”Want to Adopt” New book by Helen Oakwater reaches #4 Bestseller on Amazon
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
We are delighted to announce that … (Fanfare) …“Want to Adopt: how to prepare yourself to parent a child from the care system” is available to purchase now!! Who is it for? existing adopters, foster carers and SGO’s prospective adopters, foster carers and SGO’s social workers decision makers including local and national politicians family and friends of the above. yes, it sounds like ‘everyone’ … and I reckon ‘everyone’ would benefit from reading it. Why read it? You will learn new models, skills and ways of thinking. It has a coaching/mentoring feel, tools for self-exploration an ..read more
Visit website
What did you expect? Joy, satisfaction or sadness?
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Expectations “This is not what I signed up for” I silently repeatedly.  Maybe when looking at the self inflicted cuts on my daughters arms. Possibly when another twenty quid disappeared from my purse or listening to more lies. Definitely scrabbling on all fours filling five bin liners with furry food, soiled underwear, dead vodka bottles and unidentifiable sticky bedroom trash.  I did not understand that ‘adoption’ meant trauma would walk through my front door on six little legs.  I expected ‘normal’ kids with some attachment problems, whom my love and parenting skills would ..read more
Visit website
Failure of long view in adoption is a strategic, economic & humanitarian mistake
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
  National Adoption Week is always emotive. The intent is to recruit adopters. Unsurprisingly some experienced adopters rant at the saccharine articles in newspapers, knowing that below the rhetoric is a deficit of ongoing, deep, appropriate support. Failing to take the long view, over decades is a strategic, economic and humanitarian mistake. PAC-UK had a splendid series of truthful and useful blogs during NAW which might resonate with you. In Mondays PAC-UK blog I explored strategies to avoid disappointment: spoiler alert, it’s you that has to change. Having been qu ..read more
Visit website
Beliefs drive Behaviour. Hear why on Facebook Live soon.
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Ever wonder why adopted and foster children behave in apparently nonsensical ways? Why do they self sabotage? Why do kind or constructive words fail to impact their behaviour? It’s because beliefs drive behaviour. That concept rocked my world back in February 2002 on the morning of my first NLP course. It explained so much about my kids. It changed my life trajectory. Robert Dilts, the creator of the Logical Levels model has generously agreed to do a Facebook Live with me, sometime next weekend during the NLP conference in London. It will be posted on the FAB Parents Facebook Page. I promise ..read more
Visit website
SANDY & TIM start in life
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Compare and contrast these two babies. SANDY (Securely Attached Normally Developed Youngster) all needs met regularly. TIM (Traumatised Infant Maltreated) neglected, ignored, hurt. This is the draft cartoon of the opening to my next book; “So you want(ed) to adopt. Ponder their probable life path. Ponder the sort of parenting Tim will need in adoptive or foster placement a few years later ..read more
Visit website
Mothers Day and Expectations. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst.
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Last Sunday I cooked my own meals, bought myself some flowers and uncharacteristically drank an entire bottle of wine and had a good cry.  Why?   Because yet again, on Mothers Day, I received nothing from the three children I adopted 25 years ago.  We’ve had minimal contact for the last seven or eight years. By minimal, I mean a handful of cyber messages.  But the possibility they might send a card is the emotionally charged dark cloud that hung over me a couple of weeks before Mother’s Day.  I didn’t expect; but I did hope. Hoping for something totally out ..read more
Visit website
Don’t assume keeping a sibling group together is right
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Today’s Daily Mirror featured a sibling group of four looking for one set of adoptive parents. I’ve read the article with increasing anger. The children had a chaotic background, but had settled in well  ….. blah, blah. Unlike prospective adopters; I and other adults experienced in parenting traumatised children could read between the lines. These kids are deeply damaged. My guess is that, similar to my three children (placed together at 2,4,5)  these kids will have different attachment styles (Take your pick from avoidant, anxious, ambivalent, disorganised, none will be securely at ..read more
Visit website
The boy who killed and mother who tried to stop him
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
I hate being right.  The  documents the massive steps a mother took to get help for her son. It was constantly refused (below the threshold). She pleaded. He killed. Two families and a network of friends shattered. Society incarcerates, while judging the behaviour disregarding the root cause. This is what happens to a hurt child without intervention. They grow into hurt, scared, rage filled traumatised adolescents then adults. Children grow into adults! Who knew? This is why I continue to write and train in the child trauma world and bang on about need for early interventions. It’s ..read more
Visit website
“Adoption is no longer fit for purpose”. Someone has to say it.
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
“Adoption is no longer fit for purpose”. Those are the sentiments expressed recently by many adopters and a few enlighten professionals. I’m independent, so I can voice it publicly. Many others can not. The capping of the Adoption Support Fund at £5000 was the tipping point. Its introduction was much heralded and deeply appreciated in the adoption community. It provided money to facilitate the often lengthy therapeutic work that all adoptive families need and was promised before their children arrived. However its implementation has been fraught and the recent imposition of a cap is intolerab ..read more
Visit website
How to Futureproof adoptive families from Facebook contact
FAB Parents
by Helen Oakwater
3y ago
Yesterday I read a blog from yet another adoptive parent who’s adopted son is reconnecting with his birth parents. (Befuddled mum) It’s a scenario I have witnessed many times in the last eight years; watching hundreds of adoptive families grieve as their teenage rejected them and returned emotionally and/or physically to their birth family. Sometimes they stayed connected to their adoptive parents, sometimes they didn’t. Some adopters feel they have lost their child forever. Uncontactable. Lost but not dead. They grieve, but with a tiny glimmer of hope still flickering. Maybe this year a birt ..read more
Visit website

Follow FAB Parents on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR