“We recently had our daughter’s first birthday! That is, her first birthday with us. She just turned six, it was fantastic!
We’re now nine months into our forever family story and it’s a good point to reflect and think about our journey.
Why adopt an older child?
We made the decision to adopt an older child as we love being out and about, walking, travelling plus we both work.
Adoption for us was a positive choice to expand the troop and not for any biological reason, it was a luxury really to be able to choose a child a little bit older who fits into our lifestyle so well. We were approved for children aged 2 – 5, and as we worked through the process it became clear that the older the child, the more you know about their history, their behaviours and their quirks.
There is so much testimony from teachers, social workers and foster Carers which paints such a holistic picture.
We feel totally privileged to have our little girl in our lives. She has so much character and makes us laugh everyday! Our daughter moved from quite a busy foster home to just having us two and our dog.
I think having that one to one attention has helped her thrive; she has settled so well. With her being older she can articulate her emotions to a certain extent.
We speak quite honestly about her life story because she remembers she has siblings, she has moved area and schools.
There are so many people who she had in her life who aren’t there anymore and it was important for us to empathise and allow her space to grieve for those people and places.
Time together as a family is so important..
She called us ‘mammy’ and ‘daddy’ from day one; there was a sense that she was really ready to settle into her forever family.
We took shared parental leave which allowed us both to be off together, I would really recommend this as it gives you a chance to catch your breath and sleep! That combined with lockdown has meant we’ve all been together 24/7 which is time bonding we wouldn’t have ordinarily got.
We don’t see many behaviours that aren’t age appropriate at the moment but we also understand that these things can arise unexpectedly.
What we do know is that we have the support of Yorkshire Adoption Agency to deal with this as and when we need to.
Adopters are amazing!
People tell us we’re doing a really good thing, but we see it as we’re the lucky ones, we’re on this amazing, unpredictable journey with our daughter who is so deserving of love, opportunity, education, fun and life certainly isn’t boring! We can’t imagine her not being in our lives, even though we haven’t been a family very long, we still get to experience lots of ‘firsts’.”
Joanne, Adoptive Mum
