We’re at the end of National Adoption Week in the UK.
Adoption changed our lives 5 years ago when our “housemates” moved in, they were aged 1 and 3.
It was and is relentless, as all parenting is.
Parenting adopted kids comes with a few extra challenges. Most adopted kids have additional needs, parenting styles are often different to allow for those.
5 minutes on a naughty step means jack sh1t if you survived on your own for a couple of days.
In-utero and early life trauma means they experience some aspects of life differently.
As adoptive parents, we’ve personally studied brain development, brain chemistry, trauma and psychology, and movement based therapies to re-parent them to give them, their systems and minds the opportunity to make up for early development that has been missed.
When people discover we’ve adopted, they often say we’ve done a good thing, giving our kids an opportunity to thrive.
In some ways we have, the life they have with us is very different to the life they may have had.
However, we wanted children and nature didn’t agree; without adoption, being parents wasn’t an option.
In our non-DNA matched family we prove love and nurture wins over nature on a daily basis.
Every day is a new challenge and experience, some amazing and some exhausting.
If nature isn’t working for you and you want to be a parent, adoption can be a great choice.
Don’t be put off by the horror stories about going through the process of being assessed and scrutinised, it simply preparation for when you have kids and they scream at you to wipe a bum when you’re trying to have a coffee while it’s still warm.
Without our kids, I would have had people looking at me strangely as I drove to confers today in my spider-man costume with my side kick sat next to me.
Whatever, your route to being a parent is, be a great one.
Darren “Spidey” Checkley
