rainbow in the sky, or she’s Sagittarius with Pisces ascending, or because of Brexit/ Trump/ Bake Off moving to Channel 4?

Too Convenient By Far

I have found myself sorely (and arrogantly) tempted to presume that everything magical and amazing my children do is because of something I have done as their adoptive mum (with a nod to Andy’s involvement). And then I surreptitiously blame all their challenging behaviour (i.e. anything that attracts the glares of nosy strangers in public) on the black hole of ‘their past,’ whilst conveniently forgetting the not-inconsiderable impact of their fabulous foster family (who did all the hard work, if the truth be told).

She bit her brother? No idea where she gets that from. Not my fault your honour.
She learnt how to put her sock on the right way around? All me.
She drew lipstick onto her face with a permanent marker? Where’s she seen that? I never even wear lippy.
She gave me a hug, a cuddly toy and a book when I was shivering with fever? Of course she learnt that Florence Nightingale routine from me (those who know me well are choking on that line).

It’s Not Because They’re Adopted

After a few rather dodgy scapegoating sessions, my husband and I choose to ban the phrase ‘because they’re adopted’ from our vocabulary (and I humbly recognise that this might not be true for you).

We did it to take full responsibility, to accept that we have the most direct impact on their behaviour now, to make up step up to the plate and take it all as a reflection of our abilities as parents. Yes there may be some ripple effects from their lives before us, but it’s up to us now to give them new skills, new reactions, new behaviours for their new family.

If he bites her, it’s because I haven’t taught him not to.
If she draws on her face in permanent marker, it’s because I left a marker in reach and ignored her when she begged me to play makeup, but let me take a photo of that pen moustache for Twitter before I suggest she tries scrubbing it off.
If she cries when I pop out for milk, it’s because I slipped away thinking it would go unnoticed, instead of talking her through where I was going and when I would be back and perhaps even giving her something of mine to look after for me.

They are my children, my responsibility, and everything they do and say is a reflection of my influence on them. And maybe that is easy for me to say, because I have never had to deal with behaviour that gets my kids excluded from nursery or school, or suffered child-on-parent violence or things that aren’t easy to live or cope with.

But for me, for our family, that’s the way it has to be.

Have you ever been tempted to use the phrase “because they are adopted”? Share your stories below…

How To Balance A Child Over A Sink

Leave a Reply

The sinks are all gleaming porcelain, at just the right height. You reach for the soap, under the mirror and over the sink, catch some and then wash your hands under the eco-friendly push button tap, then walk over to the dryer, perched out of the way on the wall. All clinical, clean, easy to use. Perfect. Unless you have children (or vertically challenged), when they are…

Perfectly Useless

The sinks are far too high.

But that’s no problem, surely any establishment with toilets that welcomes families (i.e., isn’t a strip club) will have a step? A simple, sturdy plastic step costing a few quid from Ikea, to help my children reach the sinks.

Uh, no. They might have an outdoor play area, a children’s menu and more, but the chances of a step in their bathrooms? As likely as my daughter getting that unicorn she has on her birthday list.

So instead I have to bench-press my children in some Mission Impossible human trapeze over the sink so they are suspended at just the right height, cupping her body with both hands to avoid her head-butting the sink or taps or soap dispenser with a precariousness that turns ‘let’s just wash our hands’ into a fiendishly difficult trick that would have health and safety experts reaching for a non-conformance report.

Still she’s at the right height now, so job done.

Job Not Done

She can’t get to the soap, even on a step (unless she has arms like ElastiGirl from the Incredibles), and on a dangle, the angle’s all wrong, so I have to manoeuvre her body so she’s hanging from one arm, then punch the lever (right now I want to punch the person who designed this ridiculously common and impossible bathroom) and catch the pink goo single-handedly before blobbing some in the region of her palms. ‘It slid off? OK sweetie, let’s try again.’ Now I have one soapy hand which is not making my slippery grip on her any more secure, but at least I am back to a two-armed grip on the wriggling worm that is my daughter.

Water Water Everywhere

She just needs some water and she can get frothing. She presses on the tap, nothing. She puts her entire tiny weight through both her hands and onto the eco-tap. Again, DroughtCity Arizona. I shift her body against my hip and arm and press the tap to be rewarded with a tiny microsecond of dribble, which her lightning reactions fail to intercept. Again I press, again a drip, again we miss.

By the third drip, she yells because the drips have turned to a boiling inferno, which the establishment warns us of with polite signs saying “warning: very hot water” as if an A4 sheet makes it okay to provide water hotter than Old Faithful. Through some knee- and edge-of-the-sink balancing (‘Mummy, it’s digging in’), we create foam in the general regions of the end of our arms whilst splashing water and soap liberally over the sink, the floor, our bodies and down my trousers such that I’ll have to keep my coat done up until my crotch dries.

Drier, Where Are Thou?

I stand her back on her own two feet, with a “chuff” of expelled exertion, confident that at least we’re nearly done, we just need to dry her hands. It’s almost in reach (if there was a step, which of course there isn’t), but the sensor won’t sense her, so I have to balance her on one uplifted knee, as I swipe my hand underneath with the regularity of a ticking clock so the darned thing won’t cut out.

It’s taken us ten minutes to simply wash her hands and I am drained by the thought that this life-sapping event is likely to be repeated a few more times on this quick trip to town. Then a minute after the door closes behind us and I sigh with relief that that torture is over, she gets a second wind and declares ‘I need a poo,’ after which I suggest she wipes her brown hands down her trousers and we’ll bleach them both later.

I can see why hand sanitiser is so flipping popular.

Disabling Our Children

Why can’t cafes, shops and malls provide a child-friendly, child-tested, child-proven bathroom experience so that a child is able to complete the simple routine act of washing and drying their hands without needing a human hoist with the patience of Mother Teresa?

With this simple act, we empower our children, to be able to do things on their own, without shadowing their every move and nannying them.

Can’t people see that these designs are unfriendly and unwelcoming? How do you expect me to feel good about having kids when every single item in this room is designed as a spectacular obstacle akin to the lofty hurdles of the Grand National? When you present parents with a choice between clean hands (and good routines) and doing their back in, which do you expect them to choose?

Why is this world so child-unfriendly?

I want to give my children the confidence and skills to do things for themselves, even if it’s just going to the toilet on their own and washing their hands. Yes I will sniff and inspect them afterwards to check they have been thorough, but this is about empowering them to do what they can, from the youngest age appropriate, to learn, to grow, to expand. Yet the moment we are in public, we design rooms, chairs, seats, cutlery, doors, sinks and more that are barriers to them: too high, too big, too long, too wrong for them to use.

I’m not the only mum who must feel like this, so why haven’t things changed? Why is it that designers and architects, builders and more still continue to churn out toilets that are entirely unfriendly to any child or grown-up who doesn’t fit the norm?

Come on world, you can do better than this.