Roving

Hoodwinked is perhaps too strong a word, but I am feeling a little hoodwinked. Saying that raises the spectre of a tricky conversation that won't perhaps reflect that well on me.

I entered into the Adoption Contract in good faith, and this week I'm feeling a little hoodwinked as the dawning realisation of the enduring and lifelong challenge that is set before the good MrsC and I is revealed. Of course details can't be shared but I now see that my short to medium turn future remains fundamentally restrained and challenged in a way that my peers aren't experiencing. It's been a funny week, I've social worked a social worker, negotiated a truce, staved off financial disaster and spent the bank holiday roving the lanes of Northumberland like a cross between Liam Neeson in Taken and Basil Fawlty. So, I'm living out all my resilience theory and then some (see Rutter's thoughts on Steeling)

Of course, I took these children as my own to raise, love and cherish. And we've done that and as we would with a biological child, we've rolled with the punches, literally, stepped up to the challenge and done what we can and should like ever other parent that ever had children. There's no doubt that we'll continue to do so.

But dare I say it, 20 years on from my preparation group I can't help feel a little burned. Why? well I'm not sure. I'd change nothing and I love them dearly but I can't help feel that I've been a pretty cheap solution to some really complex problems. Ah, now that's something you can't say as it cast a pretty big question mark over my motivation and values. Well cast on, I'll show you my scars, physical and emotional, but it's true that I'm looking again at that Adoption Contract. The support I received withers' pretty quickly post 18 and I'm looking for solutions or answers that the system is not geared up to have.

The Adoption Contract  is that you take them as your own come what may? I'm cool with that. Well kind of cool, but I've no recollection of this level of adversity being laid out in plain English. Don't get me wrong, it's not all doom and gloom but we're literally the living case study for Selwyn's rule of thirds.

I'm always reluctant to fall into adoption moaner blog, but I find myself in uncharted territory. My friends raise their eyebrows and exhale when I talk to them. So be it. Roving