Alison and Paul Jones have been married for nearly seven years and during that time have opened their home informally to a number of needy individuals, whilst Alison was also a community worker on the estate where they lived.

In 1990 Alison and Paul attended a seminar at Spring Harvest on adoption and their interest was quickened. Later that year they learnt that they would not be able to have children of their own. Paul felt God saying that they should adopt children of school-age. This proved less than easy because Alison has mild MS. However, in May 1992 Joseph (7) and Patrick (6) joined their family as a result of an advert in “Be my Parent”. Their background is of severe neglect and abuse and they had experienced a traumatic foster placement. Despite enormous difficulties the children have made great strides since coming to live with Alison and Paul.

Alison is a magistrate in Inner-London, a parent governor of Patrick's school, co-ordinator of the local PPIAS group and represents parents on two adoption panels. She is also involved in setting up a fellowship group for adults with learning difficulties. Paul is a structural engineer and also helps with Joseph's scouts and cubs group. Church involvement at St Mary's is difficult because of the demands placed on them by Joseph.

Interrobang - the Symbol In the early 70s a youth working in South Africa was reflecting on the discussion groups for young people that he had been leading. As he reflected he doodled, thinking all about the fresh enthusiasm of his young people and the contrast between their obvious enjoyment of many areas of their lives and the pains they all had as they went through the questions of adolescence. They seemed to be two sides of the same person, the questioner (?) and the exclaimer (!). He doodled some more and developed the interrobang symbol:

a coming together of the exclamation mark and the question mark - a statement that for most of us there is a mixture of feelings in our lives: We've worries and our questions, but we also have the things that make us want to sing and shout for joy. Looking back over the last ten months since our children were placed with us it is the interrobang symbol that I want to hold on to the symbol that suggests to me that despair and hope are not mutually exclusive and if I can find a way to hold the two together I can somehow make more sense of the ups and downs of building a family.

PREPARING FOR ADOPTION

When you look back on the preparation for adoption courses it is easy to say “Why didn't they say this?” or “I didn't need to know that”. Retrospectively I'm glad that we were introduced to the possibility of some of the strange behaviour that we have experienced even if our children have not performed in the standard text book way. At the preparation time you are so anxious to get on with the process so that you can ‘get through' the panel and then become a family that you don't always want to know that “in our experience many of the children placed for adoption What you are wanting to know is “From your experience, social worker of my child (yet to be placed) is how we can help our child make sense of their experience?” When you look back on the preparation for adoption courses it is easy to say “Why didn't they say this?” or “I didn't need to know that”.

Retrospectively I'm glad that we were introduced to the possibility of some of the strange behaviour that we have experienced even if our children have not performed in the standard text book way. At the preparation time you are so anxious to get on with the process so that you can ‘get through' the panel and then become a family that you don't always want to know that “in our experience many of the children placed for adoption What you are wanting to know is “From your experience, social worker of my child (yet to be placed) is how we can help our child make sense of their experience?”

EXPLAINING BEHAVIOUR TO OTHERS

In the early days after placement you have questions, and also the moments when you really exclaim and want the world to know that Joe said sorry and admitted he was wrong and that Patrick washed his troll's hair in the bath. To the other parents standing at the school gate neither of these two things seem much to exclaim about but when you know that your children had no experience of toys for the first four years of their lives and that no-one was really around enough to care whether or not they were sorry, you do feel excited. Likewise, when your seven year old screeches like a parrot as the lights go down in the cinema and then swears at you and bites you as you seek to calm him, you can't really go up to the person in the next row and say, “Sorry, this is because our child is frightened of the dark and responds to new situations violently”, because we didn't know that they'd never been to the pictures or that each time we took them somewhere new and outside their experience Joe would start off by either being very loud and aggressive or he would try to avoid the situation by refusing to go or struggling all the way there.

FIRM BOUNDARIES OR FORCEFUL ADULTS?

There have been moments of real questioning, times when I've wondered whether or not I had the patience, understanding or energy to cope. The days when Joe would draw attention to himself by kicking, biting, screaming or swearing literally every ten minutes, when I've had to go on saying, “Stop -come into the time-out chair I know you're angry or scared but you can't respond to it by hurting others”, and when on the way to the time-out chair he would try to stamp on his favourite toy. The days when we would be out with friends and Joe would try to hurt himself by riding his bike into something or by throwing things down. He would try to hurt others by swearing at them or I hitting them. We would intervene but the public or our friend could only see us shouting at him and restraining him - they couldn't see that in the shouting at him to stop and restraining him we were trying to get him to realise that his behaviour does have an effect on others and that he needed to begin to acknowledge that. All those on the outside could see was very directive “forceful” adults trying to get to grips with Joe's behaviour. But for a child who effectively parented himself for nearly eight years learning boundaries has been difficult.

Yet for us the joy has come when he has started to say sorry (we also respond by saying we forgive him) and he has started to regulate his behaviour. At times we can get caught up with questions of “How long will it take?”. “Will I always have to feel embarrassed when I take him to new places?” but in the quieter moments of reflection come the deeper questions, “What must it feel like for Joe to have to experience firm and consistent boundaries?” “How does Joe feel when we take him somewhere and expect him to cope but he can't because it is outside his experience?”

REGRESSION

There have been questions too caused by the times that Joe and Pat have regressed. When they have asked for nappies and a bottle and have used them for a few months at a time (at one point Patrick developed nappy rash and I wondered how I would explain that to a teacher if I was asked - fortunately I wasn't) We know so little about what happened before they came to us, that it is hard to answer out own questions (“Why is Pat so quiet? Why hasn't Pat got any teeth?”)

DOUBTS

Some of the practical questions may never be answered and we struggle to find the answers to the questions we have about the boys' behaviour. We know at times we've struggled with the question of, “Are we the best parents for the boys?” Would other people, parenting differently, have enabled other aspects of the boys' characters to develop?

THOSE SPECIAL MOMENTS

But we know that despite all these questions there have been so many times of !!! I look back through my diary of the special moments we have shares, so many times of joy -Patrick learning to ride a bike and doing the monkey bars, Joseph asking his cab driver on the way to school to forgive him for swearing, seeing the boys relax in the hay jump at the city farm, realising that under all the boys' anger and seeming hardness there is a great sensitivity and a concern to go over to the child crying in the park or wanting to give someone a hug “cause they look sad”.

There've been the special moment of working out traditions as a family and the children beginning to own them: “We always have tea in the living room on Sundays”, “Can I light the family candle tonight?” (we light a candle when the four or us are together at tea); realising that the boys are interested in other people and like asking them questions; times of cycling through the park together and sitting by the fire playing board games; seeing the boys gain confidence and be able to join the swimming club and local youth club; seeing their emotional development - Patrick beginning to hug us and asking us to hold his hand before he goes to sleep, Joe saying sorry more and beginning to talk about “my friend”; the children beginning to be able to play at ‘make-believe' and enjoy it even if it is only for ten minutes.

HOW TO SHARE WITH OTHERS?

In our lives together there have been many times when we've been really thrilled at the boys' development, both physically and intellectually, but especially their social development. As new parents we've wanted to share this with others, but unless our closest friends have had the time and the space to ask themselves why we are so excited about Joe's ability to count to ten or Patrick's confidence in asking friends home for tea, some of our excitement has got lost.

I think that all of parenthood is about the coming together of the hard time and the joyful time -it's just that in adoption the contrast seems to be a lot sharper. For people adopting older children there is no shared history of their early years that enables you to understand why they are afraid of boats or dogs. Nor is there immediate awareness of the steps your children are making because you don't know where they are starting from.

MOVING AHEAD

What I do know and have realised again as I write these thoughts down is that? and ! are not totally contradictory, than even in the times of questioning there are many things we can exclaim about and that the children's experiences and the things that they have given us have helped us to be excited even when we feel we could be defeated. That even the questions lead us to the next area of growth. Personally I look forward to the next ten months and am prepared for the times of confusion that the questions raise because my life is so much richer because of the times of???!!!

 

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