The beginning

Where do I start? At the beginning I suppose. Just over three years ago we became the proud adoptive parents of a little girl. A little girl who was two weeks away from her second birthday so you can imagine what a massive impact the first little fox cub made on our lives. For reasons of protecting her identity I will refer to her as Girl.

Girl was removed from her natural parents at birth and placed with foster carers who clearly did care for her in some respects but with family and personal issues of their own they failed in their care of her. Girl's adoption was delayed by almost a year due to concerns with her development, mostly we believe now caused by lack of stimulation and interaction and a certain amount of neglect of care. After many tests and consultations with experts we took Girl on knowing that she had an uncertain future, that she might catch up with her development or she may need to attend special school, nobody could say for sure but when we saw that first photo of her we could see a sparkle in her eyes and we fought tooth and nail to go ahead with the adoption. Three years on and outwardly Girl displays as being quite 'normal' whatever that means, inwardly though that first two years of care has made quite an impact, both emotionally and developmentally and we are currently working with post adoption support workers to help us cope with her issues.

Being suckers for punishment, last year we adopted a little boy, our second fox cub (I shall call him Boy) and he is now also weeks away from his second birthday so you can imagine the chaos in our house at times.

With this blog I hope to offer an insight into what it is like to live with a child with an attachment disorder, adoption issues and good old fashioned parenthood. I don't pretend to be any kind of expert on any of the issues, I talk regularly with other adopters, I have read a lot of books (which I will tell you about), picked up a lot of tips, tried a lot of things (some have worked some haven't) and if anything I can share can help you then that's good enough for me.