My son is adopted – there’s one thing he wishes we’d done differently

I recently asked my 23-year-old son what we could have done differently when he was growing up. “Not paying fifty quid for me to have my hair cut by your hairdresser for a start,” he said. “That was 16 years of hairstyles I hated.” Not bad, then, on balance. When we adopted Levi in 2004, two weeks shy of his second birthday, I spent the following 20-odd years or so worrying whether I was doing it right. This is a common feeling among most parents, I know, but maybe one that adoptive parents are more sensitive to. The sense of ownership is another. A question persists for me even now: does he belong to me? Or is he on loan while I look after him for someone else? I’ve felt this more keenly in the last year, as Levi’s job has taken him abroad for long stretches of time. Like the tide, he always comes back but never stays and I have to toughen myself to his absence and soften again when he returns. (Photo: Supplied).

The adoption process

We’ve had to let him go, but he was never ours to give away. My husband Garry and I embarked on the adoption process after three failed and miserable attempts at IVF. We took a year off to consider our options – travel the world, change careers, write a novel – but the desire to be parents pulled us back. We signed up to an adoption agency and over the next six months underwent a rigorous assessment in which we were grilled about our childhoods and family relationships, mental health and emotional stability, as well as our attitudes towards education, nutrition, race, and sexual orientation. We had to confront our expectations and motivations for becoming parents, and be judged on whether we’d be any good at it. Which is just as it should be. (Photo: Supplied).

The biggest question

At the heart of adoption lies a fundamental question – can I love another person’s child? You are committing to a lifelong relationship with a stranger, who has more than likely been taken away from their birth parents and come through the care system, having possibly experienced abuse or neglect. We knew our limitations and were prepared to wait for the right child. After two long years of false starts, raised hopes and disappointments, we finally found Levi. He burst into our lives like a small, loud tornado. It was a leap of faith and while I would have thrown myself under a bus for him, I had to wait for love to come. (Photo: 10'000 Hours/Getty).

Feeling like an imposter

Women who give birth naturally have a nine-month gestation period in which they can prepare and bond with their baby, building on that relationship as they develop. Levi came as a fully-formed, (almost) talking and walking toddler who was as delightful as he was tyrannical. Meanwhile I felt like an imposter, blurting out to anyone who’d listen – shopkeepers, bus drivers, mums in the swing parks – ‘He’s adopted!’ – so they’d excuse my incompetence. It didn’t help that he called us both Garry for the first six weeks. It took a year before the legal adoption came through. Until then we were on tenterhooks, terrified when he fell over and bumped his head in Tumble Tots that he’d be taken back by social services. We were easily intimidated by immigration at airports when we holidayed abroad because he had a different surname to ours in his passport. (Photo: Supplied).

Wishing for the early days

Now I wish I could have unclenched my jaw and just enjoyed these early years more. I yearn to spend a day with him as a four-year-old when I’m not checking my phone for work messages, living in dread of a tantrum, stricken by a sense of ineptitude or irritated by the constant chatter and demand for my attention. These days I have to book an appointment to have a conversation with him. “That’s because you ask too many questions,” he says. Levi was – and remains – a fairly easy-going person with a bright disposition. He had been lovingly and consistently cared for by foster carers for the first two years of his life and attached himself quickly and easily to us. We parented him as our friends parented their children – we told him off, used the naughty step and sometimes sent him to his room. We didn’t practice therapeutic parenting techniques that adoptive parents are now encouraged to use based on connection rather than correction. (Photo: Hinterhaus/Getty).

Understanding his experience

Now, as a qualified counsellor, I’m far more informed about potential attachment issues and in retrospect wish I’d taken a softer, less punitive approach. I feel guilty about it but Levi claims to have no memories of harsh treatment. “I could lie and say it was a horrible experience, but I think my life has been pretty easy,” he says, breezily. One thing he does pull us up on, though, is diversity. He is of mixed white-Afro Caribbean heritage, while Garry and I are both white. We felt that living in multi-cultural London would provide him with a suitable environment to explore his ethnicity but we know now that we weren’t sensitive enough to his difference, sending him to a (predominantly white) private school rather than the local state school. (Photo: Ben Birchall/PA).

Wanting to find his birth family

“As a child growing up was I around enough diversity? No, of course not,” he tells me. “I would have benefitted by being in a more mixed environment. However academically, I thrived having gone to a private school.” I’ve always anticipated that Levi would want to trace his birth family, and we’ve promised our support should he decide to. We expected it during the turbulence of adolescence – “you’re not my real parents” – and the maturity of later years. But as yet he’s not interested, which has been both a relief as well as a nagging concern. Should he be so disassociated from his background? “You probably think about them more than I do,” he shrugs. “It would be like meeting two random people who I don’t know, which is awkward.” (Photo: Xavier Lorenzo/Getty).

Chosen family

Maybe one day he’ll read the letter his birth mum wrote to him when he was taken into care. But for now, it’s buried in his memory box where a collection of his cards, letters and trinkets are kept. As he grows into adulthood our differences become clearer: he’s more conservative (with a small ‘c’) than us, loves gaming and EDM (Electronic Dance Music for those who don’t know!), doesn’t cook, or talk willingly (to us, at least) about his emotions. But he has our shared sense of humour, an appreciation for the arts and loves animals, travelling and a fancy night out. He is both his own person and our son and for him, nurture has always won out over nature. “The way I look at it, I was chosen by my parents,” he says. “How can that ever be a negative thing?” (Photo: Milan Markovic/Getty).