When a child may have to leave
Attachment — By Voni on December 18, 2009 at 7:42 amLeaving? Maybe…
The world simply wants to pretend this doesn’t happen. Even people in the adoption community can be harsh toward a family that needs out of home placement. Permanently, it is called disruption or dissolution and comes with insane amounts of heartbreak for every member of the family – the child, the parents, siblings…but, it’s real. Another real fact is that many children can’t live in the home, but disruption is not the chosen option.
What other options are there? We are struggling with this exact question. Recent events have led us to understand that our middle son is not thriving in our home. Maybe that’s putting it too kindly. He is actually unsafe here – not to himself – but to others (both human and animal). Many families choose RTC (residential treatment centers) which are almost always full and when space can be found, many are quite temporary. There are organizations that work extensively with troubled children…at a cost that could wipe out the whole family. Most adoptive families I know do not have $100,000 a year sitting around to send their child to a reputable place. Therefore, most suffer in silence.
Yes, we adopted internationally and understood that our state system would not have a cross to bear in our adoption…but this happens in fost-adopt all too often. It’s hard to get help. Talking to attorney’s about options is basically a report of the fees of it all. Two hundred fifty dollars an hour for a process that can be endless is not rare. Again, this is for disruption…and once they are your children – once you’ve loved them…how hard that decision is.
Even options that are remotely available and financially possible are not always the best ones. You start to weigh the simple fact of getting to live a small amount of life without the threat against all the other emotions you have. There is military school – boarding schools…but, will it help? Or is it just for your own good…and how selfish is that. What if another child is at risk by leaving this child in your home? Double edge and very sharp since you can also be in trouble for not protecting the second child.
Where is the line? I try to find it everyday. I look for signs that we can work this out. Signs that we can remain a healthy family with him here everyday. We have found two options and I wonder how many other families are searching…looking for ways to make it all work. If you are – know that I am too and it’s hard.
What would you do?ca-pub-3017103269052419
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19 Comments
wow, that is so sad, but I know a family suffering the same thing with the children they adopted who were foster children first.
I am an adoptee. My question as a mother, not an adoptee, would be…if a family had that problem with a biological child, what would be the options?
I would assume, the family would struggle with it for the long haul,come up with the money for long term care or find some solution. I have 6 kids but have not had to face any of the struggles mentioned here but if I had to, there is no option to “send them back”. I would just try my hardest to help my child.
btw, the family is doing everything they can to help their children by getting counseling, both individual and family, some long term care and lots and lots of love.
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I don’t know what i would do. in my gut i do not think i would disrupt for the same reason i would not abandoned my biological child if he came down with a mental illness. My children are my children. That said, what are your options if one child is a threat to another? I don’t know the answer to this. Is the child a threat with all children? Or is it a family dynamic thing. I don’t mean is the family at fault, it’s not that, but some children can be extremely sensitive to various dynamics. If this child is the middle child perhaps he would be much better off in a home where he is the youngest or only. I wonder if there is a way to look for some respite care somehow. I wonder if there might be a way to find a family that has dealt with these issues.
I’m sorry that your family is suffering. I’m sorry I don’t have any answers. I just wanted to let you know that there are a lot of people who do not judge you. Know one can say what they would feel/think/do until they’ve been there. It’s brave of you to reach out, and i’m sure it will help other families who may be struggling with the same thing.
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As an adoptee – I would hope that an adoptive parent would do the SAME EXACT thing as they would if they carried the child for 9 months and birthed him. Where would you give your birthed child back to?
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Please read The Primal Wound by Nancy Verrier. It will give you a lot of insight into what the adopted child is going through and how to help him.
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Or is it just for your own good…and how selfish is that. No more and no less selfish than the original adoption was. For you disrupters, you who will have dispossessed a child for (at least) a second time, there cannot be a hell hot enough.
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Stop trying to rationalize abandonment. This child needs you, and you need to shoulder the responsibility you chose to assume. Elaine said it best: to where would you return a child born of your body?
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What you are experiencing is not unique to families who have adopted. Any family with a troubled child faces what you are talking about ~ the desperate search for quality, affordable help. What is unique is that, it appears, you feel as though because the child in question didn’t come from your loins means that you can opt out. Now I’m not trying to be holier than thou, nor am I not understanding the magnitude of what you are saying. I realize that you are talking about a child who is displaying sociopathic tendencies. But no one is EVER guaranteed a child will not break their heart and/or turn bad! You chose to parent this child, so set your mind to the fact that you are his parent, and look for options.
If the child commits a crime call the police and press charges! Do what you would do if he were your child, because he is! Don’t dupe yourself into thinking that if he had your DNA he wouldn’t have turned out this way. This is just not true. Find a support group for parents dealing with out of control children. Besides learning that this even happens to good parents, you will also find support. I know, because I too had to deal with an out-of-control child. But I didn’t have the ‘advantage’ of her having been adopted by me, so I ‘had’ to buck-up and find help and hope were I could. I remember days when I wished I could find someone else to give the responsibility to! I felt so over-whelmed and incapable of finding a solution. I was a single-parent who, during most of that time, did not have a permanent job. So I understand the cost factor, I had no insurance, I could barely pay rent & that not on time. But you CAN keep trying and looking for resources. Please don’t add insult to injury by abdicating your responsibility as his parent! I’m not saying that this will bring about a positive outcome. Sometimes it does but many times it doesn’t. That is what being a parent is… the good, the bad and the ugly. It will bring you swells of pride and love and joy and heart-ache that you never thought was possible. Welcome to parenthood, the REAL parenthood.
In understanding and hope,
Michele
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Just another case of buyer’s remorse. Have you asked your abduction agency if they can give you a refund? Or maybe a coupon credit towards your next purchase?
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that’s really sad and really tough.Highlights the BIG dissociated difference between adopted and ‘real’ children though- You can’t send a ‘real’ kid back anywhere!(thankx EP! Thankx Michelle!:)
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I find it amazing that people even want to talk about this. You want to normalize so-called “disruption”?
Why?
It seems counterintuitive to the whole adopter party line of getting women to relinquish.
What sane woman would relinquish knowing that if the adoptive parents grow tired of their child or don’t feel a “bond” with their child or don’t want to fork out money to support the child that they can simply send them back or put them in “respite care”.
The whole point of adoption is supposedly find a “forever family” for a child in need (forgive me while I stifle a laugh there, it is obvious from the many entitled adopters here on this site what adoption is REALLY about). Are women going to be as willing to place when they discover that “forever family” really means only as long as the adopters can stand to be in a commitment to a child they do not love/want/need anymore?
And BTW shame on you, not only for “disrupting”/abandoning a child but for actually having the nerve to seek online approval for your selfish and horrendous decision.
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It’s interesting how everyone assumed I was planning to disolve my adoption because I never said I was – nor are we. That is not an option for our family…I want to draw attention to the fact that there are often FEW options for a family in our situation. We will find the correct outcome for everyone. I will not put the safety of one over the safety of the rest. And…I wouldn’t allow this from a biological child either. Perhaps you can all swing $100,000 a year for a great treatment facility…good for you. We can’t – at least not while still raising our other children. I now know why so many families are left with no other option than disrupting the adoption…there just aren’t any good answers. At all.
If my bio child was doing these things – the options would become what the options have become in this case. Private boarding type school for a year in order for us to figure out how to make this family and this home safe for everyone. In order to give my other children and my husband and I a chance to breathe and remember that life is not only about therapy and door alarms and worry every second that a child here may do something ‘bad’ that could get every child in my home taken from me. Biological or adopted is not the issue here – safety versus violence is the issue. If I didn’t love him, we’d be done. We aren’t. I sincerely hope that those of you spewing hate never have to live through this. Yes…we go to therapy and doctors and every single resource we can find. I spend hours each day researching what other families have done that has worked or not worked. This is my full time job…healing my children. Both of them…I can not sacrifice one for the other one’s illness. I will not. Oh…hang me from the cross you choose.
My son’s first family ’sent him off’…easily…so obviously, biology didn’t play a role for them. They didn’t even bother to show up to court to make a plea – at all. After they did this to him…I didn’t break his heart, his body, his spirit. I have worked to heal him and I will still be working to heal him…no matter what option ends up and what road we take.
To those who try to understand – or have been there – thanks for the kind words. It’s purely the worst situation I could ever imagine being in – for HIM, for ME, for everyone…
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I have to agree with B. The only thing I find more reprehensible than adoption disruption is trying to justify adoption disruption and garner support for doing it. The child does not “have to leave”, you want the child to leave and if the child is not thriving in your home that is YOUR FAULT!!! Do some research into the difficulties that adopted children go through and show a little sympathy and empathy for the child. It sounds like you may not have disrupted yet and I hope that these comments shame you into doing the right thing and finding help for the child that you decided that you had to have.
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What you don’t seem to appreciate, Voni, is that several posters here DO KNOW what they’re talking about, having lived through it themselves.
The internet is filled with stories demonstrating the ignorance that adoptive parents have with regard to adoption. Yet when push comes to shove, the adoptees get blamed (directly or subtly) for their resultant behaviors.
Whenever I have suggested IRL to APs or PAPs that they do extensive research into adoption, including finding out what first families and adoptees themselves have to say about it, they almost unilaterally become furious and and go into attack mode to cover up their defensiveness.
If you had done your research, you wouldn’t be in your current situation. But no: you had to have that cute little kid, no matter what the facts were about the kind of family/home life he would need to support his issues.
It’s like the midlife crisis guys who buy an expensive red sports car, then freak out at the ongoing costs of maintaining such a complicated engine.
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You all can hear what you want to hear. I did ‘do my research’ – we went into this with eyes wide open. Of course we knew what the worst case scenario could be. I’ve read all the books there are to read, most of them over and over. We use parenting techniques that are proven in the RAD community. And yet…there are things you can not prepare for. He is our child – a very loved member of our family – we have not – nor did I EVER say – that we are disrupting…we are not. We are looking for answers…looking for ways to keep all our children safe. You can continue to rip me…make me the poster child for all that is wrong in adoption. You aren’t here…you don’t know our home and the intense love and protection we give to all our kids. You don’t know why we adopted…just like I don’t know why you hate adoption so much.
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Voni, so he is going to a private school for a year? Is it a school that provides therapy and discipline, etc? One that will help him heal as well as learn? There are a lot of those schools now.
Will you go see him while he is there?
I know this is heartbreaking for you and a very difficult decision. I hope it works out for everyone.
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I don’t hate adoption. Not at all.
The truth is, if one of my children became violent toward another family member, I would do everything I can to help him. I would not complain about the expense but pull up my bootstraps and do what was needed. I would look into grants and help from social services. I would hold fundraisers. I would take an extra job. I would beg and borrow to help my child. I would do anything for my children. Anything I had to do.
One thing I would not do is go to the internet and complain about how expensive good therapy is and lament the fact that my child may have to leave my home.
And if I ever were to lower myself to air my family’s intensely private business to an open forum on the internet (not that I would EVER do this), I would sit back and listen to every piece of advice and opinion I get, after all, I would have opened myself up to the judgment of others.
I would not spew hatred and venom. I would not accuse those who do not support me of hating adoption.
Many of us do not hate adoption (some of us do) and it is unfair and dismissive of you to throw out those statements simply because you are not getting the support and sympathy you so obviously expected.
Perhaps some of us are holding up a mirror and you do not like the image you see looking back at you.
Please don’t make this about the people who disagree with you, you made this about you when you wrote this, when you complained about the expense of this poor child who is, after all is said and done, a child who needs your help.
This whole thing should be about him. He’s the one that matters, right?
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It’s amazing to me how quickly people cast stones. I think Voni points to a very real problem in society–what do you do when a child–any child–isn’t able to safely live with his or her family? Clearly people judge the parents in this heart wrenching situation very harshly–and instead of thinking of solutions and support, hate is spewed instead. Placing blame or fault, running someone into the ground, “shaming them into doing the right thing” doesn’t help that parent or that child. Voni, I hope you, your son, and the rest of your family finds a workable solution!
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Just as a sidenote: many people that have biological children with severe emotional and violence issues choose to relinquish their children to the state in order to get them the help that they need. It happens all the time because there are so few resources out there to help seriously mentally ill children and their families.
I’m not saying that I’m advocating this to any family, but people have been quick to say that those with bio-children wouldn’t “send them back”, but the fact of the matter is, it does happen. A lot.
The crux of the issue is that there is so little help and support available. And everyone has an opinion on the matter as to whose ‘fault’ it is.
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I’m late to this conversation – but thought I’d still leave a reply. I’m an adoptive mom, but my comment is about my biological family. I was raised in a family with a brother that was very violent towards me. The priority was to “keep the family together” and to focus on my brother’s pain and mental health issues. The effect on myself or the rest of the family was always very secondary. So what do I believe – he should have been moved to another home, or I should have been allowed to live elsewhere. Biological or adopted there are times that certain family members should NOT be living together. Personally, I think it’s very brave as a parent to recognize this fact.
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