last homestudy next week

Where has the time gone? Tuesday will be our last homestudy visit before Bonnie goes off to write up the PAR. I have been so busy at work that I have forgotted to update the blog so I haven't commented properly on the last visit. We again talked about parenting and really started talking in detail about what issues we would think we could cope with in a child. This is hard because your first instinct is to say 'I could cope with anything' as you cannot bear to think that these gorgeous kids should stay looked after. Then reality and practicality set in and you have to be realistic. I thought about the things I couldn't cope with when flip was younger and the biggy for me is sleep. In that I need it. Lots of it. Well, at least a regular 8 hours worth. I can cope with less occasionally so long as I get chance to catch up but I get really short tempered, stressy and unpleasant if sleep is lacking and would not want to be like this with our new child. Which brings us back to profiles. How do you decide whether one child who is 'full of energy' is not ADHD when other profiles actually state ADHD? etc. etc. So I started looking at the 'sleeps well' children thinking that even if they are energetic, at least we can all crash out together.

We are very open to considering children with disabilities so long as they are not so severe as to need one of us to be at home full time - no point in adopting if we can't pay the mortgage and provide a home! Which brings me onto the curveball. At the end of the session Bonnie handed us a pile of extended profiles sent to the agency by other SWs around the country. These were for us to look at and discuss in detail as to whether we thought we could consider any of them. Came away not knowing if this was an exercise or not (Bonnie said it was) but some friends who were on our prep course had the same only their SW indicated it wasn't an exercise..... and of course we have seen a profile for a little dumpling who has taken our breath away.

What to do?

parenting

At our last meeting with Bonnie we started to talk about parenting skills & styles and how we thought parenting an adopted child might be. I suppose you could say I have an advantage as I aleady have Flip, but I must admit I feel like I have had an easy ride with him. We had the usual teenage moods and sulks, but no drink/drugs or other worrying behaviours and on the whole he didn't do anything that caused us any great stress or worry. We know that this is not likely to be the case with an adopted child due to the trauma in the background of any child who has been taken into the care system. So we talked through a few different approaches to parenting but on the whole we know that we are likely to have to adapt our parenting style as and when a child is placed and once we know from the foster carers what is likely to work and what definitely doesn't!

To aid us in this we have been looking at back issues of BMP and CWW to look at childrens' profiles and discuss how we might approach parenting or what we feel the isssues are likely to be. Not easy. But on the whole I think we are beginning to get an idea of the issues we can and can't deal with. And by looking at the profiles separately and then coming together to discuss we have been able to see where we are in agreement and where we differ in what we think we could cope with.

We have also started redecorating the bedroom which currently looks as pictured above. Yes that is daylight coming through the walls and yes it is a bigger job than expected, but at least it will all be done by the end of March. Some remedial work to be done to beams by our carpenter and then it should be a fairly quick job to finish. Tell me, does anywhere sell childproof plasterboard......?