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Walk Together
Walk Together focuses entirely on adoption in the UK, supporting mothers, fathers, children, and anyone connected to the adoption journey. We understand that adoption can be emotional, complex, rewarding, and challenging all at once, and our aim is to create a space where every part of that experience is acknowledged.
We publish weekly blogs covering everything and anything to do with adoption: family life, identity, attachment, school, trauma, birth family contact, and the realities of parenting before, during, and after adoption. If there’s a topic you’d love us to explore or an area where you feel more guidance is needed, please get in touch. We’d be very happy to add your ideas to our content plan.
Half-term for adopted children: what the gap in routine really asks for
The autumn half-term lands at the end of a long first half of term. Your child was just about managing. And now the structure drops out from under them, and the week ahead stretches out as either a holiday or a minefield depending on how it is held.
1 day ago3 min read
Why anger in adopted children is almost always grief
The slammed door. The small refusal that detonates. The rage that arrives faster than you can respond to. For many adoptive parents, the hardest behaviours in their child are the angry ones, and the hardest truth about them is that the anger is almost always grief wearing a different face.
Oct 164 min read
FASD in adopted children: the diagnosis many UK adopters eventually consider
FASD, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, is estimated to affect a significant proportion of children in the UK care and adoption system. For many adoptive parents, it is the diagnosis they eventually consider when the trauma, the attachment work, and the sensory profile do not quite add up to the whole picture.
Oct 95 min read
Anniversary reactions in adopted children, when the body remembers what the mind cannot
Every March, your child becomes a different version of themselves. The sleep gets worse. The temper is shorter. Small things become big things. You have noticed it for three years now. Nobody has connected the dots, including you. There is a name for what is happening, and there are good reasons it is happening to your particular child.
Sep 255 min read
When your child grieves a birth sibling they have never met
It often arrives as a question with no warning. Do I have a sister? Where is my brother? For many adopted children, birth siblings are a presence in their inner lives long before they are a presence in their conversations. The grief is real, often invisible, and rarely talked about.
Sep 186 min read
When you didn't fall in love at first sight, the bonding stories adoptive parents rarely admit to
There is a quiet thing many adopters know but rarely say out loud. The moment they had imagined, the first time they met their child or first held them at home, did not feel the way the books and films had suggested it would. It did not feel like falling in love. It felt awkward, or unreal, or like meeting someone for the first time and trying very hard to act normal.
Sep 115 min read
Sleep and adopted children, why rest can be disrupted for years
Most adopters know the bedtime struggle. The bath, the books, the calm, then a child who wakes hours later, or cannot fall asleep at all, or sleeps in fits and starts in your bed long past the age you imagined. Standard parenting advice rarely matches the reality. Sleep in adopted children is its own thing.
Sep 45 min read
Routines that hold, helping adopted children through the school holidays
For most families, the summer holidays are a chance to slow down. For adopted families, the same six weeks often look very different. The structure that has been holding your child quietly all term, the morning routine, the school day, the predictable adult expectations, falls away all at once. Many adopters describe their child as visibly more dysregulated in the holidays than in term time.
Aug 285 min read
Food, control and early deprivation: understanding your child's relationship with eating
If your adopted child has a difficult relationship with food, you already know what this looks like. It might be hoarding - food hidden in pockets, under pillows, in the back of drawers. It might be compulsive eating - consuming everything available as fast as possible, regardless of hunger, as though the food might disappear. It might be refusal - a flat, anxious rejection of meals, particularly unfamiliar ones.
Aug 1410 min read
The hidden hangover of contact days, and how to help your child afterwards
Most adopters know the contact day itself can be hard. What is less often talked about is the 48 to 72 hours afterwards, when the regulation that held during the meeting starts to come undone. This is the contact day hangover, and it is one of the most consistently underestimated parts of adoptive parenting.
Aug 75 min read
Why adopted children can want birth family contact and fear it at the same time
Many adopters describe the same scene. Their child asks something curious about their birth family, then within hours becomes anxious, irritable, or completely silent when contact is mentioned. The wanting and the fearing seem to switch on at the same time. They do.
Jul 245 min read
When siblings don’t bond: navigating the reality of adoption and sibling relationships
Sibling relationships are complicated. This is true in every kind of family - birth, adoptive, foster, blended - and it always has been. The idea that brothers and sisters naturally grow close, become each other’s confidants, and form an unshakeable bond across a lifetime is a romantic one, and reality is frequently messier.
Jul 1011 min read
What no one tells you about adopting a second time
The practical advice for second-time adopters is, in many ways, the same as for first-time adopters, but with greater urgency: accept help, ask for support, do not try to manage alone. The specific things that second-time adopters find most helpful include: having a clear and honest conversation with your social worker about the support you need during and after the placement, including respite if necessary.
Jun 269 min read
Hypervigilance in adoptive parents, when your nervous system won't switch off
It is 2am. Your child has been asleep for hours. You have heard a sound that is probably nothing. Your body is already alert, already scanning, already half-out of bed. This is hypervigilance. For many adoptive parents, it is one of the most exhausting and least talked about features of the work.
Jun 196 min read
Moving house, changing schools, and other transitions that hit harder than expected
The overarching principle for managing transitions with adopted children is this: slow down, over-communicate, maintain connection, and expect it to take longer than you think. Almost everything that helps can be organised under those four headings.
May 2910 min read
For the dads: the adoptive father's experience nobody talks about
The adoption system, in its current form, was built with a particular family shape in mind. It has evolved considerably, and continues to do so, but many of its assessment tools, preparation materials, and support frameworks still carry implicit assumptions about gender roles in parenting
May 19 min read
Friendships and adoption: Why peer relationships can be complicated
Friendships are not just social connections. Developmentally, they represent emotional proximity, belonging, and mutual dependence. For adopted children, these themes can closely mirror early attachment experiences, even when the child is not consciously aware of the connection.
Feb 277 min read
Online safety and adopted children: What parents need to know
Adoptive parenting is already rooted in openness and communication - those same skills are the foundation of digital safety. Your willingness to stay connected, even when the topic feels uncomfortable, is what will ultimately keep your child safest online.
Oct 31, 20257 min read
Why adopted children may be more vulnerable to exploitation - and how we reduce the risks
We use “exploitation” broadly to include criminal exploitation (for example county lines), sexual exploitation, online grooming, financial coercion, labour exploitation, and manipulation linked to substances or radicalisation. We draw on UK and international research and translate it into practical steps for parents and carers, schools, and support networks.
Oct 24, 202511 min read
Pets and adoption: The surprising role animals can play in a child’s healing
Research has shown that the human-animal bond goes far beyond affection. Animals can support attachment, regulate stress responses, and even influence the chemistry of the human body.
Oct 10, 20259 min read
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