Second day of adoption training started with understanding what is in someones name, and how, despite everything else, it is the one single thing that is yours. You can lose your safety nets, you can lose your family, you can lose you home, you can lose everything that is important to you, but you still are you and you still have your name... I would never have thought of wanting to change a childs christian name, though apparantly there are some that do.
One particular exercise caused certain discomfort when you had to write something very personal and potentially revealling which was then put in other peoples hands. It was all designed to explain trust and responsibiliy etc... pretty intense for all of us really, so more than others.
A couple of case studies and lunch later and we are on to the (so called) joy of parenting... though this did turn a bit into 'Steven gets the Powerpoint Presentation to work' :-) ... just like at work!!!
It was to try and explain that things that may be taken for granted in a normal household can all create negative emotions for adopted children (depending on each case naturally) - for example, a situation where there is shouting going on could be interpreted as the 1st stage of violence to them (shouting to pushing to fighting to violence) or large groups of people, like a party for example, to an adoptive child could be seen as an upcoming period of neglect (esp if in the past it involved drink or drug abuse).
Even harder can be normal situations (to us) like meal times that either may have been either non exsistant to a child previously or, conversely, could be all to familiar and recognised by a child as being the first stage of violence (ie mum makes tea, dad thinks its rubbish, throws it around, much shouting... you can work the rest out).
Good news is we have our appointed worker now, and the first visit is next week, so the ball is rolling a bit faster now.
Sorry if this seems a bit dis-jointed but it's quite tiring and i'm about to fall asleep at my keyboard
Nighty night xx
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