Our Blog of the Week this week comes from Adopt and Keep Calm who looks back at the transitioning of her soon to be adopted son into her family.
The post – ‘Transition…looking back’ gives us an insight into not only her own experience, but what it must have been like for the little boy that soon would call her Mummy.
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Bonzo toddled into my life when he was 2yrs 3mths old.
I had had time to think about, discuss, chew over, over think, and get on, move forward with my decision to adopt. It was my choice. He was also my choice.
Bonzo however, had no time to think, no understanding and no choice.
He had by the time I met him had more ‘homes’ than I have had in 40 years, and certainly more confusion.
Then one Friday afternoon several people came to what he thought was his home. The home where he had lived with people who had loved him (I hope) for the previous 9 months. A couple of them he will of recognised, one of them was me, his new Mummy (who he won’t have recognised, I had seen him fleetingly months before). We sat and discussed when and how the following week would go.
The week of transition. For me, but mainly for him.
It was decided I only needed 5 days of intros. I had experience with children, knew how to change nappies and run a bath. What Bonzo needed didn’t seem to come into the chat. So, that Friday afternoon, around his foster carers dining table his immediate future was mapped out. It should’ve been minimum 7 days but the weekend was too busy for his foster carer to fit intros in, so 5 days it was.
This is roughly how it went
Mon – I arrive mid morning, a little boy with blonde hair and blue eyes opens the door (with his FC) and says ‘Hello Mummy’. I play with Bonzo, watch him eat his lunch and then go home as he heads for his nap. (something else I didn’t need to practice, so wasn’t in the intros agenda. I thought it was for the child’s sake, not mine, that I put him to bed?)
Tuesday – I arrive mid morning and we go to the park together. I take my first photo of him, followed by many more. I take him back to his FC and this time I am allowed to put a sandwich on his plate. I then go home and he goes for his nap. Late afternoon he comes to visit me in his ‘new home’. We have drinks & flapjack and after an hour or so he goes back with the FC.
Weds – Similar as Tuesday only I take him to the park on my own. And to the corner shop where we buy a football. It is nearly as big as him, but his smile is huge and we happily play in the park for an hour or so before I go home.
Thursday – FC brings him over to my flat and leaves him, comes and collects him just after lunch.
Friday – I go and collect him mid morningish and he stays all day at my house.
Saturday & Sunday – no visits. FC have a busy schedule on Saturday and Sunday is the ‘goodbye’ day.
Monday morning – 10am -this comparative stranger, who Bonzo knows as ‘Mummy’, turns up again. This time, he and a bin liner full of stuff are loaded into my car, and we are off.
Bonzo’s new life begins.
Now, how we expect a child, with no understanding of what is going on to cope with that beggars belief. At the time I didn’t think about it too much – I just got on doing what I had been told to do. When I look back now and see the sadness in his eyes it is hard to take in. Did he understand what was happening? Of course he didn’t. To him it was just another change in his hectic, muddled life. Did he complain. Not a bit.
Does it explain where his Insecure Attachment issues come from. I think so. Not just that transition, but the others he had gone through too. Some planned, some emergency – all too much change & upset for 1 little boy.
Bonzo has seen his Foster carer twice since. Once about 6 weeks later and once around a year later – I was keen to keep in touch. Now it it just Christmas news.
It is no wonder he thinks I am about to disappear, it is no wonder that he panics and behaves like a, well, like I don’t know what, when unknown people come to visit. He clearly thinks they are going to steal him away.
After all, in his innocent eyes, that is just what I did.
