Adoption day!
By James, aged 11
My family always celebrates October 16. Why? It’s not my birthday, it’s not Christmas, but it is the day when two years ago I went to the High Court of Justice in the Strand with my family. What was I going to court for? I was ten, so I was old enough to get a criminal record. What had I done? Had I murdered someone? No! Had I done criminal damage? No! It was my adoption hearing.
I was dressed very smartly in my new clothes. My younger brother Anthony was with us. My teenage brothers Jack and Stephen came and they were dressed very smartly too. It was the first time I had seen Stephen without a hooded sweatshirt. They moaned because they were told to take off their baseball caps to go into court.
I had to go into court where there was a woman judge sitting in an enormous chair by a big desk. A man banged on the table with a hammer and said, ‘Silence in court’. Then the judge asked my mum and dad if they wanted to adopt me and my brother. They replied, ‘Yes, we do’. Then they asked my social worker Louise if we were happy in our new family. She commented that we were very happy and were doing well at school. Then she asked me. I felt nervous but I said I wanted to stay with my new family. She asked Anthony what he wanted to do and he said stay. Then the judge said, ‘I will write in my book that today Anthony and James became members of the Smith family’.
We went out of the court and my mum and dad gave us all new signet rings with our new initials on. It was a bit like having a wedding ring. My mum took a photograph of all her four sons showing their rings off. Then our old social worker Louise said goodbye to us – it was the first time in my life that I had not had a social worker. Afterwards my family and two of our friends, Tracy and Natasha, came out for a meal with us. Then we went to the Trocadero and went on the dodgems. We had lots of fun and it felt even better because I should have been at school.
The next day I had another half-day off school. There was a special lunch for children who had been adopted. Guess where it was? It was in the Houses of Parliament. We had to go with our special invitations to the entrance to the House of Lords; it was the same entrance that the Queen uses. The children had a party with a clown while the adults listened to boring speeches. Then we went out to the balcony by the river and had lots of coke and cakes. I had my picture taken in the Houses of Parliament. It was good fun being there and I met some other children who had been adopted.
So, now you know why my family always celebrates October 16. This year we have tickets for the circus. We get to celebrate another adoption day in March, which is when my brothers were adopted ten years ago.
First published in The Colours in Me, Edited by Perlita Harris, BAAF 2008.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in March 2010.
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.
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Last updated: 30 April 10
