Week 3 - Parental responsibilities

Well, it is just starting to sink in now. After months of shall we or shan't we, we are actually on our way to becoming adoptive parents.

As I have said before, it is a scary thought - that we will be responsible for looking after two small children.

There will be no handing them back at tea time, as we do now with friends' children. We will have to be there for them when they fall over and cry, calm them down when they have a tantrum in the shop, be there for them through thick and thin.

To be totally responsible for the caring for them is a funny feeling. But I expect that by the time we have been through the training etc., we will be able to cope with these feelings better as time goes on.

It's just a strange feeling, though. The hardest bit now is the waiting. We have to just sit here, not knowing what the future holds for us, waiting to be contacted by the social worker to arrange training dates.

We were warned by the social worker just how hard the waiting was, but we thought 'we would deal with that when it happened'.

Well, it's happening now. We have a lot of time on our hands to think now, though. A lot of that time is taken up with Rob's grandson, who is three years old, my step grandson, whom we look after a lot while his Mum works.

Then there is my step daughter, who is married and 22. I have been a part of her life for almost 20 years. She grew up with her Mum and step dad, but we played a big part in her life, and always will, I hope. She is 100 per cent behind us in our application, which means an awful lot to us, and she is looking forward to having young brothers or sisters!

We have learnt a lot by watching our grandson develop, and start to learn new things. We are hoping this will help us in our application...one of the things we have to discuss for the form F is experience of children.

Well, since we cared for our grandson from the age of nine months, we have gained an awful lot of experience! So we are hoping this will help us.

In the meantime, we just sit and wait for the call to start training...

E-mail Ann and Rob

See also:

Week 2 - We are on our way...and it feels so good
Week 1 - The social worker is coming
More about Ann and Rob