See videos that mention adoptive children, parents, positive, and lonely
“I was adopted when I was 6 weeks old, and ever since I was a teenager I decided that I would adopt.”
“when I wasn’t very successful with various relationships I just decided I wanted to adopt ”
“...you just have to draw a line with that sometimes and move on and that’s what we decided to do”
“...we couldn’t have a kids of our own and then maybe adoption was a way to go to achieve our purpose. ”
“So, we looked into the possibilities of adoption and when we started actually going through the process we’d – we actually decided that that was the best solution. That was exactly what we wanted. And actually almost became a preference, didn’t it f”
“ I learnt all about adoption and the fact I could adopt despite being single and also I could give up work and there would be an adoption allowance to help me adopt.”
“...we had a baby that was stillborn and we had several miscarriages as well. We’d decided that originally we were going to foster as we didn’t think we could adopt birth children and we went through the fostering process, got to the end of the process”
“ ...it was harder to conceive naturally. We went down the IVF route for about four years and were unsuccessful so adoption seemed to be the next step. ”
“...we went through years of infertility treatment and… decided right early on that if things didn’t work out then we would try to adopt and decided to be placed on a waiting list”
“So it was just really because we didn’t want our son to be an only child.”
“It was better for her to be adopted rather - to have a mummy and daddy rather than have guardians for the rest of her life, which was the decision to go ahead and adopt. ”
“...it’s very important not to adopt because you couldn’t conceive… as the sole reason. It’s, it’s no substitute for child birth but it’s an amazing experience on its own.”
“When the youngest of our oldest children went off to university, Marilyn got a very bad case of empty nest syndrome. ”
“...adoption seemed like a way of getting a baby instead of getting a bill”
“I didn’t think we had a chance actually of adopting when I first started, I thought, ‘Well, you know, we were…I was too old or…”
“And I was actually surprised at how much…how well Sandra knew me by the end of the process.”
“As it went on, it felt like free counseling a little bit rather than… people sort of probing and us getting defensive”
“...you had to start digging in to issues that probably as a person you haven’t dealt with before in the past – but I think the advantage for us is that we went in to the whole process with the attitude that we would do whatever we needed to do to adop”
“ Because there are so many mixed race children waiting for adoption once we were sort of approved as adopters, the child had already been chosen”
“And so it’s a wonderful process to explore both your own history as a child and what you’d like to continue in the parenting and what you’d like to do differently.”
“We’re foster carers so we’ve had lots of children over the years, we’ve been fostering for ten years, and these two children arrived three and a half years ago and we just can’t part with them.”
“...we were just sort of sitting there, sort of jibbering wrecks going ‘Oh my God…you know, these children are totally beautiful. And we could never have made more beautiful children than what we’ve seen here today.’”
“And when we’d found out that, you know, that it was gonna be us we said well, yeah ok, when can we have them? And they said we have to really wait ‘til they’re six weeks old and… my husband, Steve, was having none of it and said ‘no I want them ”
“she’d obviously been very well prepared by her foster carer and it was ‘Hi mum and dad, you’re late!’ ”
“By the time we left, they…we were only there for about an hour and…by the time we left, they were calling us mummy and daddy. Which we weren’t expecting at all.”
“They’d told me he liked football so I’d got him a football and he’d got me some flowers.”
“It was very scary. You have this little creature in the back of the car in a car seat and you almost get out of the car and forget to take him into the house. ”
“She’d sat there saying ‘what if they don’t like us?’, ‘what if they don’t want us?’, and, and it was lovely to be able to share that conversation that, that we had felt exactly the same way too. ”
“ ...meeting someone who you had wanted to meet for so long, but not wanting to crowd his world ”
“...just played with his toys and he was happy wasn’t he, and it kind of grew from there…but that first day was stunning. ”
“And then when we were leaving, both of them brought out their little toys that they’d had, which was the only thing they owned, and made us put them in the car so we would take them home to wait for them. They’d only just met us but then they thought ”
“it was… an odd experience ‘cause we’d seen her, we’d seen many pictures of her, but there, there she was in the flesh the first time. And… it was… it wasn’t difficult but it was quite odd as to what you do. It was like being introduced to…”
“And the questions got progressively deeper, and you were thinking OK so this is from a seven and eight year old and then came the jaw-dropping question, “Do you two sleep together?” ”
“I forget that I didn’t have her when she was a baby”
“In fact, in some respects, I think I probably love her more because I feel so honoured to have been given the opportunity to be a mum. Whereas, you know, many people kind of fall into motherhood.”
“I think it’s easy to get hung up about biology. Just ‘cause this child is not related to you by blood doesn’t mean that you can’t love them as much. That’s completely rubbish, you know. You just, you have a child, you care for that child, you lo”
“Yeah right now I would say without any doubt in my mind that I can love them both – I don’t love our adopted son any differently”
“I’ve also got a birth son who’s grown up and I don’t’ feel any differently towards these 2 than I do to him not in the slightest there’s absolutely no difference. ”
“ I can honestly say hand on heart we do love him as much as we do our own. Obviously in certain ways because of their ages, one will drive you mad one day, and one will drive you mad the next, but the bottom line is they are loved both the same definitel”
“I think that love is… a thing that is special for each person. And it doesn’t, to me, as a foster carer, as an adopter and as a birth mother, I’ve loved each child for who they are. ”
“They’ve had a past life, they want to talk about their birth parents, and their families, and what they had for Christmas or where they went to see fireworks, or what school they went to. You can’t just cut that off.”
“I didn’t want to adopt because I couldn’t have my own and I wanted to sort of wipe out their past, you know their past is very important to them and I wanted to enhance their lives as much as possible, so what better than more family rather than less”
“Mum and dad, they’re the people that have looked after me. I’ve only grown up only knowing them as my mum and dad and my sister as my sister, so why should it… why should it be any different? I’ve got, got a good home. And… That’s all that mat”
“Make sure that you’ve got plenty of good friends who are supportive, because you’re gonna need them.”
“So I would say go for it, you are going to give a child a life, a home and love and I don’t think there is anything more than love ever in the whole world”
“And don’t wait, don’t think we’ll put it off and we’ll wait for a few years, just do it!”
“ But, you know, then she says ‘Oh so you don’t like having babies in your tummy,’ And I’m going, ‘No…that’s not the reason why you came to live with me, it was because your…your…the two people that created you couldn’t actually look af”
“I would try not to be jealous, and try to be quite grown up about it, but, you know, I’m sure there will always be, there thinking ‘Oh, I hope she doesn’t love them more than me’.”
“They may or may not want to seek out the birth parents. Whether they do or not, you have to accept has got really no relevance, it doesn’t reflect on you or your parenting abilities… It is something they will feel the need to do, or not do, and so sup”
“...if you’ve always been open with them they’ll always talk to you about it rather than have that worry that if they search for their birth parents that its going to upset you which a lot of people tend to do but yeah that’s part and parcel of adopt”
“A lot of people really didn’t understand it, they all thought it was a bit weird. And, they…they were sort of concerned about how, ‘how’s it going to impact on your ability to do your job.’”
“ I did find I waited obviously a lot longer for a child to be matched or placed with me. I’m not saying that’s because I was single, but…it did take about five years”
“the social worker who first came to see me said well I am really going to put you through your paces and make sure you are sure about this”
“I love him enough for a mother, father, aunty, uncle”
“But my daughter didn’t speak all the way home, which was a good hour, you know. And it was kinda quite tense, so we.. we spent the journey home singing nursery rhymes, and trying to fill those quiet pauses and stuff. ”
“ And they wanted all see their bedrooms and see everything. And we’d, we’d also taken time to bring some of their things with us so that in their bedroom they had their… their teddies and their toys and some clothes and things like that so that th”
“I brought him back home and the friend put all his luggage in the house and then said good-bye to me and I shut the door and I had this terrible feeling of panic,”
“ ...his foster mum called him and when I think about it I sort of choke up, his foster Mum called him and said well Joshua these are your new parents…”
“...the bond developing and the trust developing, and the love developing between a new born baby and the birth parents… And that…and I always feel quite envious, and quite jealous that…you know, that we missed out on doing that with our children, bu”
“...birth children have that continuity from birth, they are the centre of someone’s universe. Adopted children didn’t have that, so there’s always this sense that they were thrown away, like rubbish.”
“it was a sort of list of illnesses and disabilities and… and background situations that a child may, or may not, have. And it was really hard, a process… to fill in, because it really confronted you very, very directly with, with the type of child tha”
“when you adopt, you’re not just adopting a child which isn’t yours, you’re adopting somebody else’s child”
“if, say for instance there had been a Thai child waiting in… in our area, for adopting, we would never have been allowed to adopt that child. Now, that seems a little but crazy to us”
“I am not one of those at all that says that you should not under any circumstances have a transracial adoption because I think that would be patently absurd”
“We’re a little community and we hope to build that community with another adopted child in the future”
“And our adopted son sat there one afternoon and he just said ‘Dya know, it’s all about trust, isn’t it? This is all about trust and getting to know each other’. And we were just completely gob smacked by that…”
“...you feel as low as you can possibly get and why on earth did I do this and you need somebody with you, or you can phone up if you haven’t got a partner, to say you’ll get through this. At times both of us have felt like this, what on earth did we d”
“one thing you have to be very good at doing when you’re a prospective adopter is waiting. Because you spend an awful lot of time doing it.”
“But we saw a little girl and Bob came home and said ‘she’s fantastic’, you know, ‘she … she would be really great in our family’, and I was saying ‘yes, however, we’re quite old and she’s only five’.”
“you’re not just adopting a child you’re adopting a country. You’re adopting that culture. And it’s up to you to keep that child in contact with that country, with their culture, to make them feel that they have ownership of that”
“And you’ll think ‘oh no, no, no, I can’t possibly do that because I haven’t got the skill’. Nobody is born with that skill, everybody learns that skill with the child. ”
“And both sets they will have letterbox contact, which is classed as indirect contact, twice a year… with both, both grannies.”
“It’s also a direct way for the children to be reassured that their birth mother is still well, and equally for her to see the children are still being fed.”
“...the interesting thing is it is a bit like marrying in to a family they are a bit like in-laws, you adopt and they are in-laws and so Christmas, Birthdays you contact each other and wish each other well ”
“...it’s so helpful. It doesn’t in anyway detract from our relationship with the child. It adds to it. It is not a threat. It’s just, makes the child feel slightly more at one with the world. ”
“...they will naturally type in birth families details at some point and find them, so it is a worry now for us and I don’t really think it is so much of a worry as when they are eighteen…”
“...little Jonny followed by little Jenny, running around in a grassy meadow. Life’s not like that. There is a lot to gain by adopting a special needs child.”
“I can’t imagine that I do feel less close to my children or less fond of them because they are adopted, they are very wonderful people and they have taught me a lot about being a mother and they have needed me in that way,”
“He believes that everyone around him adores him, which is true. So, he’s… in a way, emotionally much easier to look after and we just have to deal with his medical problems”
“We wanted to try and adopt an Indian baby, for obvious reasons. ”
“this child comes to you and they are their own person and you have to respect that. But also, it makes it easier not to put all of your stuff on to them. You know, all… load them with your expectations, or… or worry that their, their characteristics a”
“...the last eight years we’ve been trying for the next step, if you like, which is a baby. I think, in reality, we’re thinking well, if we take on a child at the age of 46, when we are in our late 50’s our child will be doing his or her 11+ and all ”
“And it was at that point we realised a lot of people were feeling what we were thinking now, feeling that three years ago but they were too scared to tell us because they didn’t want to spoil our… our enthusiasm. ”
“...we’ve really, always wanted to have a big family and having brothers and sisters was important to us. Interestingly enough, having four children it meant that the… the power balance in our, in our house to begin with was… had changed because ther”
“they don’t feel like somebody else’s children. They’re our children.”
“ ...you don’t look at it as somebody else’s child. I never, I never did. It was strange, it was just immediate bond with both of them”
“...when you get a child of 8 months who you’ve only known a few days, you don’t know them in depth, but you soon do. We know, it’s just as if he’s been there from the beginning you know, crease on his face, little pimples, so all of a sudden you t”
“‘Oh wow, so we’ll be like normal children’, and it suddenly dawned, dawned on me that our children didn’t feel at that point that they were like all the other children because normal children don’t have a social worker and don’t have to have a”
“Adoption is adoption and that child has the same status as a child who is born to you, birth parents can’t ask for them back and in just the same way, you have a right to get on with your own life, so yes you can have relationships, social services have”
“But we went in and they were asleep and their beds were next to each other with their arms round each other. And that was fantastic to see and now they’re best friends.”
“ And the younger girl too. She, she often cuddles us and says ‘I love you’ and that’s... In fact, although I, I’ve spoken about them having a lot of behavioural problems, in some ways they are quite loving, and very polite and quite perfect childr”
“ I was lying down on the sofa and I thought what on earth am I doing with somebody else’s baby here – it just seemed completely wrong, you know I had no bond ”
“It was really difficult in fact it came to about the seventh day I got home I was emotionally exhausted I cried all night I thought he didn’t like me”
“It was like ‘Ah, everything’s over’. It was just the start of a new life really… with just the little bits of trauma to come.”
“...we are not exactly from the same part as Africa so I think he was matched with us because of his circumstances and his looks and there is quite a lot of things that relate to us ”
“I was very insistent that the children would look like us as well because I didn’t sort of want the child growing up and people at school saying is that your dad or your mum because you don’t look like them…”
“We are all white. And she says things like ‘I don’t fit in’. And ‘I’m not the same as everyone else’. And we deal with this by talking to her and trying… trying to make her proud of her ethnicity”
“...you might want to consider this little boy was because he was black/British mixed race and white/Italian and my husband is white Italian and so it was adoption Bingo! ”
“I don’t think there was any one specific time when I, when it kind of clicked that I was adopted. I mean… It’s, it’s always been the normal, normal thing for me.”
“Go for it! It’s… The process of actually going through the adoption interviews is quite tough. But if you… if you’re committed and, you know, you want a positive outcome then it’s definitely worth all the questions and the probing”
“...he refused to allow her to go back unless she gave you up for adoption. Because he couldn’t deal with two children that weren’t his basically. ”
“I was about ready to give it up, it really deflated me. It really upset me and it was Collette who said no, come on let’s keep going…”
“I had George Galloway on my back and all sorts of things and I thought, man having social workers, and IVF- which we had recently finished and George Galloway and so we did give up on adoption until well I lost the election ”
“We were concerned because he’d obviously been with us for 13 years himself, but we made the right decision because at 13 he was getting a bit more independent and he was desperate for a brother or sister and actually he has been fine.”
“ I think it depends on the needs of the child doesn’t it and what age group and things, but I mean even our baby is going to be included in the contact once a year at the moment until he gets older.”
“What it was like to just be left on the floor and not fed and not given toys and not given love.”
“...we hope that, with understanding, they can lead their own lives in a competent way and look after their own children and break the cycle. ”
“...you are always told – don’t over-compensate for their past but it is always in the back of your mind that they have been through such difficult times, that now when they fall on hard times you try and soften it a little bit for them.”
“...the elder children were, were wonderful. Absolutely wonderful about it. I mean, obviously they, they talked about it and they needed to be reassured that they wouldn’t be cut out of our lives.”
“I don’t think I knew how to react to it properly. Everything that had happened and now the fact that I.. I was settled and had something and, you know, I had love, and… you know, a family. ”
“...I hope it will be a really positive experience for our family to bring out all the different cultures and heritage with all our kids …”
“oh Dad I haven’t told them that we are G A Y yet and we have had a whole conversation about well actually you are not, but me and Daddy are, so he is kind of coming to terms with that,”