"Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards"
Soren Kierkeguard. Author and Poet, 1813-1855.
IOMAS is aware that children moving into adoptive families will have had a range of difficult experiences in the years before they joined their adoptive families. A child may have been neglected, abused or witnessed domestic violence. Their parents may have abused drugs or alcohol or had mental health problems. They may be very young themselves, or they may not have known how to keep their children safe.
As a result of these early life experiences, children may have learned ways of behaving which have enabled them to keep themselves safe, but which have not encouraged the child to trust others easily, to allow others to develop close and intimate relationships (either with adults or peers) and which may, over time, be seen by others (schools, the wider family and friendship groups) as different to other children. One of the challenges adoptive parents face is to help children unlearn some of these behaviours, to trust and accept their new families as safe and skilful parents and to learn more appropriate ways of responding to others.
This is not an easy set of skills to learn, and adoptive parents will often need help to understand their children’s past experiences and to learn new ways of responding to help their children change.
IOMAS accept that there are times when advice, support and practical help will be needed, and are here to help. We can provide services at a number of stages – prior to placement, between when the children come to live with you and when they become legally a part of your family, and for the rest of their childhoods, post adoption. We can provide ongoing training in new ways of managing old behaviours, reading material and where appropriate link you up with parents who have “been through this before” and survived.
We encourage adoptive families to maintain contact with the agency so we can assist at the start of any difficulty rather than wait until difficulties have escalated.
We are also developing more social occasions for adults, children and families to encourage adoptive families on the island to get to know each other and provide mutual support.
See our events page. |
