Together in time

“Looking back, I did feel there was something superficial about our relationship right from the beginning, but I had no other children so had nothing to compare it with,” explains Ruth. “It just didn’t feel quite right, but I loved him so much that the idea that attachment was a problem for him didn’t seem a possibility.”

Although Ruth and Ed didn’t know the words for it at the time, Joe from the start showed all the signs of having attachment difficulties, resulting from his physical and emotional needs not being met, or not consistently or reliably, as an infant and small child.

Joe expressed this in different ways. He wanted to be in control of situations. “Each day Joe would try to tell us how and where to sit, stand or even walk,” explains Ruth. “He would change seating arrangements at the table, move
placemats and cutlery. We would come in from the garden to find the living room completely rearranged or paintings in different rooms. It was like he wanted to control us by recreating the chaos from his ‘before’ life.”

Joe also found it hard to let Ruth or Ed close to him to comfort him when hurt or distressed, or simply to show their affection. He was visibly full of hurt and anger, and expressed this in fits of rage, tantrums, and destructive behaviour. “We never knew how Joe would react,” recalls Ruth. “We were always on edge because he might attack us or break something. It started every morning with throwing his cereal on the floor, refusing to put his shoes on and then hitting me on the back of the head as I drove him to school”.

Ed and Ruth didn’t know how to manage their son’s increasingly difficult behaviour. At first, as inexperienced parents, they assumed that Joe was ‘acting up’ and that things would get better with time and love. But they increasingly felt a sense of powerlessness and failure. “We couldn’t even manage a simple activity like cycling as a family,” says Ed. “We had to admit to ourselves that Joe needed more than our love. His inner turmoil was way beyond our life experience and probably that of most people.”

Feeling like they were “at the end of the road”, Ed and Ruth finally decided after two years to contact a therapist recommended by a friend. Ed knew that they needed advice and strategies to help them manage Joe’s behaviour, but also thought that therapy was “self-indulgent”. “I had this nagging doubt in the back of my head; ‘pull yourself together. You should be able to sort this out yourself’.”

From the start, Joy, the family’s therapist, made it clear that her role was to provide Ed and Ruth with guidance. “If change is going to take place, it will be because of what you do at home every day, rather than what I do here for an hour a week.” She encouraged them to share their difficulties with other people – something that Ed and Ruth had not done, as they felt that their experience of parenthood was so removed from their friends’. She also suggested that they contact the West Midlands Post Adoption Service for support , who organised a professionals meeting involving Joe’s GP, head teacher and social workers to let them know about Joe’s difficult behaviour.

The whole family began an intensive programme of therapy with Joy, having sessions with her on Friday afternoons, as well as Saturday mornings and late afternoons, weekly. Despite the time and financial pressures, Ed and Ruth were willing to go ahead out of desperation.

Joy would use music instruments as a way of getting Ed, Ruth and Joe to interact. “The Friday session was about getting us comfortable by playing instruments together. Not too demanding on Joe but challenging his need to control by having to co-operate. Inevitably he would defend himself by squeezing under the sofa, playing the wrong instruments, and never keeping still.”

Joy would also make ‘deals’ with Joe, checking every week how he had done. Ed, Ruth and Joe might be taking turns playing instruments or playing a role in a story. Joe may also be asked to complete a simple task, such as sitting on Ed’s lap without moving for one minute. These required Joe to co-operate, something he found difficult due to his lack of trust in adults. Sometimes he would refuse to follow instructions or to sit still, occasionally trying to bite or scratch Joy, or spitting at her. Joy explained that this was a sign that she was getting through to Joe – and a positive one.

Ed and Ruth began to apply their newly-acquired knowledge at home. One of the tools they used was to reduce Joe’s choices – for instance only offering him two kinds of cereals for breakfast, knowing he didn’t like one of them – which reduced his anxiety. When Joe had chosen they would always say “That was a good choice Joe, well done”. They also used tactics for gaining his co-operation such as telling him they were counting to ten in their head and that something would happen at the end.

Getting Joe to own his behaviour was also part of the work. “We would take a cushion to represent his anger and say ‘Here, have your anger back. I don’t want it. It belongs to you.’ He looked baffled at first but his rage didn’t escalate as it so often had,” says Ruth. Both were also encouraged to share their feelings with Joe, letting him deliberately overhear chats in which they’d say, for instance, “I’m feeling really sad and fed up because Joe wouldn’t eat his dinner. I worked so hard to make him a nice meal.”

The therapy helped Ruth and Ed to understand why Joe behaved in the way he did, rather than get locked into reacting to him and trying to contain him. “It began to dawn on me how dreadful Joe’s early life must have been,” admits Ruth. “Neglect had left him unequipped to develop the most essential human skill of making relationships.”

It wasn’t easy, but gradually, Ruth and Ed began to see improvements in Joe’s behaviour. “Joe had become less oppositional, even on the odd occasion doing as he was told the first time he was asked,” recalls Ruth. “He was less anxious, less intense and didn’t irritate me so much.” Receiving affection from Joe for the first time one bedtime was a particularly key moment for her. “It was the first time I felt like his mum.”

The changes in Joe were also noticeable at school, as Ruth explains. “In the end, learning took off because Joe gradually became anchored and felt safe. Fear no longer dominated his brain, his life or our lives.”

Parenting is the work of a lifetime, and for children as traumatised as Joe was, the work is even harder, but the improvements in Joe’s behaviour and sense of self have been amazing. “Think of Joe as a broken vase you have to repair by gluing it together,” was Joy’s advice to Ruth and Ed. “When you fill it up it holds water and you can put flowers in it, but from time to time due to the early breakage it may leak, the cracks may let water escape. It will work but it will always be fragile.”

Isabelle Rameau

Based on Together in time, written by Ruth and Ed Royce, published by BAAF as part of the “Our Story” series.

Available from BAAF Publications or by calling BAAF Publications on 020 7421 2604.

Post-adoption support

One of the key intentions behind the Adoption and Children Act 2002 was to make post-adoption support more widely available, and provided consistently.

Every adopter or person affected by adoption (which can include birth family members or former guardians of an adopted child) now has a right to be assessed to see what support they need with respect to their adoption experience.

Families can approach the Adoption Support Services Adviser in their placing authority if the need occurs within three years of the adoption order being granted, or in their local authority if this occurs after the three-year point, and ask for an assessment of need.

Although there is a right to an assessment, there is unfortunately no automatic right to the services or help that the assessment might identify. Each local authority will make provisions depending on their financial circumstances and local demand.

However, there are some core services which each local authority is required to provide, including:

• Support in respect of contact
• Therapeutic support for the adopted child
• Support for adoptions at risk of failing (disruptions).

Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in September 2008.

This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.

Last updated: 04 September 08

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