Supporting transitions - introducing a new home, family and friends.

Our adopted child has had a number of moves in his short life (age 3 when he came home). This is the impact of assessment and circumstance for so many looked after children. For him transitions can be difficult.

Since he has been in our lives, we have had to approach transitions thoughtfully often with support from others. This began for us with his transition into our family. I forget now what advice we had from whom - foster carer/social workers, but it was useful and worked well for our little one so I wanted to share it with you.

In preparing him for us his new family, we did five main things:

1. His transition teddy. We chose a jellycat dinosaur as this seemed to fit best with his interests. At the earliest stage, we gave him his dinosaur so that he could connect it with us. The idea of it being a soft toy rather than another toy was that it was something physical to hold and cuddle and when needed provide comfort.

   
   

2. A transition book. Here we shared elements of our lives, who we were, our children and cat! What the different rooms were in our house and what we might do in them. For this we used a toddler board book printed from snapfish - I can't recommend this highly enough!

   
   

   Before giving him the dinosaur we first took photos of it with us. I wrote the book so that he had to spot the dinosaur in different places around our home and garden, the sofa, the slide, his bed; helping him to engage with the book in a meaningful way. This enabled him to further connect the dinosaur and the book to us.

   
   

3. The transition video. This was the hardest to do as my husband and I are both a little camera shy, although happily our birth children are not! (this was also a great way to get them involved) We did a tour of our home, enabling him to get a little bit more understanding of what was where, i.e. some of our toys, or the layout. The main intention of this was also so that he could hear our voices.

   
   

4. His bedding. We were encouraged to buy two sets of his bedding, one for our home and one for his foster carers. The one for his foster carers we sent ahead of transition week, they then changed his bedding so that it matched the bedding both in his bedroom in the book and video, but also matched the set at ours when he did first come to visit. The foster carer was very keen to ensure that throughout transition week we also swapped the two bedding sets a few times, so that the set he was using was taking on the smell of our house rather than theirs, a great sensory element.

   
   

5. Special purchases. Our little one came from a foster home with other children, over the transition period we learnt that there were some items that were quite significant to him but belonged to another child in the foster carers home. Over the transition period we started to learn and consider which of these may be useful for him to have at our home. I.e. the same bib, or a particular bath toy. We were keen to not buy too much as we knew we needed to explore his interests at our home too, but we made sure to buy some things that were exact matches to offer him some familiarity and aim to prevent him from becoming too overwhelmed at significant times such as meal or bath times.

These simple things were all an introduction for him to us, and certainly the book and the teddy have been quite instrumental in supporting him throughout his time with us so far and been a source of reassurance on a number of occasions.

After a short time following the transition period we started to consider how best to introduce other elements of our lives such as introducing friends and family. The transition book had been such a success for him, we decided that photos might be the best way.

We created a second book to introduce our wider family (just those closest). We asked them to send photos of themselves and any pets, the front of their homes, their living rooms and gardens, giving him a tiny piece of information to support his understanding of the relationship.

The photos of them worked really well as we were able to talk through who they were. The intention of seeing their homes within the book was so that he would know what to expect when we did eventually go to their homes. I hadn't considered that initially it would make him wonder if he was going to be moving to their houses too. This took some extra support in understanding that we would just visit and became easier to explain once they could more regularly visit us. It was helpful to give some context when we did finally visit their homes.

With regards to friends, we decided to stick with just photos rather than make another book - this was to support him in understanding the difference in the significance of their relationships from our family members. We asked our closest friends to send us a photo of their families and we displayed them where they were easy to see. This enabled him to interact with them at his own pace, asking us what their names were when he was ready.

When we felt he was ready we started to introduce him to our family and friends, keeping either their family photo or the wider family book close and he loved making links between the people he could see in real life and their photo. We made sure to always have our initial family transition book to hand and would make sure to read it to him when with others so he could keep that reminder that we were his family and he wasn’t going to be moving again.

It is a joy to see him now forming an attachment to his dinosaur, as he doesn't have that connection with many other objects and it does provide comfort for him when ill, or a little unsure. The books have also been a source of connection as he would often choose for my husband or myself to read them in the early stages of his life with us and will seek them out during periods of change.

I certainly hadn't considered the significance of just how important this element of preparation would be, but we were blessed to receive some good support and helpful advice.