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.

The 5th March is our official gotcha day as a family. I used to celebrate a date in July when I first met my first daughter, A, but this time last year my older daughter S officially moved in with us and our little family of three was complete.

It feels like it’s been a lot longer than a year in many ways – I can’t quite believe it has ONLY been a year since she moved in!

A LOT has happened since then, and it certainly hasn’t been an easy ride by any stretch, but my god am I glad she’s my kid.

She is such an incredibly bright, funny, cheerful, TALL 11 year-old, and she has enriched our lives in ways it is hard to describe. I am so proud to call her my daughter.

I thought I would write a blog post on this as it’s quite a big subject and we have had some interesting experiences recently.

So, in the UK, in most adoption cases, direct (in-person) contact with birth parents is usually not allowed once adoption is approved by a judge as a course of action. (Unlike in the US where they have open adoptions – this is usually down to the fact that in the US a lot of women give up their children for adoption at birth voluntarily whereas in the UK most children have been removed from their parents by the state due to neglect or abuse – so the safety and trauma of maintaining contact has to be managed in the best interests of the child).

When a child is first removed from a parent’s care, they continue to have visitation and direct contact visits, supervised via social services in a neutral location until a placement order is made (meaning that child will be put up for adoption). Once this decision has been made by a judge to be in the best interest of the child, a final contact visit with birth parents will be arranged, and the parent (and child if they are old enough) will be told this is the last time they can see each other in person.

Being a parent, and especially a single parent, means being all things all of the time, whether you want to or not. It’s a huge responsibility to be the person holding everything together even when sometimes you don’t feel like it.

You are the anchor, keeping everything stable.

You are the Captain, in charge and sure of yourself and your decisions at all times.

You are the navigator, charting a course, figuring out where you are going and how you’re going to get there.

You are the ship itself, keeping everyone safe as you roll around in the stormy weather, reeling and rocking, getting pummelled and battered, while keeping them warm and dry.

You are the activities director, planning all the playdates and football matches and swimming lessons and fun stuff.

You are up the mast clinging to the pole trying to spot any icebergs bearing down upon you, working out if you can avoid them or not, or if you will inevitably have to take the hit.

You are the safe harbour when the outside world is too rough and inhospitable.

You are all of these things, and sometimes, you are also an exhausted human who needs their own safe harbour, and anchor and captain to look after you too.

If you’re lucky enough, you have a support system (or harbour) strong enough to hold you sometimes when you need to dock and refuel, to bolster you ready to head back out to sea and do it all over again.