Huffington Post has a nifty article on traumatized foster kids overcoming great odds as a adolescents...
Cool article, I hoped to make an annonymous comment... not possible. so I'll link the article here and the comment I intended to leave (but wouldn't have been able to even if I did register... because as usual, my comment is longer than 250 characters.)
Finding Hope After Trauma by Gary Stangler
As an adoptive parent of a "special needs sibling
group" adopted out of our state's foster system in 1994, I'm very grateful
our adoptive children's adoption social worker had the foresight to
"guarantee" psychiatric care until age 18 for all three!!! I can't express how desperately psychiatric
intervention for the three was needed "after 18!"
I'm not normally a fan of putting a video game in the hands
of a child and calling them a "child" until they are 30, however
...in the case of mentally ill individuals (especially in the case of our
"special needs sibling adoption group") I 100% see the benefits of extending
psychiatric care past 18 for "attachment disordered" adoptees!!!!!
"Over-18" is where our adoptees have had THE MOST
difficulty!
They have accomplished much... they still have so very far
to go! I remain hopeful!
The age-appropriate season of "detachment" as
young-adults to begin to embark on their "adult lives" reawakened the
abandonment issues and RAD behaviors in our adopted children that were
troubling to see in young children, and horrifying to see as they became young
adults.
Our "overcame-so-much" Honor-Rolled college
student who completed most of her AA degree as a dually enrolled high school
student went for one semester out-of-state to college... then dropped out and
returned home a completely different person!!!
The Reactive Attachment Disorder we believed she was healed
of, was back in ways we never imagined possible.
Her adoption benefit of unlimited psychiatric care had
"run out." Our daughter was
eligible for care through our family insurance plan as long as she remained a
full-time student... but she had quit school.
We offered to pay for her psychiatric care but she refused. She continued to spiral downward under the
unethical "counsel" of an overzealous student of psychology, who
encouraged her to call her "mom."
That lady who bought our daughter's affections with expensive gifts she
could not afford (like a car) became "mom" to our 21 year old
daughter. Three years later in the eyes
of our adopted daughter that "RAD typically triangulated" woman is
still "mom" and I am not.
I have since learned this behavior of early-traumatized
adoptees adopting gullible new families when they are young adults phenomenon
is quite common behavior for Attachment Disordered individuals who were adopted
out of orphanages or the foster system.
We learned, in our neck of the woods anyway, parental rights regarding psychiatric issues
expire before a child reaches 18.
... Our simultaneously spiraling-downward (unofficially
diagnosed "inhibited form" RAD) at 2-months-to-18-year-old son was
supposedly getting the psychiatric "help" we so very strongly
encouraged him to participate in, but we as parents had no right, according to
his counselor, to information on his progress or lack-thereof... "It's not
like medical records... the laws are different... I'm not allowed..."
Like his "officially diagnosed RAD" older sister,
our son chose his own set of "new parents" as is common for
legally-adult adoptees with attachment
disorders to do.
As painful as it is to experience this rejection from
children we have poured the very best of everything we have into... their
"coping mechanism" kind of makes sense. It is familiar to them... their
"roots" have been pulverized.
I don't fully understand their behavior because my life's experiences
are so drastically different than theirs.
My family has always been my family.
They joined my family. They have
been grafted in... they have access to my roots, but my roots have not always
been their roots. Their roots have never
been my roots.
They have experienced traumas I would never wish on
anyone. They are coping as best as they
know how.
Our adopted children had lived separately as foster children
were only "placed together, 'as a sibling group' for adoption" when
their bio-mom was required to terminate her parental rights for issues of
abuse/neglect/abandonment.
The oldest I was told lived 8 years with one foster
family...
The middle I was told had an estimated 17 different
families...
The youngest was removed from bio-mom's "care"
shortly after birth and bounced between 5 or six homes that I'm aware of before
coming home to ours.
The three children (placed with us at ages 2.5, 6, and 13)
had come to us at an "interim" foster placement after a "failed
special-needs-sibling-group adoptive placement." They EACH had experienced numerous
psychological (and other) traumas before ever being placed in our family.
According to our children's social worker, this beautiful,
symptomatically RAD initially-charming child never lasted more than 90 days in
any one foster or adoptive placement.
The social worker wanted "this" adoptive placement
to work out. We did too!
I'm grateful to see the overcoming the impacts of difficult
beginnings related to foster adoption story in the news.
I'm eager for the world-at-large to learn about Reactive
Attachment Disorder and how to best support the mental health of individuals
who have experienced trauma during the most important years of brain
development.
I too have tremendous hope for our children who had
overcome so much before we ever knew who they were, who have accomplished so much as young adults, and who STILL have a lonnnnng way to go!!!!
