As time goes on in your assessment you almost begin to relax. The natural rhythm of weekly visits moves you closer to the ultimate goal of approval and eventual adoption, but somehow for us the reality of the total change in our life still seemed distant.
Then we went on......the course.
There is a scene in the brilliant film 'Airplane' where an hysterical woman gets slapped round the face in an attempt to calm her down. Then someone else has a go...and then the camera pans back to see a queue of people holding baseball bats, tennis racquets, bottles etc, all lining up to take their turn.
There would come a time on the course where we felt like that woman after the queue had all had a pop.
It's a 3 day course, and it gives you a chance to meet and talk to everyone. Others who are going through the assessment process, social workers, child experts, those who have adopted, and those who have been adopted. Your precious little preconceived ideas become cracked, broken and soon swept away by a tidal wave of cold hard realism.
The first thing we did was meet the others on the course. These were the people who, like us, where working there way through assessment. I was struck by the variety of their stories. A few were the same as us. Couples who could not have a family naturally and had immediately chosen adoption as the best option. There were others who had already had kids and were looking to adopt purely because they felt compelled to give a child a home. And there were some who had tried every single avenue to have their own children. Every treatment had been tried. Every hope had been extinguished. To them adoption was the very last chance they would have of having their own family. I must admit I found these guys the most difficult to converse with. There was a desperation in them. A tension in how they looked and spoke which hinted heavily at the pressure they felt. It wasn't that I didn't like or get on with them. But I felt uncomfortable when my slightly laid back, jokey manner, was contrasted against their heavily focused, deadly seriousness.
The rest of the day was spent in talks with a number of of experts. And it was a complete eye opener. My belief that adopting a baby would be the easy option was soon smashed. It was made clear that there are no undamaged children in the care system...and that includes babies. (I have since learned from experience that this is more than true...believe me!) The seriousness of the damage may vary. The time of when problems occur may vary. The symptoms may vary. But the perfect, trouble free adopted child just does not exist.
Although I felt slightly deflated after the first day I was soon to learn it was a walk in the park compared to day 2.
Day 2 ripped my heart out. When you watch the news or read the paper about the abuse of a child it is heart wrenching, but you can get up and make a cuppa. You can close the paper and go for a walk. You can escape. When there are people sat 6 feet away from you talking about their experiences there is no hiding place. We had stories from social workers, from child psychologists, from adopters/foster carers, and from brave brave people who had been abused as children and now wanted to help by sharing what they had been through. Of all the horrible stories the one that sticks in my mind is from an adopter. She had adopted a young girl who had been taken into care to protect her from her birth father. Social services knew the father was violent towards her but thought that was as far as it went. After many months in her adopted home the girl calmly walked in, sat down at the kitchen table, and started to talk to her adopted mother about the sexual abuse she had been subjected to by her birth father. The adopted mother had to carry on washing up, stay calm so as not to scare her daughter or give her the impression that she was doing anything wrong, and just listen while this small girl unburdened herself of secrets no child should feel they have to keep.
I went into day 3 with a heavy heart. But what an incredible day. Day 2 nearly broke us. I think that was the point. Our social worker told us that if people were going to drop out of the adoption process they usually did it after the course. The reality has to be confronted. The worst case scenarios have to be told honestly and brutally. Adopters may never have to be confronted by terrible issues, but there is a good chance they might. And you have to be able to deal with it. Because who else is there?
But after the depths came the heights. The speakers on day three were mostly adults who had been adopted.These were people who had been confronted by the many different issues adoption brings. They were incredible. The tales were not relentlessly happy, but they all ended on one note. How their lives had been made better by being adopted by good people. How proud they were of their adopted parents. How good people can make a difference to young lives.
People like us.
And we walked out of that gruelling 3 day course thinking that it had been worth it. And that whatever happens in the future has got to be worth it. Hard as it might be.
The fear didn't leave us, but maybe our confidence and resolve grew just a bit.
And so onward to the panel and, hopefully, approval.
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