"How adopting an angelic five-year-old blew our family apart"

[sparkly]

Originally Posted by ariesallover

I'm afraid that's the case. During my practicum, I wanted to shake my supervisor who insisted that we not "waste" too much time on some patients because they were damaged, meaning beyond help.

Now I recognize how right she was. I also recognize how I was played by Alexes who were reading me and giving what they deduced I wanted to see.

A breathing therapist I met for treatment told me about having to give back a child. She said had social services told her family fully about the extent of the child's issues and provided support, then they could have kept the child with help. Instead, they were essentially abandoned and unable to cope with the dangers that the adopted child presented. He went back into the system.

It breaks my heart to hear of children being sent back to foster care, but I get the feeling that sometimes children will do things so they'll get sent back, because they're afraid of opening up and getting their heart broken again. I guess it's a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Originally Posted by Dixie Normos

^ call me a softy, but I don't believe anyone's beyond help. Everyone's like a locked garden...only certain people can open them up and see the goodness inside. Unfortunately, not all closed people are found in time to stop them from destroying themselves...or others.

So would you be willing to try and unlock Charles Manson's garden? Just playing, I promise.

[MoodyJenny86]

Originally Posted by Honey

Jesus this picture terrifys me...I got chills and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I scrolled down...

Those eyes...are definately going to give me nightmares...

I work at a day care and sometimes it feels like the trouble makers are spawns of satan himself but now THIS kid makes the little brats I deal with look like angels...In fact, tomorrow I am going to give BIG hugs to all of the 'bad' ones and show them I care!

[A*O]

My heart began to pound. She was so beautiful - and she was smiling.
Her eyes seemed to have a magnetic pull, and as each step drew me closer, they grew larger.
The photo from the adoption agency had not done those eyes justice.
Nor had it captured the silken gloss of her fair hair, which hung to her waist.
I was in love already.

Sorry - these are NOT the reasons you adopt a child. She may be totally fucked up (dur) but if you go into adoption on the basis of how 'cute' the kid is then you have no business adopting in the first place and whichever agency arranged this has a lot to answer for.

[Chilly Willy]

This is the reason why you should think carefully about adoption. Chances are, you'll get a child that is disturbed and that needs an insane amount of attention.

What you shouldn't do as a responsible adopting parent, is go out and get five or six kids at the same time, just because they're cute and match your outfits.

This is not the first ime I hear from an adoption gone wrong.

[Just Kill Me]

I used to make a seriously bad joke about wanting to adopt a rainbow family of children of differing ages and then if they were all fucked up I could be liek "I didn't do it; they were like this when I got them"
It's horrible.
Children don't end up in the foster system because their lives were raspberry waterfalls
and unicorns.

I don't know what I'm doing here... Sparkly, regarding the child being receptive to therapy; maybe if they had started as soon as they got her. It should just be a given in adoption that therapy will be needed.
My younger sister works with children (infant to 4 years) and she was talking with me yesterday about one of her students and she jokingly said "when we first get them we have to break them down" She doesn't mean it in a be mean way but you have to indoctrinate them to what is going to be the routine and what will be acceptable. She's told me some stories that are just sad regarding children who have obviously been plopped in front of the TV since they were able to sit up and they don't even have the grasping motor skills to play with play dough.

[crumpet]

In fact, tomorrow I am going to give BIG hugs to all of the 'bad' ones and show them I care!
Good idea, in case they were plotting to kill you already, lol!

Seriously, attachment disorders are a huge problem with these kids and sometimes their brains never developed properly and it can't be undone, at least not always.

[sluce]

When we are born the nuerological hard wiring in our brain are not final. They connect during the first part of life.There are some amazing studies where they were able to actually watch as some brain connections were made while an infact was held, talked to softly and loved. Most children with RAD are from countries where they are abandoned at birth and placed into over-crowded orphanges. They are lucky to be held a few times a day for a feeding but often are just given a bottle that is propper up for them. The lack of human interaction severly effects the completion of the brain connections that control human emotion. Sadly for many there is not enough therapy in the world to help them over come it since their brain just will not function as it should.

[Dixie Normos]

Originally Posted by MoodyJenny86

Jesus this picture terrifys me...I got chills and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I scrolled down...

Those eyes...are definately going to give me nightmares...

I work at a day care and sometimes it feels like the trouble makers are spawns of satan himself but now THIS kid makes the little brats I deal with look like angels...In fact, tomorrow I am going to give BIG hugs to all of the 'bad' ones and show them I care!

^^just so you know, the child pictured here is not the one they adopted. It's a child model. Technically, I don't think it's legal to print a pic of a child facing charges, or commited/institutionalized, in case it ruins their chances of a normal life later on.

[Just Kill Me]

Repetition is what builds the pathways in our brain. If started soon enough it can be changed.
It's all so very fucked.

[Dixie Normos]

Originally Posted by sluce

When we are born the nuerological hard wiring in our brain are not final. They connect during the first part of life.There are some amazing studies where they were able to actually watch as some brain connections were made while an infact was held, talked to softly and loved. Most children with RAD are from countries where they are abandoned at birth and placed into over-crowded orphanges. They are lucky to be held a few times a day for a feeding but often are just given a bottle that is propper up for them. The lack of human interaction severly effects the completion of the brain connections that control human emotion. Sadly for many there is not enough therapy in the world to help them over come it since their brain just will not function as it should.

Exactly, new pathways can be created with hard work at any time. People are not old dogs, they CAN learn new tricks. All they need is at least one person they can really open up to who won't abuse them, the rest is all effort on their part.

[Just Kill Me]

That's if we're dealing with a healthy brain. Some of these children were subjected to god knows what in the womb.

[southernbelle]

Originally Posted by Just Kill Me

Well yeah I understand social workers don't get paid shit and they usually have overwhelming caseloads. We are constantly hearing cases that a severe being lost in the paper shuffle yet there are other cases of over zealous persecutions of parents. It's an absolute mess.
What can be done? First we need to keep people who have no business inflicting existence upon a child from having them in the first place. I'm all for ruling with an iron fist and sterilizing people.

I agree. I am anti-abortion but I have no problem with birth control, including mandatory sterilization for certain individuals to ensure that we don't have situations like this where children are born to people who can't or won't care for them, resulting in neglected children who go on to live miserable lives and often become financial burdens and liabilities to society. I believe that many of these kids turn out to become sociopaths, and I feel that those are very dangerous individuals. People I believe would be candidates for sterilization include:

-Drug addicts
-Anyone convicted of a crime against other people, but particularly children (sexual assault, battery, murder, etc.)
-The mentally retarded or individuals who have a mental illness or disability so profound that it would prevent them from adequately caring for and meeting the needs of a child.

[moomies]

Am I the only one that wonders if Daily Mail makes up their stories?

I mean it's like deja vu, I'm pretty sure I read something very very similar by them a while ago.

The way this story is written weirds me out (and Daily Mail articles weirds me out quite often). e.g. what A*O quoted.

(quoting again just because)

My heart began to pound. She was so beautiful - and she was smiling.
Her eyes seemed to have a magnetic pull, and as each step drew me closer, they grew larger.
The photo from the adoption agency had not done those eyes justice.
Nor had it captured the silken gloss of her fair hair, which hung to her waist.
I was in love already.

If you were a parent who has had a difficult experience with raising an adopted child, would be this melodramatic? It doesn't sound right to me.

[Grimmlok]

I don't think anybody can rightfully claim to be anti-abortion unless they also support some sort of fully funded program to take care of unwanted offspring that result from the lack of such an option. Until that actually takes place, or all the anti-abortion cheerleaders take it upon themselves to ensure each child is personally cared for out of their own pocket, then anti-abortion stances are hypocritical and unworkable at best.

At worst, you get unwanted kids abandoned, abused, and left to the horror of neglect which IS NOT LIVING. it is existing. i dont care what you think some potatosack wearing weirdo 2000 years ago said on the subject. There is wishful thinking and what you think SHOULD happen, and then there is reality and what DOES happen, where we all actually live. In the really real world, contraception doesn't always work, sterilization does not always work or is not an option, and there is nowhere for these kids to go but down once they're born because there is nobody to care for them and no system set up to deal with them.

That's the problem with these kids.. children are like little unprogrammed feral animals. The lie, cheat, steal and exist in a world of pretty basic stimulus/response. These ones are the apex of that. They are emotional survivalists and will do what they know to survive as best they can and will try to brush you aside if you get in their way. That's the reality and that's why they are so hard to mould into something socialized after they've been passed around so much. They have so many walls built up around them and all they have to rely on are the instincts, threats, and actions that have enabled them to get this far. They don't trust. They don't know how. It takes a LONG LONG time for those walls to fall and they get passed around because they present a danger before those walls have time to fall.

In the end, they never do and they grow up fucked in the head.

[Just Kill Me]

Just a little bit of history repeating itself.