Believing in better for all families
Another school year is upon us, and many of us will be back into the fray, fighting for the support our children need. Knowing how to advocate for your child is a vital skill we need to hone. After 10 years on the frontline, these are my top tips to help you.
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Apparently mid-August is the point in the school summer holidays at which parents finally snap. We thought this would be a good time for some more tips to help you make it to the end of the summer holiday.
Continue readingToday we’re very honoured to have a guest post from the amazing Sarah Goldbart, on being adopted. This post is so heartfelt, honest, and moving, we’ve replicated it exactly ‘as is’.
You can find Sarah here, but before you go, grab a cuppa and some tissues, and enjoy her story of an amazing family full of love.
The very lovely Philippa Whipp asked me to write about what its like to be adopted, which is a wonderful excuse to talk about my much beloved and missed parents, Sheila & Len Goldbart. Pip’s only advice was to ‘just write from the heart’, so here goes…
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Triangulation may be new terminology for you, but I’m sure that you’ll very quickly recognise it and how it is affecting your family.
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I mentioned in my last post that I’ve had several conversations recently where families were really struggling with the question of how to talk about adoption with their adopted child.
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June is LGBT Pride Month. It’s a month where the LGBT community celebrates in glorious style.
This year is also the 50th year anniversary of the Stonewall riots; the catalyst for the modern LGBT rights movement.
As the mother of a child who is often, and I hasten to add, lovingly, described as ‘camp as Christmas’, and with friends within the LGBT community, I’m bewildered that we still need Pride Month.
That we still need to raise awareness, campaign for LGBT rights and raise political awareness. To try to stem a growing tide of bigotry and hatred against a whole community of people just because they are, quite wrongly, perceived as different.
Which then got me to thinking about our adopted children. I’ve had several conversations over the last month that have shocked and saddened me.
Conversations about children being repeatedly and systematically bullied for being adopted. Children who have fallen through the cracks due to to lack of funding or institutional apathy. Families who are not getting support because no one knows where to find it. And families who are still struggling to find ways to speak to their adopted children about their adoption story.
It is heartbreaking that in the 21st Century, we still cannot embrace everyone with open arms. Whatever their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, mental status, or even, how their family came together. That adopted children are being failed and stigmatised and traumatised even after placement.
So as Pride month comes to an end, lets each take a moment and practice a little more tolerance and inclusivity. Let’s fight a little harder for our children and loved ones.
We can’t change the world in one fell swoop, but if we all try, just a little bit, we can surely make a difference!
The world is irritating me at the moment.
From politics to Facebook, TV to business, there is an air of indifference and acceptance that the UK is quite frankly ridiculous. That it ‘Is what it is’.
At the same time, I have become acutely aware of the slip into negative language being used day to day. Now I don’t mean that the population of the UK is roaming around whining and bemoaning their lives (although…).
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With just a few days until the Easter holidays are upon us, my mind has turned to my favourite pastime – how can I occupy my child for the most amount of time but for the least amount of money.
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I cannot work out whether as I get older I am turning into my mother, Hyacinth Bucket or Victor Meldrew. I suspect I am channelling all of them and quite frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.
One of the things that brings out these pedants in me is semantics, defined as the meaning of a word, phrase or text.
In the world of our children and their challenges, there are a myriad words and phrases so loaded that the actual meaning of the words is lost beneath a mountain of inference and vernacular – and if I sound like I have swallowed the Oxford English Dictionary then good – think of this as your claim to intellectual reading for the week!
Ok, so what am I actually getting at? Well I have 5 words or phrases that really get on my t##s (normal service resumed). They irritate me much more than they should and cause Hyacinth and Victor to surface dramatically.
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Last May I gave up my job of 18 years. I had totally fallen out of love with teaching – not with the actual act of teaching, that is, but with the increasing nonsense and narrow curriculum that went with it. As I have mentioned several times before, I felt I had no choice but to home educate my son, so there was a swift exit, don’t look back!
That was my first radical act of self care.
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