We started September by saying goodbye to a child who has lived as our son, and as a brother, for the past five years. Five years.

Five years is not a ‘placement’ or a file. Five years is a huge chunk of a small person’s life. For a child who has known nothing else in their conscious memory – five years is most of what they can actually remember as the entirety of their life. Our faces. The smells of our home. The rules about whose turn it is, as we teach.

Posts like this are never easy to write. Because they require not only reflection but also consciounes about the readership – the child of whom I speak may one day read this. His first mother may read it. His adoptive family is likely to read it. Holding each in equal gentleness whilst interrogating a system that remains deeply flawed is no easy task. But at the end of the day, this post, hard as it may be to read for others, is written for him.

This post is not written for me. Nor for his adoptive family. Nor for other foster carer. It is written for a little boy for whom everything happened, and to other children, like him, who have their best interest determined without their input.

This post is not for the people who’ll comment ‘shame, you must be heartbroken’? Because I have decided that this post is for the children who never get a blog post at all, because the focus it seems, always remains on the adults who have wronged, or have chosen the ‘holy’ path of adoption, or the ‘rescuers’ who step into the gaps. And all of these adults get enough airtime.

This post is written with seeming disregard for the adults who have agency. In a hope of creating sole focus on the adoptees. Who are lucky. But really so unlucky.

When a child is removed from a foster family and placed into an adoptive family, posts about the event are generally focus around one of two things: The heartbreak and loss that the foster family experiences. Or the praise for the adoptive family who has done something so wonderful.

And the comments follow the script too. “I could never do what you do.” “I’d get too attached.” “You guys are angels.” (We are not. But I digress.)

And it makes me ill. Because every single one of the adults involved in this situation has some type of agency and choice.

Is it devastating to say goodbye to a child who you have loved as your own for five years? Sure. Of course it is. But we CHOSE this path. We were in a situation that gave us sufficient agency to be able to, of all the things in the world, choose to be right here.

And irrespective of how or why they ended up on adoption, the adoptive family had choice in getting to that point. I refuse to get into a debate about why people adopt – whether religiously motivated, or brought on through infertility reasons, it isn’t the point of what I am trying to bring to the fore her.

Irrespective of all of it, the choice sat in the hands of the adults.

To do it.

Or not.

We could have said no at any point. We could have walked away.

But there was not a single point in this childs life where he could have done the same. For this child, and every child in his situation – life, foster care, adoption – they all happen to him.

And the net result is that adults get to grieve with agency. Whilst adoptees are so often forced to grieve in gratitude. That’s not the same, and it’s an unfair burden and expectation to thrust onto an already laden child.

Where the adults get support groups, the debriefs, and the glass of wine and the friend who says ‘you did an amazing job’, the child gets a lifetime of forms asking for his medical history and family background, and having to work out which family he’s even meant to write down, and a lot of confusion about why he should feel grateful for something which happened to him without asking so much as his thoughts.

Now I know now people will say that the adopted child will receive support services once adopted into a first world country – and heck, I hope they do. But it doesn’t change the absolute fear and devastation that must surely accompany a change of this magnitude, thrust on you without your request. And yes, technically a child’s views are ‘given due consideration’. But considered is not the same as chosen, and every adult in that process knows it.

Imagine if we applied the same rules to adults who had done no wrong. “We’ve found you a lovely new family. New house, new school, possibly a new surname. You’ll adore them. No, you can’t stay. Yes, we know you love it here. Now be excited.”

The crux of my post, without wanting to diminish the fact that we do in fact need adoption and I am not, contrary to how this may read, against it, is that adoption is thrust on every single child to whom it is the ‘solution’. Very few adoptees (if any) have any choice in their adoption. They’re deemed in need of care and protection. Then deemed adoptable. Then ‘given’ a family. Given. And they don’t get a choice. And I cannot for a second process how hard that must be.

It is lifesaving. Obviously. I’m not naive and I’m not anti-adoption. But it is also a largely problematic notion, and we are weirdly allergic to saying that out loud.

And before anyone types ‘so what’s the alternative then?’ into the comments. I know. Institutions. Endless temporary placements. Children ageing out of the system with a black bag and a ‘good luck’. I’ve seen the alternatives up close. Survival is the floor, not the ceiling. But ‘better than the alternative’ is a very low bar to be throwing a party over.

Every decision made about him was made ‘in his best interests’. I’ve written that phrase on more forms than I care to count. And I believe in it. Mostly. But have you noticed how ‘best interests’ is always decided in rooms the child isn’t in? By social workers with impossible caseloads. By courts. By lawyers. By us. Kind people, mostly. Adults, entirely.

And then there’s the language. Permanency. Stability. Forever family. It’s all so tidy, isn’t it? Forever family. As if the five years before were a waiting room. As if he was in a queue, and not in a home. Like he’s only a real boy now that he’s adopted.

Within the realm of this adoption was a little human. A little human who had survived one trauma, only to find himself in our home, and then be forced to endure the next one. Whilst being sold it as a massively positive thing. By every adult around him. Us included, let’s be honest.

We did what you’re ‘supposed’ to do. We said all the right things, in the right tone, at the right volume. And somewhere in there I caught myself wondering. What if he isn’t excited? What if he’s terrified, and he’s just worked out that the adults need him to be excited? Children in care are experts at reading a room. They have to be. It’s a survival skill. So we ask them to perform gratitude for the very thing that is breaking their hearts. And then we clap when they do it well.
“How lucky he is.”
Lucky to be adopted. Lucky to get a family.

Both are true. Lucky. But so bloody unlucky.

And it isn’t only him. He was a brother. There are other children in our house who also had no say in this, who also lost someone, and who were also told it was wonderful news. Grief in a big house is not linear (is grief ever?). It comes out sideways. At supper. At bedtime. In a fight about absolutely nothing. And I feel so deeply conscious that I am the adult that thrust this on everyone who stayed behind. Because I chose this path. The other children did not.

Our hearts ached. And celebrated. With him, for him, sometimes all at the same time, which is a ridiculous thing to ask of a heart, never mind a small one.

Goodbyes in this space are weird. There’s no funeral. There’s no section at the card shop for it. People don’t know what to do other than assure the adults. But at the centre of this ‘good work’ is a little boy who wasan’t working at all – he was just trying to live, and he got no choice in the ‘wonderful’ things that happened to him. And I hope with all my heart that his new bedroom and city and home and friends and family remember that he shouldn’t have to be grateful for any of this. But I hope more that they give him a life that he feels so deeply wanted and loved and included and seen that he can feel whatever feelings he wants, and maybe even thankful one day.

I suspect he will have a beautiful life with his exceptionally beautiful family. They love him. I know he will grow to love them. I genuinely believe that, they’re wonderful humans who this post is not intended to diminish in any way.

Loving a child who comes to you through someone else’s loss is a complicated, brave thing, and I hope people give them room for that complexity too. Nobody in this story is the villain. That’s exactly what makes it so hard to talk about. It would be so much easier if somebody was.

I hope they let him be sad. I hope they let him miss us without turning it into a loyalty test. I hope they let him love three families without ever making him pick one. And in this case I really think they will.

But the point of this post isn’t the happy ending. And it isn’t our grief either. The point is to make some space. Awkward, uncomfortable space. For the backwardness of adoption that coexists with the beauty of it. Because it does coexist. Both at once. And if we only ever post the beauty, what are we telling children? That their losses are a footnote in somebody else’s joy?

Adult adoptees have been saying this for years, by the way. Loudly. I’m not saying anything new. I’m just saying it from the other side of the front door, a bit late, having watched it up close.

If you’re a foster carer reading this: your grief is real and it matters. I’m not telling you to swallow it. I’m asking you to shuffle over a bit. Make room in the middle of the story for the person it actually happened to.
And maybe, just maybe, we start asking children what they think. Properly. Not as a box ticked on a form. Before the decision, not after the hashtag.

Will that make it messier? Absolutely. Slower? Probably. Will some children say things we don’t want to hear? I’d bloody hope so. That’s sort of the point.

So next time you see an adoption announcement, the balloons, the photos, the forever-family hashtags, maybe just ask. Who chose this? And who is carrying it?