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Adopting Siblings – Bravery Optional

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‘That’s brave’

It wasn’t the first time people had said we were brave to be adopting siblings, but coming from a social worker during our preparation groups, it filled us with foreboding.

  • I didn’t feel brave
  • I wasn’t sure I wanted to be brave
  • But I did want to adopt siblings

Was brave shorthand for that’s crazy?  Out of seven couples at our prep groups, we were the only ones considering adopting siblings.  Really?

I was shocked.

To us it seemed logical. We wanted a family, not an only child.  We knew that siblings were harder to place and so why not invite a set of brothers and sisters to join us? Did they know something we didn’t?

Both Andy and I had siblings and knew we wanted at least two (me), if not three (Andy, who would be going to work) children.

Do You Need To Be Brave?

Four years later, I can answer this question honestly.  Was it brave?  No.  It was definitely hard work taking on two toddlers at once.  They arrived and turned our life upsidedown in an explosion of nappies, spoons, toys and routine.  Even simple things like bedtime or a meal became logistical headaches. And then there was the lack of sleep from two children waking at different times, for different reasons for many many nights.

It was hard.  It was tiring.  It was exhausting at times, but it wasn’t brave.

It Was Joyful

Right from day one, the relationship between Nibbles and Bubbles is crammed to the rafters with joy.  During introductions, she was chasing him around the park, as he tottered in tiny circles and she dashed this way and that, more steady on her feet.

He was besotted with her, and everything she did was magic.  The way she looked after him, hugged him, helped him reach things, pretended to read to him, fed him – it was a cornucopia of sibling love and caring.

It Was Giggly

Put the two of them in swings.  Swing them as high as you can.  Then listen.  They would blow raspberries, sing, make nonsense noises, and giggle their heads off.  I recorded them time and time again, because I knew that this time would pass as they gained words and new ways to make each other laugh.  Listening to it now, it still makes me laugh uncontrollably.  So cute.

There isn’t a day since we adopted them when they haven’t made me laugh.

It Was Love

When we first saw their photos and information during matching, both Andy and I knew. Don’t ask me how I knew, but it was like an angel (or God if you wish) shouted deep into my soul and heart that these were the children who most needed me to be their mummy.

Their love for each other is huge.  Enveloping. Magical.  They love each other to the moon and back, then Aunty Sally’s and back and even to the splash park if they remember.  She always wants a hug from him as she goes into school and has to say goodnight each night to her wonderful brother.  Add that to the love they get from us, from their foster family Ken and Mary, and from everyone lucky enough to be a part of their lives and the love that surrounds our family has never been so ginormous.

To Sum Up…

But if there was one word that summed up my experience of adopting siblings it is adventure.

A great big, hair-raising, heart-racing, breath-taking rollercoaster of an adventure, a proper Indiana Jones style adventure, which has taught me a great deal about myself, about strength, about siblings, about friendship, about connection, about laughter, about playfulness, about love and most of all about life.  And I am still learning, every single day.

So let me take Helen Keller’s words and re-write them anew, in honour of the fantastic siblings that have made my life incredible…

Adopting [siblings] is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

These four and a bit years have definitely been a daring adventure.  Packed with new experiences, new places, new faces, new giggles, new joy, new love and more.  Long may it continue.

If you are up for an adventure, perhaps you might consider adopting siblings too?

To celebrate National Adoption Week (16-21 October 2017), the Kindle version of my book is available for just £2 (in honour of the two incredible children who have made my life into an even more daring adventure).  Get yours on Amazon here

 

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Two Plus Two Equals More – Adopting Siblings

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This year, the focus of National Adoption week is siblings – as around half the children waiting for a family are siblings.

I’m not going to tell you that adopting siblings is easier than adopting one, that would be crazy. It isn’t.

When my husband returned to work I was scared. I felt woefully unprepared to cope with two children vying for my attention. I needed eyes in the back of my head, a nose like a sniffer dog, seven pairs of hands and was worn out by it all.  My life felt like an exhausting roundabout of nappies, meals, tidying up, refereeing fights, supermarkets, naps, bottles, laundry, nappies, trying to understand their sort-of-words, more tidying, another meal, more nappies, baths, stories, bed and more.

When Bubbles went to pre-school for a few hours, I suddenly experienced how much easier one child would have been.  Not just a little bit easier, but soooo much easier.  With just Nibbles, there seemed more space, more time to do things, more time to even think, less to do. So I can understand why you might be thinking of adopting one child.

But there are upsides.  Things that you can only get if you adopt siblings.

LOVE

They’d only been with us a few weeks and Nibbles was upset.  We had no idea why he started crying in the car and nothing we said or did, not even my most soothing rendition of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” was working.  Two-year-old Bubbles asked him to “hold my hand.”  She stretched out towards him, touching fingers between the car seats in a moment of joyful tenderness I will never forget (captured in the photo above).  The impact was immediate.  His tears stopped and he smiled.

When everything else was strange, unsettling, weird, when their new home didn’t feel like a home at all, they had each other, they had love and that helped them feel safe.  Their love for each other is massive, unbounded, magical. With siblings you get share a love that goes to the moon and back.

HISTORY

Their lives and the people in it have changed so much in the few years since they were born. They’ve experienced trauma and separations. But one person has always been there for them, always been part of their lives.  We were somewhat late to the party, but Nibbles and Bubbles have always had each other. Their history started and continues together. And through this history, they’ve learnt that you can trust some people to be there for you through it all.

SUPPORT

“What did he say?” I would ask her, all confused. When Nibbles spouted sentences of jumbled consonants and vowels, when I had tried all the combinations I could think of and was running out of patience, Bubbles would often know exactly what he was trying to say.

She was our go-between and not just for translation.  When he was confused and upset in those first wobbly weeks, in a way we could not mend, a big hug from his sister was all that he needed to know that things would be okay.

INDEPENDENCE

Nibbles and Bubbles are inseparable (most of the time). They invent make-believe places and games that take them into the depths of their imagination, with a healthy borrowing from films and things they have read. Together they play, they explore, they invent, they create, they cut and stick. They learn interpersonal skills when they are too noisy or boisterous, don’t play nicely and learn the consequences when they hear the dreaded “I don’t want to play with you.”  They learn to compromise (if often a little late).

It feels safer when they are together, because they look out for each other, so I relax and give them leeway, to stay in the park on their own for a while, to grow to their capabilities (rather than being limited by my fears).  Sometimes their gang of two isn’t open to me, and yet as much as I pout, they are growing faster together.  They need me less and less, because they have each other as a co-adventurer.

GROWTH

With a big sister, Nibbles has run to keep up.  Sometimes literally, sometimes with his words, with behaviour, eating, skills and play. He wants to copy her and she loves to help him with his reading, or things he struggles with (it used to be zipping his coat up), getting washed or showing him how to dry up a sharp knife without hurting himself.

After years of waving her off at at the door, he couldn’t wait to start school, to do the things she has done.  And one day, as I keep hinting, he will be faster than her.

SPEED

We always wanted a family, Andy and I.  Not just a child but a family.  And by adopting siblings, we created a ready-made family overnight.  It wasn’t easy, but it’s what being a family meant to us.  Andy and I were a little family; Nibbles and Bubbles were a little family; and then we became a new family of four.

Within six months, we had got over the early wobbles and were finding our feet. But when they ask you at Matching Panel why you want to adopt siblings, don’t say “because it’s quick”!

CONNECTION

They share their very DNA.  They don’t look the same, yet there is something in their make up, a connection beyond skin, beyond looks, beyond shared experiences.  They will always have someone to talk to about being adopted (I might want it to be me, and it might not be).  Someone who understands what it is like to be them.  Nibbles and Bubbles know they belong with each other (and now with us), and they ‘get’ each other in a way that only siblings can.

Being with each other, feels like home.

AND MORE…

The way they play with each other is infectious and before you know it, I am shouting “giddy up” as we canter to school on the back of imaginary unicorns.  They might be double trouble, but they’re also double the hugs, double the happy-tears of pride in their achievements, double the joy, double the giggling at jokes too. With a child in each hand, I feel balanced, rooted through their touch to my life at a whole new level. They have multiplied the love and laughter in our home many, many times over.

It wasn’t until I wrote this list, when I sat down and really thought about all the magical and incredible ways that these two lives, these gorgeous people have added to my family that I really understood what it was that we did when we adopted siblings.  I wouldn’t change it for anything. They are my family and I am their mummy and I have never been prouder.

Happy tears.

Adopting siblings is the best thing I have ever done.  Maybe you could consider it too?

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Siblings Are Sophie’s Choice

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As I walk away with Nibbles, a hollow feeling invades me. It starts small, in an ignorable way, but with every step it grows, louder and more insistent until it’s almost painful.

What Have I Done?

It is the first day of the new term and as capable and organised as I am, I cannot physically be in two places at once. Yet Bubbles starts at junior school today, Nibbles is at infant school and the schools are half a mile apart.

I have abandoned Bubbles in the playground with the hurried consent of another mum.

Abandoned

I have let my “never be late” religion (if you’ve read the book, you’ll know) override the sort of mum I want to be to Bubbles.

I want to be stood with her.  I want to hold her hand and look into her eyes and embed the “it will be okay” thought that sits on the tip of my tongue (perhaps I need to hear that more than she does).

My legs feel like lead. As if every step towards Nibbles being on-time is a betrayal of my daughter. As if I am putting him first, that his needs are more important, demonstrating a blatant form of (blasphemy coming) “favouritism”.

I want to turn back. My gut screams “turn back” in order to untwist the knots within it. I almost turn back. Not just once, but a few strides later, then again as I wrestle with the blisters between my actions and my conscience. I tell Nibbles that I have made the wrong choice, but he reminds me “we don’t want to be late” and I heed his palliative words.

With one of me, and two of them, I cannot be there for both of them at every single event.

Sophie’s Choice

I remember when we’d first adopted the children, and Andy had gone back to work.  Whenever we left the house, I’d be faced with impossible choices, created by the unsafe limbo between the car seats and the shopping trolley, or the car seats and the front door.

I would unbuckle my strap, and get out of the driver’s door.  And open the door nearest the pavement and ask myself – who do I unstrap first?

  • In the car seat, strapped in tight, they were safe and secure.
  • In the hallway, they were safe(ish) and secure.
  • In between those places, in the seconds it took to unload the shopping or their sibling, they were at the mercy of some child-snatcher (or their birth family) who might swoop down the second my back was turned and steal them

Which One Would I Pick?

Whichever child I picked, what did that say about me?

For one would be held tight in the loving arms of their mother and the other one left abandoned in the car, with the door open, the car unlocked, vulnerable and defenceless.

Did I pick Nibbles because at least Bubbles could scream loudly and kick up a fuss that I could understand?  Or because he was youngest?

Or did I pick Bubbles because she was more confident on her feet and could be left to toddle up the path on her own, so I could look after Nibbles who needed me more, whilst effectively abandoning a two-year-old to a solid stone walk-of-death?

The Choice Haunted Me EveryWhere

  • Which child to pick out of the bath first, whilst leaving the other to drown?
  • Which child’s nappy to change first, when they sychronised their poo-xplosions, thus leaving the other child swimming in their own filth?
  • Which child to carry to the safety of the car whilst the other walked out, unsupervised, in front of a two-tonne lorry?
  • Which child’s plate of food to pass first whilst delaying the other for a few seconds of screaming, bawling, “I am starving” distress?
  • Which child to run to first if they played piley-on in the park and both hurt themselves, whilst trying in vain to wrap myself around both and “there there” them in equal measure?
  • If both screamed in different rooms at the same time, who did I run to first?

And everytime I chose I would ask myself if I had chosen that child too often already, if they had already won the “favourite” crown from their sibling, if Bubbles had picked up on the disparity with her observation of every minute detail of my barely adequate parenting.

Like she did with “maybe”. Informing me one day that it never meant “yes” and it always meant “no” and I knew then that she would pick up on every single thing I said and did.

Why is it so hard?

I Denied My Needs As Her Mum

Yet was it really Bubbles that needed me on her first day at school?  I worried she might get upset, that she might be scared, that she might need me. And I let those fears gnaw at me all day after I failed to turn back.

She was smiling and happy at the end of the day, excitedly sharing her day, liking her new teacher (because she rides an electric bike to school) and delighted with her lunchboxes with notes from mummy saying “I love you, have fun xx” and a host of (nutritious) food she loves.

Maybe I’m not ready to let her go. To let her grow up. To let her not need me anymore.

The truth is that I wanted to be stood beside my little girl. To be there for her. To squeeze her hand and let her know that she mattered to me more than a late mark. I am ashamed now of my order of precedent – that an unblemished record of zero late marks made to choose to leave her on that first day.

I will never have that chance again. To be there with her, to stand alongside her proudly as her mum.

I feel bad because I denied what I truly wanted to do. I wanted to turn back. I wanted to recognise my mistake and act on it. To show her (and him) that when I make mistakes, I mend them. But I didn’t.

Why?

Because I didn’t want the grown-ups, who had already seen me leave, watch me come back, as if Bubbles isn’t strong and brave enough to be left alone.  I worried more that the mums and days would think of me if I turned around than what my daughter thought of me. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Never Again

If I had that day again, I would go back. Even just for a few seconds. Just until I was certain she was okay, to let her make the decision, to let her grow at her own pace.

When I get that feeling that I’ve chosen badly, or wish something was different, I will do what I can, as soon as I can to change that decision and mend it. There and then. I will show my children that I am fallible, human, that I don’t know everything and don’t always get things right, and I will show them how to change their mind and learn. Regardless of what anyone else thinks or says or mumbles to others under their breath.

For I didn’t deny her needs that day.  I denied mine.

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