Click to read Sticking with a wounded child. Some readers’ comments appear below.
John Raible Online
Supporting the Transracial Adoption community through education and research
Click to read Sticking with a wounded child. Some readers’ comments appear below.
This post was incredibly needed right now. Thank you.
Thank you so much for this, and other, posts. I’m both humbled and inspired. I too believe that working together we can transform the system. It’s going to take a long time, it’s going to be a ton of hard work, but I think it can happen.
This is the single most powerful piece I’ve ever seen you write, John! Every would-be parent should read it! Thank you!
Pat
Thanks for your support, Pat!
Count me in, when you’re ready. I’m a trans-racial adoptee and an adoptive mother…I understand exactly where your coming from.
READY NOW!
Wow. Just wow. You have said it all, seriously – and I hope people are listening.
The one and only thing I would add is that everything you say that exists in intercountry adoption – racism, classism, and biologism – is there in domestic adoption. The demands of the overwhelmingly white prospective adoptive parents who choose not to adopt older children or children of color drive the unethical practices that mark many domestic infant adoptions.
Thank you for your honesty.
Agreed. I have lots to say about domestic adoption, too. But I didn’t want to muddy the issues. It’s not as if domestic adoption is “good” and international is “bad!”
Thank you.
John, I’ve been blown away by your voice many a time, but this one takes it to the next level. Thank you…from the bottom of my heart.
I just hope my sons won’t hate me for airing our dirty laundry. I hope they will see that I am just trying to generate more compassion and understanding out there.
John, I hope so too…because from where I sit, your decision to share your family’s truth comes from a place of hope and love…
Loving your child with every fiber of your being, yet not being able to guarantee that the parenting choices you make are ultimately the “right” ones for him or her is, for me, one of the hardest aspects of parenting.
You are a brave soul. And I appreciate everything you do here.
well said!
(came from the link on Harlow’s Monkey’s blog)
Thank you for your message. It is so rare to hear people share their very real experiences with kids that other people have essentially thrown away. I do believe the fears increase when we don’t talk openly about the challenges.
I am an African American woman looking forward to adopting my future children out of the foster care system. People look at me like at me like i am crazy when i say this! Having worked for years with kids of color deemed “at risk” i have struggled to find others who are ready or willing to make a commitment to such kids caught in a system that funnels them into prisons.
I am definitely ready to get on board with your movement and build a stronger and intelligent adoption community that talks back to the industry!
Thank you so much for this post! I am an AP of a 6yo son who was adopted at almost 4yo. Even though I read a lot (I thought!) beforehand and talked to a lot of people, there is so much that I didn’t understand about how complicated it all is. But I am learning (many thanks to adult adoptees and first moms who share their often complex and contradictory feelings and experiences), and hope that it will help me be a better parent to my young son.
Bless you!
Thank you so much for your powerful words. I think there are many adoptive parents out there right now that would love nothing more than to join your fight to reform the system. Your words:
The worst of it is that the adoption industry focuses primarily on the desires of parents, not the needs of children and their original families. Don’t even get me started on the added complexities of raising children of color in a still racist society. You can read about that elsewhere on this blog.
are spot on. Thank you for sharing your story. It’s so important!
John. Thank you again. I finally felt semi-able to articulate myself on this tragedy in my latest blog post…I was sure to link to this piece of yours at the end.
Stellar writing that the entire adoption community needs to tune in to.
Thanks for your support!
Great piece, John. I am glad to be made aware of your blog, and I will read it often. We need voices from your unique viewpoint!
As far as I’m concerned you really have the last word here on this horrible situation. <3 and ((hugs)) to you and your sons.
I actually was cheering for the Russian decision to suspend American adoptions, and then I heard they reinstated them — so quickly?
Adoption is a huge source of income to struggling economies… not surprising, then, that Russia reinstated so quickly…
Thank you. I am a very disgruntled adoptive parent of an internationally, once very wounded child, who was not helped when she turned the same agency little Artyom was adopted through. We turned over every stone looking for help for our daughter. We too endure the harsh attitudes of those who refused to see the impact that trauma has upon children, but we kept fighting. I am a tenacious woman and when my daughter told me she hated me during an afternoon snuggle time, I looked at her and replied, “That’s okay honey I have enough love for both of us.”
Bless you for hanging in there.
Just the title; Sticking with a wounded child….is so incredibly profound. Thank you so much for speaking out for those of us who have been wounded, and especially for the children we are parenting – who are so grossly misunderstood.
You piece moved me more than any words could ever express. Thank you.
Bless you for continuing to love your child despite all obstacles…
John- No thanks needed here. Your words, your faith, your beautiful family. Ever thought of taking on an editor job? I could use your wisdom!
MeDenne- If you are one and the same that wrote me a beautiful support letter a long time ago. Thank you again. Keep on keeping on. Keep moving mountains.
Thank you for writing this.
I stand with you. Found you tonight via Harlow’s Monkey, via Stuff White People Do ~ but have seen you speak years ago here in Vermont, and watched your videos numerous times. So glad to find you again – you are such a passionate person, deep thinker, articulate speaker and writer, and fierce advocate for the rights of adopted persons. I am the adoptive white mom of two black sons, now fourteen and twelve ~ I have worked hard to raise them with a strong, positive self-image, although the waves are getting choppy these days with my fourteen year-old…
I am ready to work with you to help recreate a healthier adoption system that serves the needs of children by properly educating and supporting prospective adoptive parents and birthparents *long-term*.
Thank you for describing the love that a *real* Dad has for his children. A Dad who will always be there. A Dad who can disapprove of what you do, and love you anyway. A forever Dad.
Best, Andrea in Vermont
Bless you for caring and for seeking info to enhance your parenting…
Thanks for sharing your story. As an adoptive mom, I am livid with so many aspect of Artyem. Most people in the adoption community that I’ve talked with are outraged. We are out there.
Thank you for giving direction to my anger over the idea that giving back is part of adopting. As an AP who has walked through fire with a son with issues, I identify with the lack of support from schools and jails, but “sending him back” was never part of the picture. As a teacher with several adoptees in class, I felt compelled to express my opinions about the permanent nature of adoption with my students. I could sense how unsettled they felt about this new story. Thank you for writing to this issue with such meaning and impact.
still emerging from my naive and shallow AP clothes i just happened across your blog this past week…..wow that was a big share!! it seems there are many APs out there ready…but what do we do?…..i have read outsiders within….i write about the hard questions i am thinking about on my blog….i send my SW adult adoptee blog links and book suggestions….where do we go from here?…..ready for the concrete…..thanks…
keri
John,
I appreciated your post very much. As a former direct line social worker (in child protection and permanency work) and current policy specialist for child welfare, I believe it is very important for us to listen to those who are “experiencing” so we can find better outcomes for children. Working in adoption strengthened my sense that we need to work harder to keep children with birth families in the first place.
I admire that, with all you have experienced, you continue to search for allies. Thanks for your thoughts and courage.
Thank you for recognizing that I am not anti-adoption.
Excellent post. As you say, it’s probably just as well that Artyom will not be raised by a family that was incapable of loving him as he deserved; hopefully, he will eventually be found by people who are actually capable of giving him the love he needs. And again, while the adoption industry has serious problems, especially the international segment of it, shutting it down would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
Adoption is the destruction of one family to create another. It should always be a last resort option, and not the common act that it is today. Family preservation should be encouraged and invested inheavily by our government. But instead, adoption is a tax-deductible act as if buying a vehicle.
People who want to adopt need full psychological exams and background checks.
Relinquished children need representation in court (CASA) to protect their rights to maintain their biological identities and to be able to “disrupt” their adoption if they are abused and “unsatisfied” with the parents they were purchased by.
Most importantly: The birth certificates of adopted children should NEVER be sealed and edited. A person is only born ONCE. Amending a birth certificate is FRAUD. We teach our children not to lie yet their birth certificate IS a lie. That’s a mind trip.
Do you have a blog? I don’t think many people will see this comment buried down here!
John,
My long time good friend Pat Johnston recommended I check out your blog, and I am glad I did! Very insightful and well-written post. While I agree with 90% of what you wrote, I do have a slightly different view on a couple of things.
I adopted 4 times internationally … and we chose that route as “preferential adopters”, meaning we had two bio kids and could have had more, but chose to build our family through adoption. We went international primarily because we were ignorant of how the system worked, and because we didn’t want to “compete” with folks in the US looking for babies. After bringing home a 21 month old girl and a 9 year old boy, we added a 14 yo girl, adopting out of birth order. She had been in about 9 placements before us, and our first two adoptees already had the family imploding, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Of course, we had no services, and we (ME, the mom) was universally assumed to be the reason 3 kids were struggling so much (never mind the respectful, responsible birth kids) and folks started telling me I should bail on the 14 yo. I fought it, but finally became so overwhelmed, I agreed. She was a true disruption, not a dissolution, as we had not finalized and the agency (after a great deal of effort that the girl resisted) found her another placement. This teen had articulated that she came to America to “get an education” and her heart was still with her mom in Asia, who had sold her repeatedly. After the teen left, it wasn’t long after before our son became dangerous and required residential placement. He is now homeless and still blames me for much of what is wrong with his life. He is still running from his life, and my husband says, “Doesn’t he know that wherever he goes, there he is?” Our daughter found a boy on the Internet, made a baby, has no HS diploma after incredible effort on the part of many people, and has nothing to do with my husband or me. I learned of the baby’s birth on Facebook.
Lastly, we added a child who disrupted from her first placement. And here is where I differ from your view, sort of. My daughter would not have thrived in her first adoptive family. She arrived in the US at 8 months and joined my family 2 weeks before turning 3. Her first adoptive family found they were pregnant before traveling to get her, and asked both the local and national placing agencies what to do. BOTH recommended proceeding with the placement if they “wanted two kids.” Again, these folks didn’t know what they didn’t know. My daughter was an intelligent, traumatized infant who brought this family to their knees with her grief and trauma issues. They sought help almost immediately, and received bad advice and platitudes until they were finally referred to my organization. It was the RIGHT thing to do to move her to our family. I had a clear understanding of what she needed (I had no clue when we brought home the 21 month old, and I did not do everything right by any means.)
I think there are times when re-homing a child is the right thing to do, even if it adds yet another trauma to the child’s life. But by no means do I condone shipping an unaccompanied child back to Russia. HOWEVER, I do sympathize with a single mom who was way over her head, who had other kids to protect, who undoubtedly tried to get someone (or many someones) to understand what was happening in her home … and who received little or no support, making her think the only answer she had was to do what she did. It was a horrible solution, but as you noted, perhaps the lemonade we can make out of this lemon is to bring attention to an “industry” that needs many, many changes.
Love your blog and will continue to read it. Thanks!
Nancy Spoolstra
Founder, Attachment & Trauma Network
Thanks for sharing your incredible story, Nancy. You may be right that sometimes, in extreme cases, parents and children cannot live as a family. My goal in publishing the above post was to slow down the conversation among frightened APs. Too many sound as if they are casually throwing around the term “RAD” almost as an excuse to dump the kids they feel unprepared to parent, after convincing agencies what wonderful parents they were going to be to a needy child.
I know that many in the adoption community feel that the Dx of “RAD” is the Dx de jour, and that parents self-diagnose their kids … and many feel that parents use the diagnosis as a reason to bail on kids. I have to tell you, John, that in my experience as the Founder of a national support entity, by and large the parents we deal with are dedicated beyond comprehension to helping their kids heal. Granted, the folks who find us are LOOKING for ways to save their placement and save their sanity, so perhaps it can be argued that we serve a skewed population. But there have been less than a handful of times in the 12 years I ran ATN where I found the PARENT(S) to be completely incompetent or unwilling to adjust in any way. When I blogged for two years on adoption.com, parents came out of the woodwork to acknowledge that I articulated what they were feeling … this is an incredibly hard road, largely unsupported and highly misunderstood. But at the same time, I and the organization I founded are staunchly pro-adoption. We regret that it is necessary to disrupt family bonds, but we clearly see the need to provide stable, nurturing homes for the kids whose biological families cannot care for them. BUT … we need the community and the mental health professionals to get past the notion that “love is all we need” to make these placements work, and if our children struggle, it is NOT because we didn’t “love them enough.” Adoptive parents run the gamut in commitment and abilities much like biological parents, except perhaps adoptive parents are MORE committed as a whole, because they work so hard to become parents. It isn’t typically a lack of commitment that blows a placement … it is a lack of resources, a safety issue, a financial issue, or something to that effect. As you can see, I am passionate about this issue!
I am a member of HANA-Adult Adoptee-Community on FACEBOOK. Join us, please. Professor Raible’s work has already captured the attention of certain HANA members.
Thanks for the invite!
Wow. Thank you. This is the best post I’ve read about the whole Artyem situation. And the one of the best I’ve read about adoption in general in a long time.
Well said! Very profound, powerful and eloquent. My four children were not adopted through international means, although two are transracial. We have a son who has not lived with us since he was 15 – I could tell you stories that would stop you in your tracks. He has yet to take responsibility for his life – any of it. Our daughter, with the combination of medication and talk therapy, has healed into a sweet and sensitive young lady. Our youngest two avoided many of the trials and tribulations or RAD.
As parents, all we can do is all we can do.
John, thank you for writing this.
I wish this could be posted in the sky for every single person to read and in particular for anyone who is connected to adoption to read.
As Korean adoptee who had a very tumultuous adolescence and still struggles through life as an adult, I truly appreciate your candor and clear insight. Thank you for being so willing to share so openly and so honestly.
John,
My wife is a TRA from Korea, who recently reunited with her birth parents. My parents also adopted a little girl from India a couple years ago. In living the reality of adoption from several angles (although not personally), I feel that I have come to understand some things better and I try to be an ally of adoptees now.
I really appreciate your honesty and I agree wholeheartedly with most of what you wrote. I have been waiting to hear someone else with this point of view- that once a person becomes a parent of an adoptee (or marries one), that you never, ever, ever leave them. You speak with authority as one who has both experienced the pain of adoption and one who has sacrificed and loved through the pain of raising adopted children of your own.
Keep speaking out and helping others to learn the lessons of unconditional love, the pains and joys of adoption.
May God bless you and your sons. I pray that they will find their way through the pain into the light.
Mike
So much I can relate to in this post, both as a mom and an adopted person. The following especially resonates with me:
“Yet unlike more militant members of the adoption triad who want to shut down the industry completely, I’m still looking for allies who will join the struggle to transform adoption. Perhaps I am misguided, but I still believe that more children should benefit from the promise of adoption, as I myself have benefited. But in order to secure the future of adoption, we need to open our eyes and see adoption for what it really is.”
I don’t believe you’re misguided, for if you are, then I am too. Great post.
As a parent of an adopted 11th grader (adopted 10 yeas ago, who is now 18) who has been on probation since the summer between 8th and 9th grade, spent part of spring break in jail and will probably head back there again… It is good to hear that some kids headed down a path of self destruction do make it. It can be so incredibly discouraging to parent kids with these issues.
Help can be almost impossible to find, or financially out of reach… the cracks they fall in huge. Last fall, when she was in a psych facility they wanted to put her in a long term facility but no one would take her because it was less than 6 months before she would turn 18. Great. So they sent her home. Not what either of us needed.
I wonder how this kid will ever live on her own, yet getting her social security disability is unlikely because her damage doesn’t have a nice little label that screams unable to function normally enough to be responsible for herself, to hold a job, to be an adult.
So what do we do? We hang on, joke out of our kid’s hearing about putting them in a pickle barrel like Mark Twain suggested, be vilified by family and friends because if we’d just ‘discipline them’, ‘set stricter rules’, ‘be a better parent’ then they’d be fine. No some of them won’t. They have been too badly damaged by the hand life has dealt them – and we didn’t do it to them. Love, therapy, prayers and money are not enough.
As my kid as been and out of the system I have been sentenced to parenting classes where the message is ‘hold them accountable” for their behavior. Um, yup I already do that. Would you like to see the holes in the walls from the tantrums caused by enforcing rules? I have been saved from false accusations because the first person I call when there are problems that spiral out of control is a neighbor who is an ex cop. Then I call 911. Despite witnesses my kid still lies. She thinks that if she were in foster care or a different family she’d get everything she wants, have no rules and then she’d be happy. She doesn’t get that happiness comes from within. The grass is not greener in this respect.
It is hard enough for adults to learn not to let their past ruin their future. My kid has absolutely no grasp of that. Some of these kids have have more than their share of things with potential to ruin their future. I know there is a good kid buried in there. I see flashes of it. But I fear that is all anyone will see – flashes. She is too busy playing poor little orphaned girl who is owed by the world to realize that the victim role generally doesn’t lead to a fulfilling future. Her lying, stealing, zest for creating drama in all relationships… are going to prevent her from even coming close to reaching her potential. It makes she worry that something really bad will happen before she hits bottom and decides it is time to do something about her life.
And in the end that is all we can do as parents. Push, prod, offer opportunities, vent to others so we can keep coming back for more emotional (and occasional physical) abuse dished out by our kids and hope that maybe this new thing we found might help, might make the difference, or maybe they are finally old enough that their frontal lobes have connected enough that they will start to mature, get a grip and start to turn their lives around.
As imperfect parents we wonder if somehow we missed what could help them. We alternate between hope and despair, fantasize about “sending them back” when we are having trouble hanging on, and then somehow take a deep breath and go on, not always very successfully. This the toughest thing I have ever done.
And to be quite honest, had I a crystal ball I would not have adopted this child. I wanted a family. Instead I am a jail warden, hotel keeper, ATM machine, taxi… and I have a child who will probably never love me back. I grieve for that. I grieve that this child is in so much pain and I can’t seem to do anything about it. I grieve for my lost dreams. I grieve for the ruined relationships that I value because of her behavior and the lack of tolerance in my extended family for a child this damaged.
Yet if I disrupt this adoption this will be the beginning of the end for this child. She can’t take yet another rejection in her life. Her self esteem is in the toilet already. She has internalized that she is damaged goods because her birth mother sold her (her reasoning for what happened to her). She is hell bent on proving she is bad. If I give up she will have yet more evidence of her lack of worth.
I am the adult here and need to act like one. There are days I don’t want to. Days I want to quit. Days I wish from the bottom of my heart that I didn’t adopt this child. And there, for the grace of god, it could have been my child on that plane back to her native country. I have come that close.
Until you have parented a child like this do not judge. As parents we are human too, doing the best we can, dealing with broken dreams ourselves… It is hard to parent in the face of hate every day, where you don’t get anything back.
I don’t know how this story will end. The odds of it ending badly are at least 50/50. Not what any of us dream for our children.
Maybe I am naive as a parent. I have four children and two have been adopted. Our first from China at 9 months old and our 2nd from Korea at 23 months old. Our first daughter laid in a crib for 9 months with no one to hold her, have eye contact with her and love on her. She is my snuggle girl and never leaves my side for a second and has deep insecurity issues. Our 2nd daughter lived with her mother and grandmother for the first 17 months of her life and they put her up for international adoption. She has had severe trauma issues and is not 5 years old and is finally releasing some of her anger. It is not pretty some days but we rejoice in that she is using her words and expressing herself…finally…she can “begin” to heal. That is our story….the brief version….maybe I am defensive because I AM an adoptive mother who would lay down my life and die for ALL of my children. Your writing did not upset me at all, I think that you did a marvelous job and I will begin praying for your sons as of now. But what does upset is a comment on here that someone was actually “excited” when they were going to cease adoptions in Russia and disappointed when they reinstated them? Why would anyone think that would be a good idea? Obviously, the “best” solution would be that people in China, Korea, Russia or wherever would adopt domestically in their own countries and in some countries this has began but it is not completely accepted and it is not even working in the USA. There are millions of children around the world with no families………NONE! And if you stop international adoption or even “hope” that it ends in some countries what in the world does that do to help emotionally starving children who need a family? I realize it is not the biological family…….I realize for both of my five year olds that staying with their birth families would have been the best solution for them but that didn’t happen so would it be better for them to sit in an orphanage without anyone touching them, never knowing the sound of a mother’s voice, never knowing what it felt like for someone to REALLY love them even though it wasn’t their biological mom? Why is is such a bad thing to be an adoptive parent sometimes in some people’s eyes? Russia is a terrible place for a child to grow up in an orphanage ……..can you even imagine when the child becomes of age and they put them out in the street what their life will become like? What we need is more adoptive parents like YOU and me and others who love their children no matter what trauma is in their lives and what we need is a stronger voice for these children and stronger adoption agencies who provide post-adoption therapy because honestly all of these children will need some. All of them come with something that they will need help with even if they never suffered physical abuse……they were all abandoned….every child deserves someone to love them.
This woman made the wrong choice and handled it completely wrong but all children shouldn’t suffer from this situation and be without families.
Thank you for your honesty and your love for your family.
Thank you, thank you for your honest, heartfelt and respectful article.
Thank you for declining to classify your sons as “RAD”; for sharing the anguished frustration inherent in parenting wounded children; for providing realistic optimism for the long view; for shattering the myth that post-adoption services are readily available and for reaffirming that despite it all, children have a right to unconditional commitment.
You have allies in the struggle to reform adoption–i hope you will count me among them.
Third try…the P.S. was to my post that seems not to have posted. it said:
Bravo, bravo, bravo. I hope you are Ok with my quoting and linking to this post on my blog: FamilyPreservation
“I am fundamentally grateful that I was adopted and got a second chance in life, even though I wish I never had to be relinquished or adopted in the first place. Contradictory statements? Of course: that’s the paradox of adoption. It is both a blessing and a curse.” John Raible
That is the paradox of adoption FOR SOME ADOPTEES. There is nothing about being pressured to lose my child to adoption that I am grateful for or that is even acceptable, let alone a blessing. It is also not a mixed blessing for adoptees who have been abused, abandoned or killed by their adopters….or for any who simply who did not wind up at all better off for having been adopted.
Yes do hope so, the awareness of the public and the adoption industry’s faults and immorality needed to be raised as a matter of urgency.Hopefully some good will come of this fiasco and the child will cease in time to be a victim of the adoption industry in the same way he has been so far.
Thank you for your openess. This was a very interesting read, reffered to by Yoonsblur.blogspot.com (FANTASTIC blog by an adult Korean adoptee). Very insightful.
As an adult adoptee myself I’m always warmed when I hear this kind of commitment from an AP. This is exactly what every adoptee (and child in general) is hoping for and forever will be scared of losing, no matter how affirming the AP might be. At least that’s my personal experience. And not because my APs haven’t loved me enough, but because their love have nothing to do with the trauma of abandonment and relinquishment that occured before they were even in the picture. Their love can and has helped a lot and made all the difference in the world.
I’m not judging (although I’m aware it might sound incredibly judgemental), but it’s impossible for me to even remotely relate to APs wanting to dissolve an adoption. In my mind an adoptee’s a child first and an AP is a parent first, and it might be tough and feel hopeless, but really you HAVE TO hang in there because it’s YOUR child. You can’t change your mind anymore than if you gave birth to the child yourself. It’s YOUR child.
I know plenty of parents with biological children that struggle and feel at their wit’s end, but they don’t consider giving their kids away.
I’m always afraid of my parents (AP) rejecting me and taking their love away and not being good enough for them, but it has never even crossed my mind, that they would dissolve the adoption.
My final rant is on the RAD. I don’t particularly know the term (it must be called something else in my language) but I looked it up.
It’s not said if the reason for your not describing your boys as RAD is because they aren’t diagnosed or something else, and my comment on the subject is more in general.
If diagnosed and not just pressumed, I think it’s important not to diminish it and hope or love it away or into not being an issue. You might miss giving the child the help it needs. But I also think it’s equally important not to define the child (or adult for that matter) as their diagnosis. It’s not WHO they are.
I also liked the comments. A lot of interesting view points. Too many to comment on all of them, although I have something to say to most of them