Transitions tend to be tough for adopted children (and a number of neurodivergent kids too for that matter).

After a reasonably calm summer holidays, the start of term has been BUMPY. And ROUGH.

S has had to get to know an entirely new set of teachers (only 1 of her teachers from Year 7 is still her teacher this year, leaving around 14 new staff that she has to get to know and make them like her, which is exhausting for her emotionally). Friendships were somewhat rocky at the end of last year and she now has to repair and mend various relationships.

All of which leads to a delightful, engaged, helpful, lovely child at school and an angry, sullen, pissed-off teenager at home. It ALL comes out at home, mostly directed at me, right in my face, all the time, and it’s pretty hard work.

Reasons I have been yelled at in the last two weeks include:

• Buying the wrong type of sweetcorn for dinner
• Suggesting she might want to wear tights as she was cold the day before and the weather has turned chilly
• Not doing the laundry fast enough or correctly
• Buying her the wrong blazer/shoes/tights/skirts/hair bands/deodorant etc
• Asking her if she would like me to make her breakfast, getting a grumpy “I’m not hungry!” response, and then not making her breakfast
• Gently reminding her to do her homework
• NOT reminding her to do her homework in a timely manner, so it’s my fault it didn’t get done

She is always very apologetic and remorseful after the yelling and rudeness but it gets hard to manage when it’s so relentless. After a week or so of gliding over these incidents I started to really lose my temper too, and the apologies get less and less meaningful when she says sorry and then is immediately rude again 2 mins later.

The aggression and anger builds up and gets worse, and now thanks to a huge teenage tantrum I have 2 broken shelves in my brand new fridge and I am pretty pissed off and angry myself about it all.

Hoping things will ease up soon but it’s pretty grim and miserable just at the moment.

The part I find hardest is being the grown up and forgiving and forgetting – right now I’m too angry and upset to just forgive and move on – I know I will eventually get over it, it’s just a bit of plastic, it’s just a fridge, it doesn’t really matter, but I’m just not capable of shaking these things off that quickly. I wish to god I was. Of course I can order new shelves, I can fix it, it’s not the end of the world. But I’m upset and angry and pissed-off and I don’t want to just forgive it. I just dont feel like it.

And being a parent means you have to anyway.

And it sucks.

July came out of nowhere! How is it July already?

I had a saga this month once again with my ridiculous eyes/vision.

It’s far too long and boring to recount it here so I will try my best to summarise it in the funniest and briefest way possible.

So in June this year I met A’s birth mum.

It was a one-off meeting, organised through social services, in a structured meeting in a neutral place, facilitated by social workers. It’s a meeting I have been asking for and trying to organise for almost 4 years (since A first came home to me).

Why do it?

Lots of reasons. For birth parents it can bring closure and reassurance that they can feel they know the person who will be raising their child. It can give them an opportunity to share some of their history and past, or details about the pregnancy and birth of the child, and to present themselves as a complex human being rather than being seen as a series of unfortunate events/failures written up in social services reports.

For me, it was an opportunity to find out more about A’s birth father, as there was almost nothing at all in the reports to go on. It was a chance to ask about family medical history, any heriditary diseases or issues I might need to know about.

But most importantly, it was an opportunity for me to get to know A’s birth mum as a person.