Supporting Your Friends Adoption Journey

We are very lucky to have an amazing support network. One that is built of people who have known us for many years and those who have only known us a few.

When you are assessed as part of the adoption process, one of the elements they ask you about is your support – those who might be able to offer you practical support – i.e pick up some shopping, and those who are able to offer you emotional support – i.e you’ve had a hard day and just need to off load.

In all stages of life its really helpful to have those people, but in early stages of parenthood its especially important and adoptive parenting is no different, regardless of the age of the child or whether you have had children before.

Things you can do:

Keep on being available – it is really not easy if you have to wait for a while to be matched – you can become a little obsessed with searching for the right child and it has such an impact on so many elements of your life – planning future events, organising work, enjoying time with birth children to the fullest while not feeling you are just waiting. In being available for these conversations and being adaptable to plans not being concrete, you have no idea how much easier you can make life.

Be patient - Let your friends be hopeful, frustrated, disappointed and excited, be patient when it seems its all they want to talk about. We already had two children, we were adding to our family – ours wasn’t a story of infertility or waiting to start a family and it was still really hard at times. Being compassionate and patient is so appreciated.

Follow their lead – we had lots of advice from social workers around limiting contact with others even those within our support network when our little one first joined our family. This was hard. We are sociable people, he is a sociable child and it was really hard to suddenly not be part of what was our usual world. But it is wise to take it slowly. Check in with what is helpful, recognise that your friends might see little signs in their new child that things are a little overwhelming that will be subtle and you may not recognise. We found it easier to be really straight forward with our friends and they were very understanding of this.

And finally – Think about what can make their lives easier over transition week and early days. It is an emotional time. We had friends and family offering to take our birth children to clubs or have them overnight, fitting around our timings, others gave us lots of encouragement and some of our closest friends just popped some money in our bank account with a little message to spend it on a takeaway. All of these things made such difference.

So as I said at the beginning - we are very lucky to have an amazing support network. If you are supporting someone in their adoption journey, have a think about what you can do to really make a difference in their lives.