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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.

All parenting can be lonely. The early years, the sleepless nights, the loss of identity that comes with becoming someone's primary caregiver - these are widely shared experiences, and there is a cultural acknowledgement, however imperfect, that new parenthood is hard. But adoptive parenting carries additional layers of isolation that set it apart from the general parenting experience, and those layers are often invisible to people who are not inside them.

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.