Learning About Adoption From a Child’s Perspective

Sally Maslanksy, MA, MFT is a Marriage and Family Therapist in private practice.

Posted: April 20, 2010 08:50 AM

In their beautiful book Everyday Blessings, The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting, Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn suggest we could learn a great deal from trying to imagine the world from our child’s point of view (p.384). To this end, I would like you to imagine what the world might look like from the point of view of a 6 or 7 year old orphan.

Imagine what the world looks and feels like to a child taken from his mother at the age of 1 or 2. Imagine that no one has really prepared him in any way for this transition and there is no one he knows there to help comfort him during this process. Imagine a little deeper if you can at the impact of any possible abuse, neglect and drug or alcohol exposure.

Now imagine this child being taken to an orphanage full of strangers. Imagine the repercussions of spending the next 4 or 5 years in that orphanage. Having worked in an Eastern European orphanage, I can assure you that it is not a place in any way that promotes loving growth and development.

Children in orphanages have few opportunities to grow and develop in a healthy way. They have little if any consistent one-on-one loving attention. They often do not even have their own beds much less bedtime stories and rituals such as being tucked in, bath time, bubble baths or rubber duckies. They don’t grow up in a house with a kitchen to watch mom cook dinner, help set the table or share in the important ritual of family meal times. They rarely have their own set of clothes or shoes — and certainly few if any that fit properly. No special stuffed animal, no blankie, no family photos or albums, no special books with their names in them. Children in orphanages do not have the attention, love and nurturing so vital to healthy development. And this is all under the best of circumstances. This is assuming there is no abuse. Neglect is the nature of growing up in an orphanage.

Now imagine that one day a complete stranger arrives at the orphanage. She speaks a language the child has never heard. She spends a week or two with the child and then takes him from the orphanage to a plane and they take a long journey to a strange place with nothing that looks, sounds, feels, tastes or smells familiar. And she begins calling him a name he has never heard before.

More than likely in the entire 7 years of this child’s life, no one has attempted to help him make any sense of all that has happened to him. What is expected though is for him to be happy, well adjusted, loving, affectionate, well behaved and perhaps even a little grateful. No one anywhere seems to have any understanding what is really going on in his inner world, and no one is able to understand the feelings of sadness, despair, hopelessness, loneliness or anger he may have.

Now, switching gears slightly, imagine you are the woman arriving at the orphanage to adopt this child. Most likely no one has given you much if any of this child’s relevant history. No one has educated you about how early childhood development can be severely compromised by the kind of neglect, deprivation and emotional upheaval in this child’s life. No one has advised you on what may be necessary to understand the experience of this child or to prepare you to be the parent of this child. There are most likely no follow-ups on how the adoption is going, no post-adoption support, no community awareness of the difficulties that may arise, and certainly no consequences for adoption agencies and orphanages who have in any way misrepresented the physical or mental health of the child you have made this long journey to adopt.

I believe that the recent situation of a mom in Tennessee returning her adopted child to Russia is the result of a complete failure of the adoption process both in the US and abroad. A 7-year-old child allegedly threatening violence and drawing pictures of his house being engulfed in flames are the desperate actions of a child begging for help. A mom putting her 7 year old child on a plane, alone with no support or explanation, and having a stranger pick him up on the other end only to take him back to an orphanage is also, I believe, a very desperate act.

If any thing positive can come of this recent tragic incident, let’s hope it is to begin a global open, honest, informed and collaborative conversation about the meaning, process, reality, needs and expectations of adoption. Adoption is an amazing and rewarding way to have a family. It is how I started mine and nothing has brought me more joy and happiness. Adoption does take a great deal more than love and the desire to parent a child. Adoption truly does take a village – and a well-informed, open minded, accessible, educated village to be sure.

For more from this author, go to the Huffington Post at:

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sally-maslansky/learning-about-adoption-f_b_541791.html

Sunday, April 25, 2010  WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE

By Darshak Sanghavi

Adopted Boy’s Return Highlights Problems in Russian Orphanages

“I no longer wish to parent this child.”

When 7-year-old Justin Hansen, whose name used to be Artyom Savelyev, was sent back to his native Russia this month with that note from his American adoptive mother, much of the ensuing criticism focused on the U.S. side of the matter. Some said that Justin’s adoptive parents were not equipped to care for an allegedly disturbed and violent child and that they had failed to seek proper professional help. Others blamed the questionable practices of some U.S. adoption agencies.

But there is no doubt that families adopting children from Russia face unique challenges. In particular, Russian orphans suffer from psychological disorders at much higher rates than do orphans in many other countries. Last year, sociologists reported in the journal Pediatrics that Russian and eastern European adoptees were three to seven times more likely to have mental problems than Chinese and Korean adoptees. Philip Cohen, one of the study’s authors, speculated to me that this might be because of high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome in former Eastern Bloc nations.

Yet at least some of the blame for the children’s problems must be placed on flawed child-rearing practices common in Russian orphanages. These facilities offer a time capsule of a medicalized approach to child-rearing that was popular in the Unites States decades ago, before the critical importance of children’s attachment to their caregivers was widely recognized and before we realized how damaging orphanages can be.

My colleague Richard Moriarty, a pediatrician and expert on international adoptions, recently traveled to an orphanage in Russia’s Pskov province, where he witnessed an odd scene. More than a dozen infants wrapped tightly in blankets were lined up in cribs, observed by staff members through a series of glass windows. The room was uncomfortably warm and eerily silent, since none of the babies bothered to make any effort at vocalization. Occasionally, Moriarty told me, the infants were taken out for walks in strollers, but even then each was positioned to face away from the person pushing him. Staff members almost never held or cuddled the babies. “They didn’t want the kids to get attached to people,” Moriarty recalled. The problem wasn’t that the children were neglected: They were kept fastidiously clean and were well groomed and well fed. The problem was that they were bereft of normal human contact.

 

Charles Nelson, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has studied and worked closely with Romanian orphanages for more than a decade, told me that although the caregivers he encountered there were well-meaning, they “raised kids in a way that was devoid of any affect.” And Lisa Albers, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who studies international adoption, said that “Russian child welfare is still wedded to the medical model” — meaning that it focuses on nutrition and cleanliness, not nurturing.

Russian orphans don’t typically suffer from a deficit of medical care: If anything, physicians tend to overdiagnose them with dozens of labels, such as intestinal dysbacteriosis, pyramidal insufficiency and spastic tetraparesis, which have no meaning to my American colleagues (who, upon examining the children, often find them to be healthy).

All this would sound very familiar to observers of institutionalized children in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Worried about the risk of infection, hospitals prohibited parents from visiting their ill children for more than one hour a week, and infants received minimal handling. In 1910, for example, homesick kids who cried too much at Massachusetts General Hospital were moved into isolation wards.

This approach wasn’t limited to hospitals; it went to the heart of beliefs about child development in the early decades of the last century. At that time, an accidental alliance — pediatricians trying to reduce infections and psychologists warning about overdependence — encouraged parents and other caregivers to treat kids just as today’s Russian orphanages do.

As Deborah Blum has written in “Love at Goon Park,” her history of psychologist Harry Harlow’s work on infant development, parenting books from the 1920s discouraged mothers from hugging children (the head of the American Psychological Association went so far as to recommend only one kiss per year). Parents magazine praised a psychologist whose books, according to Blum, foresaw “a baby farm where hundreds of infants could be taken away from their parents and raised according to scientific principles.”

But soon thereafter, things began to change. The psychoanalyst Rene Spitz produced sensationalist, disturbing movies of infants growing up in what amounted to solitary confinement in New York orphanages. Chicago pediatrician Joseph Brennemann discovered that babies sometimes died of what could only be called loneliness.

In Britain, the psychologist John Bowlby published his theory of infant attachment, which argued that a strong, affectionate tie to a caregiver is essential to a child’s mental health and development. And in Wisconsin, Harlow performed a series of cruel but dramatic experiments showing that lonely baby monkeys would repeatedly return to a lifeless doll he called the “iron maiden” for affection, even when the device was rigged to stab them or hurl them away or blast them with compressed air. Children, it became clear, desperately needed parental attachments for healthy development.

With these ideas gaining traction, Congress in 1961 created a federally funded foster-care program that shifted kids out of orphanages and into family homes. By 1965, only 4 percent of American orphans remained in institutions.

But attachment theory did not influence child welfare programs in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. And so, while Americans and western Europeans largely abandoned institutional care for orphans, Russians continued relying on it. At the time of a 1998 Human Rights Watch report, hundreds of thousands of children were committed to orphanages in Russia, while only several hundred lived in family-size foster-care settings.

Of course, many factors contribute to the plight of Russian orphans, including inadequate family-planning resources, underfunding of child welfare services and widespread alcoholism. And a culture of adoption has never taken off in Russia: Of an estimated 800,000 Russian orphans today, only about 15,000 are adopted each year, half of them by foreigners.

Child-development experts have long believed that foster care is better than orphanage care, but until recently, the data were lacking. Then in 2007, Charles Nelson, the Harvard professor working in Romania, published in Science the results of a groundbreaking study in which 136 infants were placed either in foster care or orphanages. Foster care produced significantly higher IQ scores, and the younger the child at the time of placement, the bigger the difference. “Institutional care is bad for kids,” Nelson told me. “The fact is that institutional care always does worse than family care.” (This may be one reason that adoptees from South Korea, which has a well developed foster-care system, have fewer mental disabilities than Russian adoptees.)

Washing, feeding and dressing needy children, it turns out, is the easy part. What child welfare institutions in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union still need help with is providing environments that nurture strong, loving attachments between children and their caregivers. As history shows, that’s a lesson that can take a long time to learn.

But recently, the glacial pace of transition to family-based care has thawed. Kemlin Furley, UNICEF’s deputy representative to Russia, sees increasing commitment from top officials to the principle that, as she said, “kids should be in families.” She points to President Dmitry Medvedev’s creation of a program that has promoted foster care in provinces such as Perm. As a result of these changes, tens of thousands of children have moved to foster care in the past few years.

Femmie Juffer, a Dutch sociologist who has reviewed studies involving hundreds of thousands of adoptees, told me that, across cultures, “pre-adoption adversity” predicts later behavior problems. Perhaps some good may yet come from young Justin Hansen’s story, if it highlights the adversity faced by many Russian orphans who have never known a family’s love.

 

Darshak Sanghavi, the chief of pediatric cardiology at the University of Massachusetts medical school, is Slate’s health-care columnist and a contributing editor at Parents.

Poland Adoption Hope Page

Featured Agency:  Huminska’s Anioly, or ‘Poland’s Angels’

The Scoop: Children available from Poland are between 1 and 17 years of age as single children and in sibling groups of 2, 3 or 4 children. The children are referred to families through the Polish Central Authority based on the needs of the children and approval of the prospective adoptive parents.

Time Frames
From the time your dossier is approved in Poland the referral process time depends upon the age and number of children you wish to adopt.

Eligible Applicants
Eligible applicants are married couples and single women. There should be no more than about 40 years between the age of the child and that of the parents. There are no religious restrictions.

Travel
All prospective adoptive parents must travel to Poland. In most cases it is a two trip process: first first trip is about 17 days, the second trip is 7-10 days to obtain the children’s passports and visas. Because the adoption is lawful 21 days after the adoption hearing, the adoptive parents typically return home for about 4 weeks between the two trips.

Fees for an Adoption from Poland
The fees for an adoption from Poland are for the process. Huminska’s Anioly does not believe in paying per child and is strongly supported on this issue by the Polish Adoption Authorities. The total fee of $26,000 includes home study and US CIS fees, application and agency fees and all international fees. The fees remain the same whether you are adopting 1 child or a sibling group of 2, 3 or 4 children.

Travel expenses vary with the time of the year you must travel. Living expenses vary depended upon where you must stay in Poland based on your children’s location and approval by adoption authorities.

About Huminkska’s Anioly   

           
Huminska’s Anioly is Polish for Huminski’s Angels and has well over 1100 “Polish angels” home with their new American Parents since 1989.This Hague Accredited Agency can not only assist with Polish Adoptions, but also provide pre and post adoption support, as well as encouragement and assistance with maintaining the children’s Polish heritage through their Polish Adoptive Parents’ Association Chapters. (Currently in 16 areas of the United States). There are “Mom’s Groups” being established in various parts of the United States to help with post adoption issues. They also work with the Children’s Foundation of Hope to provide for those children living in Poland. Huminska’s Anioly conduct seminars and workshops on many different aspects of adoption, foster care, health and developmental issues for those professionals working and caring for the children in the orphanages of Poland. In the best interest of those seeking to adopt children from Poland, Huminksa’s Anioly have collaborated with specific adoption agencies throughout the United States. These agencies not only provide home study and post adoption report services, they are professional social workers who can assist with post adoption issues and referrals to appropriate local facilities as needed.

How Did Huminka’s Anioly get their start?

Mimi Huminski. This adoptive mom came home with her first of 2 Polish children in 1989 and has been dedicated to the orphans in Poland and Americans who wish to adopt Polish children ever since. Over these many years, Huminska’s Anioly was begun, became a Pennsylvania State Licensed Adoption Agency, became the first American Agency accredited by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy in Poland and in 2008 became a Hague Accredited Adoption Agency.

‘Huminska’s Anioly could have begun to assist with adoptions from many other countires, but it is our mission to work only with Poland. We can therefore, provide the best possible services to our families and dedicate our work to the children in Poland.’

Polish Adoptive Parent’s Association, or PAPA

Do you have more questions regarding Polish adoptions? Are you looking for families in your area that have adopted or are in the process? Looking some advice or just need to talk with someone? The Polish Adoptive Parents Association (“PAPA”) is here to help. PAPA is a network of families throughout the United States that have either adopted from Poland or are in the process of adopting.  

HUMINSKA’S ANIOLY WEBSITE:  AdoptionsPolish.com.

For More Information on Polish Adoption and  Poland Agencies,

visit AdoptionHarmony.com.

when rain hurts at whenrainhurts@blogspot.com

into our hearts at intoourhearts@blogspot.com

grown in my heart at growninmyheart.com

to kaz again at tokazagain@blogspot.com

See Many more Adoption Blogs at Adoptionharmony.com/blogs.

Check out the Russian Databank of adoptable children

at AdoptionHarmony.com/russian-data-bank.

The Russian Data Bank:  Use the translate function on your computer for each page or try using the English version offered.  Selections offered are age range, eye and hair color, gender, sibling set and region of Russian Federation.  Although it is illegal to use photographs on the computer to show the orphans according to Russian law, they have listed them publicly with US access.  Children on the data bank are often adopted by US citizens via US adoption agencies.  Families often find their referrals on this site even after they have been adopted.  It is interesting to look at the Russian Data bank, to say the least, and very sad to see how many children would benefit from a loving family.   Maybe if you look, you will find a child that inspires you to adopt in Russia. 

Ukrainian Adoption Hope Page

For readers age 4 and up, this tale is a realistic one that shows parents going to get their older toddler child from an orphanage.  Mishka has a great sense of being written by an author who has been through the adoption process and gives it the ending MOST people experience-a family is formed + one Mishka (teddy bear).

The clever narrative given from the perspective of the mishka is what makes this story work. The pictures are so well done that it mimics some photographs in our life book from our adoption.  My son and I keep it on the regular reading shelf because it is one that can be read over and over and at different ages of development.  It is general enough that we could put in our own story as we went.  Normalizing the adoption process for our children and opening up a gateway for communication is the key-and I believe this book is a must have for your adoption library.

To order this book or adoption books for children like it, go to AdoptionHarmony.com/books and movies-selection-page
                                                

The Italian DVD by Sony Pictures Classic Older Teen/Adult Film

* Running Time: 99 Min.* Rated: PG13

Synopsis  For most Russian orphans, the chance to be adopted is a dream come true. But six-year-old Vanya has other hopes. After discovering his mother is still alive, the abandoned boy teaches himself to read so as to learn her address from his personal files. Before a wealthy Italian couple can claim him for their own, Vanya sets off on a perilous journey to find his only remaining family. Pursued by orphanage staff and the police, the determined runaway must now face the most difficult challenges of his young life in this incredible story inspired by true events.

Cast and Crew* Stars: Yuri Itskov, Mariya Kuznetsova, Dariya Lesnikova

* Director: Andrei Kravchuk

* Producer: Andrei Zertsalov

* Genre: Drama

* Studio: Sony Classics

* Sub: English (US), French (Parisian), Spanish (Latin Am)

Adoption Harmony Review:

Dreaming of being adopted is the norm for the Russian orphans in this movie, with one exception.  A young six year old boy has an Italian family interested in him when he finds out his birth mother is still alive.  Showing the living conditions and staff, as well as the children and their ploys to survive, the Italian will, as I’ve said before, force you to see where these adopted children are coming from.  The main character in The Italian, Vanya, struggles to search for his birth mother before the Italians can take him away from all he’s ever known.   He will have to learn another language and is forced to speak to these strangers through an interpreter.  He has no idea why they would come all the way to Russia to adopt him and their motivations are not offered.  The vulnerability of Vanya and all the children in this co-ed orphanage are realistic.  The neglect and shame given to the orphans by the society only compounds their isolation.  This is all very realistically shown throughout the film.  Bring your Kleenex’s!

 If you have adopted a Russian boy, and so many of us have, then you may see a child in this film that may look like your son.  The main character so closely resembled my son that I did not keep a dry eye for most all of the movie.  The movie has English subtitles but is spoken in Russian.  I watched this one several times, and have on my keep-safe shelf.  It is another must-see and ought to be a prerequisite for pre-adopters because it shows what we all see when we go to the orphanages, which can be haunting.  In any case, it would be a prep for what is about to come and a plea for all the older kids that are never adopted.  Vanya will capture your heart and not let go.  This is a Mission Possible movie for sure! 

Order this DVD by going to www.adoptionharmony.com/movies-all

 Adopted:  When Love is Not Enough DVD by Point Made Films

*Running Time: 80 minutes

*No Rating (preteen to Adult)

*Accompanied by Adopted-We Can Do Better

*Entire Series Time:  2 hours 12 minutes

 Synopsis:  About Adopted

Take the Rose Colored Glasses Off now!  The most important element in adoption is understanding  how to develop a Healthy Attachment with your new child no matter the age.  Many say, “Babies don’t remember anything or they are a blank slate.”  This is not true.  Their bodies do remember, and their brains have developed according to their past sensory input and emotional experiences by the time you meet them.  Be open to the fact that your new child has a first family or home or a beginning, and it was not with you.  They are with you now, and you must understand that their is nothing glamorous about the transition from the child’s old environment to your new one. 

As Dr. Ronald Federici, a well known post-institutionalized child specialist points out, “Structure equals Love*,” when a child first comes home.  Keeping the child’s world very small is recommended.  Choose a FEW age appropriate toys for them, and as for all those ones you may have already bought, well, put them up on a high shelf and introduce them slowly one at a time.  Make sure that the toys are not babysitters, but that the primary caregiver(s) are the focus and building the emotional experiences that are couples with sensory input to get that brain development into its highest functioning to make up for the gaps from institutionalization. 

Many adult adoptees say that the adoption, in an of itself, was a trauma because it shook their world upside down.  If a child feels they have no control, and they really don’t, then that is life or death in their comprehension.  This applies right down to the babies adopted at birth.   Their “wonderful new home” is a result of a loss.  Their inner selves, their brain development, has incorporated that feeling in many ways via their senses.  It may feel like fear,loss, frustration, pain, lonliness, neglect, sadness, deprivation of love, touch, verbalization, attention, and even food. 

Don’t expect them to act grateful, and if they do, then it will be a gift for you.  The honeymoon period WILL wear off, and when they child feels safe enough to test you and every boundary you ever thought about having, then you know they are probably making progress!  They trust you enough to test the waters.  Having a well thought out and consistent discipline plan that is proactive and a daily schedule with consistent structure are some of the most loving acts you show to your new child. 

*Help for the Hopeless Child: A Guide for Families, Dr. Rondald Federici

If you are considering adopting, please read the article titled: A Different Perspective…just imagine because it attunes you to the place your child will be in upon arrival.

A great website to read about bonding and healthy attachment comes from one of my favorite sites called RadZebra.org to find articles such as  What is Healthy Attachment?

Balancing Out Being a single parent and staying balanced with finances is not always easy, but possible. I like parenting alone because I can devote that extra time to my child that I would have to divide with a spouse. I used to worry that it wasn’t fair to my child to have only one parent and no siblings until I realized that it only takes a great relationship with one person to truly garnish a child’s life. Of course, I have to supplement with lots of role models besides myself and get creative with financing.

While I do have to work to provide for our little family, I am fortunate to be working from home by runnng a website and freelancing. I work when my child goes to school until he comes home and then again after he goes to bed most nights. I catch up on the weekends thanks to endless hours of play outside with the neighborhood kids while I supervise from under the tree with my laptop going. I like my work-it’s a natural extension of myself and comes easily. It’s like I would be doing it anyway-so what a gift that I can do it as a career. I’m a weird kind of career mom-stay at home career mom. That’s a whole different topic.

I was married once when me son was 2. He was adopted at 19 months. I sufferred greatly trying to accomodate for the special needs of my son, my new husband, and his two young children. I wanted to do it right so badly, but I became drained and eaten up with resentment within a year. The “blend” was just not working. He left. I sometimes think I married for the wrong reasons-highly subconciously. I thought it would be better to raise my child in a 2 parent household and the extra income would really help too. Plus I loved the guy. I learned quickly that a man can make a huge salary and still have no money. I ended up paying on his debts as much as my own. Now days I have to divide my time only between work and homelife and keep it simple. For me, that is the way to peace.

 My biggest mistake has been fear that I couldn’t raise my son alone without help emotionally and financially. I believed that it was unfair to stay single when I had the open door to giving him more family, such as a daddy and siblings. Although I was making it fine as a single before the child, and was doing okay after he came, I seemed to keep that niggling fear that it wasn’t enough with just me. I felt confident that I could handle the emotional needs-but-not at the same time as handling the money. I was wrong! I ended up figuring out that each person has to do what their heart tells them to do and what they are capable of. I am now mama and papa to my dear special little boy, and we are doing well emotionally and financially. If a child has at least one primary caregiver that provides the opportunties for trust and intimacy, then that transfers over to others later on in life. I am giving my son that relationship. In return I get to witness his life. Money is just “green paper” that we use to live. It’s not good or bad, it just is what it is. Nature’s way is to balance itself, and that’s what we have today. This is balance for me. The scale is up to you.

Article for MoneySocial.com by Karasel Kid