It seems like only yesterday that our social worker was with us last. But it was appointment number 6 yesterday and our home work was submitted in plenty of time.
The topics of conversation were our experiences of children and working with children in whatever capacity and setting and how we expect our lives to change once we have children. I have to admit this was the easiest piece of home work I think I have done so far as it is all so subjective.
The first bit was short and simple. We both have a little bit of experience from our pasts but we are not child care professionals. Andrew's experiences are based around his time with the children of family and friends. My experiences are a bit different as we have no children in my immediate family (I don't have a lot of immediate family really) and most of my friends are just starting to have children and many are not that local to me so I don't often get to spend a lot of time with them. My experiences come from voluntary work. First from helping my Mum out at the school she worked at by helping in the classroom and on class trips and then more recently at a school local to me as a Reading Buddy (a scheme run by our local city council) but mainly as a volunteer coach for a trampoline club.
The trampoline club was something I was involved with for about 2 - 2.5 years and something I really enjoyed and was sorry to have to stop when I moved away. It had been set up by parents for children with special needs and their siblings (who have their own special needs) and was attended by up to 20 children a week with wide ranging abilities and requirements.
The second element of the discussion was a lot more practical and a lot more subjective. There is no way we can say what might change with the exception of saying that life will change - a lot most likely and we are going to have to reassess our priorities and make sure that our children come first. Do I think we will need to be more organised? Not really, I am already an organised person and leave little to spontaneity but I guess I will be organising differently.
There were plenty of examples like what would you do with a child with fussy eating habits, how you manage an angry child and what sort of things could you consider for children with a range of needs including learning difficulties, communication problems and various medical conditions. Our experiences have stood us in good stead to answer the questions but it is easy to answer a question, I wonder how easy it will be to out everything into practise when we have a screaming child in front of us. I guess only time will tell.
It feels so much more real know that we are finally talking about children - what sort of children are out there and we might be considered for as well as those we might consider, what sort of parents we would want to be for them and what we would do to support them. It is all very exciting especially as I can almost see the end of our assessment process.
Home for this week was to look at how we would deal with various issues in a age specific way, issues like temper tantrums, fussy eating, bed wetting and swearing along with starting to draft some ideas as to what children we would or would not consider and why on a draft version of our PAR (Prospective Adopters Report). I expect the second element to this homework to be difficult as it is a sensitive subject which we did discuss yesterday. Luckily our social worker was very understanding and confirmed that we are asked these things to make the best possible match for the children involved which I completely understand. I do think that these things are swaying me towards younger children as they do have am element of the unknown about them and should issues arise we will manage as we would for a birth child.
Roll on next week and out next appointment . . . . .
