Categories: uncategorized
Date: 26 January 2007 17:01:51
(Mr Dots here)
Monday is Panel Day. We have been there before, and as you can see from previous entries were turned away again, in a bureaucratic fit of jobsworthness from the agency's legal advisor.
I really am not looking forward to it. And this is not surprising. As Jennyanydots has said, it's like doing a pregnancy test in an interview format. Your worth as a person, warts and all, is assessed and accepted or rejected. And no Saviour exists to cover over your faults in this Final Judgement.
The ability to parent is the most basic ability. If you are declared unfit to parent, it's the most damning condemnation you could receive. Biology's commendation or condemnation is not moral. The panel's is. You either is or you ain't grown up enough, fit enough, wise enough or nice enough. Your relationship as a couple either is or ain't good enough. Your person, as represented in the document painfully prepared by your social worker over months of deeply personal interviews is laid bare before the view of The Panel, and they decide your fate.
Actually, I can cope with all of that, mainly because I feel that we are fit parents, and they are just plain wrong if they say we're not. What I find it difficult to cope with is that the system has utterly sapped our enthusiasm for adoption. When we started off, we felt that it was right. In some way, and I say this with the necessary tentativeness, 'God wanted' us to do this. Adoption was just another way of starting a family. We were excited.
What we weren't expecting was the level of 'we professionals know best', which gives them the right to state their opinions on things which in the normal run of things are entirely the family's choice. As we are not stupid people, we will childproof our home when the time comes. We don't need a health and safety assessment. When we deal with our child's 'emerging sexuality', we'll make the same cock-ups as every other parent. With regards to discipline, we'll set the wrong boundaries, fight the wrong battles, be too lenient on some things and too old-fashioned in others. Sometimes we'll indulge them too much, and sometimes we won't give them the time they need.
In short, we'll **** 'em up. We won't mean to but we will, passing on all the faults we had and adding some others. Same as any other parent, good or bad. But we'll love them, and give them a good stable home with a fair amount of fun. The word 'fun', incidentally, appears nowhere on the adoption form.
So if the panel start asking us about how we will cope despite our imperfections, I just hope I manage to keep my mouth shut one more time. I am pretty near the end of my patience. And I just want a child at the end of it, but that seems an endlessly long way away right now.