Nickey, Nickey and Tony, Fiona, Louise, Kerry, Hollie, Roddy and Alex, Julie and Nick, Simon , Avril, Segun and Seyi , Kerry and Amerjeet, Collette and Adam, Zoe, Jessica, and Robert and Marilyn mention family
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“I forget that I didn’t have her when she was a baby”
“when I wasn’t very successful with various relationships I just decided I wanted to adopt ”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“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.”
How is it being a single adopter?
“I love him enough for a mother, father, aunty, uncle”
How did you go about looking for your child?
“And I used to watch all the programmes on telly where they used to reunite people. Hoping, and, you know, I wanted it to be me.”
How did you feel when you met your adoptive family?
“I did want to live with my parents, which hurt me because I got took off my family and lost all my family where they’ve all had to go in different places like children’s home and everything like that.”
What were the hardest things for you about being adopted?
“Sometimes I feel pushed out of the family which they don’t push me out the family but that’s how I feel in my heart because I know I’m not their daughter”
How are adopted children different from birth children in your experience?
“when you adopt, you’re not just adopting a child which isn’t yours, you’re adopting somebody else’s child”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“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”
Is adoption what you expected it to be?
“We’re a little community and we hope to build that community with another adopted child in the future”
“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”
How did it feel when they first came to your house?
“ 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”
What are the brilliant things about adopting?
“‘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”
How did your adoptive parents help you to come to terms with being adopted?
“My parents helped me overcome my trauma of before my adoption by always being there for me, and never giving up on me, and always loving me.”
How do your emotions over your past play out?
“...now that I look back on it, I feel like I could have behaved in a more positive way, but I don’t recall… I don’t recall…you know… I needed help. ”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“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. ”
What would you say to anybody thinking about adoption?
“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”
Do you think you can love an adopted child in the same way people love a birth child?
“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. ”
Why was your child matched with you?
“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…”
Is it strange to ultimately look after someone else's child?
“...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”
How was the first time you met your birth family?
“and then kind of stared at each other for a little while and just seeing, well I was looking at them to see where my looks came from ”
Have you found out what your cultural heritage is?
“when I met them I found out that my Mum is from Singapore and my Dad is English”
How do you tend to introduce a child to new parents?
“...so they start taking over the routine of the child during those introductions. There’s a review half way through to see how things are going and at that point a decision is made as to when would be an appropriate time for the child to move in.”
“When the youngest of our oldest children went off to university, Marilyn got a very bad case of empty nest syndrome. ”
How did your extended family feel when you told them you had decided to adopt?
“...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.”
What is the hardest thing about adopting?
“...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. ”
What are the brilliant things about adopting?
“ 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”