Adoption Experience

“When the youngest of our oldest children went off to university, Marilyn got a very bad case of empty nest syndrome. ”

“...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.”

“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…”

“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”

“...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. ”

“...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 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”

“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’.”

“ 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”