Wednesday 13 August 2008

But I'm too middle class to have a social worker...

or not, as it turns out, because we are now officially assigned. The meeting on Monday went fine, thankfully, and the assessment ball is now properly rolling. We've scheduled in our nine meetings, and most of them are on saturdays which means that we now barely have a free weekend between now and Christmas. I have very mixed feelings about all of this. I KNOW I should be feeling excited that something is finally happening, but I'm just not.

When we've told people about this process, several have said some variation on the theme of 'oh well, I guess they have to do it thoroughly' or 'If only all new parents had this much preparation!' I know they are only trying to be nice, but it's not really helping. Because, you know, maybe all new parents should go through all this, but we all know that they don't, so this hey-it-isn't-so-bad approach doesn't really make me feel any more chipper. I think what I wish they would say is 'Wow, that sounds really tiring and intrusive. What a pain!'

I know all that other stuff is true, by the way, just in case you're wondering.

The good news - and this really is excellent news - is that we have a date for our assessment panel meeting. January 7, 2009. Depending on what mood I'm in, that seems either really far away or really close - I can't quite make up my mind. But we had worried it wouldn't be until March, so I'm telling myself this is good. And it is. I really was worried about Monday, and now it's over it seems like it was such a small thing. I am thankful for how well it went.

3 comments:

  1. I can understand where you are coming from here. We only had to have three meetings plus classes, and I was overly irritated. I kept thinking, no one asks a pregnant person this kind of intrusive question, and no one asks a pregnant person to define their philosophy on discipline. Cripes! But - glad you're meeting went well! (had to end on a positive note;)

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  2. Thanks, misty :) I'm sure this is somehow developing our characters, but it doesn't always feel like it, does it??

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  3. My husband said this *all* the time when we were in process with a social worker, that how crazy to think about what decent people we are, and look at all the yahoos out there who procreate willy-nilly. Yeah, I get it. And i've heard that it's so hard to get through social services hoops in the UK, a lot harder than in the US. Hope things go smoothly for you guys.

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Over to you!