That was the question repeated back to us by our Social Worker after we had finally voiced the real desire for the outcome of our adoption journey.
It was finally out there, having been said out loud for the first time in the presence of a social worker during our home assessment. We waited nervously trying to gauge her reaction. When she didn’t immediately laugh, we took it as a positive sign.
Our closest friends and family were already aware of our desire to adopt a sibling group but it was a question that was to be asked regularly by numerous people who were acquaintances and hadn’t been given access to our innermost thoughts. It is a question that has continued to be asked of us as we have met other people in the years since we adopted our children.
To answer those of you who do not know us or have not been able to ask the question directly, we will answer it here. We chose to adopt siblings because we considered ourselves to be a little bit older than typical parents when they start their parenting adventure. Our initial enquiry was made to our chosen local authority two weeks after I had celebrated my fortieth birthday.
We also had no desire to come through the process twice in order to add a brother or sister at a later date. We had to assess our financial situation in order for me to have the full period of leave from work and we were not sure that we would be able to repeat the reduction in salary twice, so it is fair to say that this definitely informed our decision.
We were aware that it was likely to be more work both physically and emotionally than having just one child to settle, especially as these children were going to have been affected by past trauma, but we did make this decision with our eyes wide open to the likely realities we would face.
I make it sound like it was a very easy choice for us to make, but we did spend plenty of time discussing how we felt about it, would we be prepared to take just one child if that was our only option and were we ready to handle our disappointment if our Social Worker just laughed at us?
Well…the good news was that she didn’t laugh and continued to walk us through all the considerations before agreeing that she would be prepared to recommend us to adopt a sibling pair aged between 0 and 5 years of age.
The Adopted Life 