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So we met a little boy this week who will (assuming all goes as planned) be our son in a couple of months. :D
He’ 4yo, and it’s a bit of an unusual situation, he was previously adopted (a little over a year ago) by his foster mother who is now putting him up for adoption because he’s “too much of a handful” with the other kids she has. I won’t go into all the details, but the short of it is that he’s a very smart little boy who has some emotional and behavioral issues from all that he’s been through who will be shortly leaving the person he calls mom and the kids he calls siblings to his new home with us.
Since he’s in no immediate harm we’re working on transitioning him slowly, we have two more day visits coming up where we’ll see how he does and slowly come up with a plan on how to explain to him the situation and start all the legal issues.
With us he was fine, he got fussy, got upset when he had to switch gears, or if he thought me made a mistake in a game, didn’t like being told no, but the outbursts were short lived, and he wasn’t too hard to talk down. We understand this is mostly his norm, though he will have bigger stronger outbursts. The social worker also expects that the change of family for him will probably only make his behavior worse for a while before it gets better (he tends to get upset and start going “nobody likes” and things like that).
We have no other children, which they think will be good for him to get all the attention for a while.
Anyway, we’re very excited, but a little scared and overwhelmed because we want to do right by him, but aren’t sure what to expect never having had kids before and not really having been around too many kids this age either. (Another piece of background, we were my younger brother’s legal guardians right after getting married while my brother was in high school after my mom passed and my dad was too ill to care for him, so teenage years we’ve got covered! Lol little kids…. No clue).
Any advice on how to manage the transition in a situation like this? Any parenting advice for first time parents of a 4yo? Any words of wisdom from those who’ve been in similar situations? How to we approach the whole “mom and dad” thing? He’s had two mom’s so far, don’t want to force him to call us anything he’s not ok with, but we will be his parents. How to introduce him to other people? Slowly one at a time better? Or one big event get it over with? My brother who I’m very close to, but who lives in another country will be up here this summer and will be able to stay with us for a few days around the time that we’re doing the adoption. Do we introduce him as “Uncle xxxx” so early? How do we prepare family for some of the challenges he’ll have to ask for support? His current legal name is different than his birth name. We won’t change his name, but the SW warned us that he did know his birth name and to be prepared in case he gets upset at being called his current name. Not sure how to manage that. We’re going to need after school care for him 2-3 days a week when school starts in September, with his issues is it better to keep him in a class like environment with other kids, or hire someone part time to pick him up and watch him at home so he’s not overwhelmed? He doesn’t seem to really get along well with or particularly like other kids (and honestly, I never got along well with kids and school was a nightmare for me until I was homeschooled much later on. But I know some kids socialization is better. How do we know?)
Seriously – blank slate over here. I’ll take whatever the hive mind can offer.
Thanks!
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