When parents disrupt or dissolve an adoption
by Anti-Racist Parent Columnist Jae Ran Kim, originally published at Harlow’s Monkey
Okay, I’m going to start off being blunt. When a person adopts a child and then disrupts or dissolves that adoption, they are re-traumatizing the child and they should accept full responsibility for that.
Now, I’m not saying that I always blame the parent for deciding to disrupt or dissolve an adoption.
Sometimes, overall, it is to the child’s best interest that the adoption is dissolved or disrupted. There certainly are instances when the child is a danger to himself or to others in the family and need to be removed from the home. And agencies sometimes lie or misrepresent children to prospective families and should be sanctioned for such unethical practice. But again, the child is the one who has no power and no choice in this whole matter and to be uprooted from a life and to have to adjust to a new home and new parents - much less new country and language in the case of international adoptions - only to be kicked out of said home and end up in foster care?
I was told that around 10-15% of children adopted internationally to my state dissolve and the child ends up in foster care. I’ve heard the stories and all I can say is, when one births a child biologically who ends up having major problems the child may end up in some out of home care (sometimes it’s foster homes or residential treatment centers or group homes) but it’s rare that a parent voluntarily terminates their parental rights to a biologically born child. Most of the youth I see in foster care are there because the courts have ordered a termination of parental rights.
Do I think a parent has the right to decide not to adopt a child who was misrepresented to them and has needs greater than what the parents think they can handle? Yes. Do it before the child is finalized. I absolutely think the parents have a right to accurate information. And I agree that it’s not in the child’s best interest to be placed in a home where the parents do not have the desire or ability to care for those needs. And that’s what I detest about this whole exchange.
Because we want to place children in good safe homes, we allow for disruptions. We have to. And that creates a practice that caters more to the needs of the secondary client (parents) over the needs of the primary client (the child).
Let me give you another example. Many prospective adoptive parents want to adopt infants. There is a high demand for *healthy infants.*
Agencies often make it known that there is no guarantee that any infant won’t develop medical, cognitive or developmental delays in the future, but who wants to hear that? Sure, we hear it and tuck that information in to the back of the mental file. At our agency, we tell parents that adopting an infant means that you know less about the child’s future. With older children, you tend to have more information. At least you likely have some history and some sense of potential risks for behaviors that the child may exhibit later on. With an infant, what you don’t know can be risky.
But as many other adoptees have said before, we’re not a tabula rasa and even as an infant with little or no information, there are risks. There are risks for children birthed biologically to parents too.
There is a high correlation between children in my state who end up using county or state mental health services and adoption status (note, correlation not causation). I’ve been told by several workers that “over half” of the cases involves children who have had at least one adoption disruption or dissolution and that includes children adopted internationally. It’s interesting to me, that many in the mental health field have negative feelings about adoption partly as a result of that.
I think a lot of adoptive parents “talk the talk” about how they love and treat their adopted children “the same as” a biological child. In terms of adoption disruptions and dissolutions, I would like to see more in terms of “walking the walk.” Once a parent adopts a child and it is legally finalized, they are the considered the same as a biological child in the eyes of the law. Adoptive parents who abandon their adopted child should be treated the same as any other parent who abandons their child.
Jae Ran Kim, MSW is a social worker, teacher and writer. She was born in Taegu, South Korea and was adopted to Minnesota in 1971. She has written numerous articles and essays and is most recently published in the anthology “Outsiders Within: Writings on Transracial Adoption” from South End Press. Jae Ran’s blog, Harlow’s Monkey, is at http://harlowmonkey.typepad.com/
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
SB wrote:
It’s awfully hard to generalize in the way you do, I fear. You must, for example, also be aware that sometimes parents have to TPR themselves in order to get long-term care for adoptive children with serious problems who are a danger to themselves and others.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 9:19 am ¶
Yoli wrote:
I agree with everything you have said.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 12:01 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:
I question that, SB. I know it happens, but my point is, would those same parents voluntarily TPR themselves for a biologically born child who is a danger to themselves and others?
Also, I just wanted to direct you again to my second and third paragraph where I state “I’m not saying that I always blame the parent for deciding to disrupt or dissolve an adoption.
Sometimes, overall, it is to the child’s best interest that the adoption is dissolved or disrupted. There certainly are instances when the child is a danger to himself or to others in the family and need to be removed from the home.”
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 1:47 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:
I have a follow up question to ask:
Is it possible for an adoptive parent to be able to disrupt/dissolve and still be committed to that child? Or is the only way to deal with an adopted child with severe emotional and behavioral issues to completely sever all ties? And again, would a parent do this with a child born to them? I guess I’m trying to figure out whether this is a pattern that happens with adopted children versus biological children.
At work, there are TRP’s that happen all the time. The majority of the ones that are involuntary involved the abuse and neglect of kids. It is rare that a parent voluntarily TPR’s their biologically born child because of behavior or mental health.
Sometimes parents will voluntarily TPR children who are “medically frail” or to consent to adopt to a family member or friend - in essence a kind of “adoption plan” - but the only voluntary TRP’s I come across in practice that are not medically fragile cases or consent to adopts are by adoptive parents who are “returning” kids they adopted from the system back to the system.
Adoptive parents have the same choices as any other parent when their child is unable to function in the home - so why is it more likely that they’ll voluntarily terminate an adopted child versus a biological child?
I am serious about being open to some insights and would be happy to have some evidence that disputes my theory that this is something particularly concerning the adoption community.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 1:56 pm ¶
Jae Ran wrote:
Sorry to fill up the comment box. I wanted to let everyone know I did have a follow up post to this one at http://harlowmonkey.typepad.com/harlows_monkey/2007/09/the-post-on-dis.html.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 1:59 pm ¶
Dawn wrote:
I’ve been a special ed teacher and I’ve heard more than one parent say when they have an adopted child who manifests a disability it’s like they have to mourn all over again that they couldn’t have biological children - granted these are the parents who have kept their children, but my heart always went out to them because it’s such a rough road.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 2:46 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
But what if the adoption agency basically lies to the adopting parents about problems that are so serious as to require institutionalization or the kind of services parents cannot provide given their other responsibilities, location, or family situation, and they did this knowing that the family had indicated that they were in such a situation? I don’t think it’s remotely fair to say that the family is responsible.
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 3:08 pm ¶
SL wrote:
In some cases of international adoption, the adoptions are considered “blind”. With older child adoption in some countries the amount of information you receive on the child before travel is small, and the two weeks spent in-country before finalization and travel home is minimal. So this makes it hard to do a thorough evaluation of the child and situation before the adoption is complete. I do think most parents enter into adoption with the best possible intentions and are devasted when it comes to the point of dissolution. A disruption and replacement into a home that can better nurture the child and is a better fit, even though it can be another trauma, can sometimes be a better alternative than the child continuing in a situation that is not healthy for anyone involved. I do think if someone has reached a point where, as a last resort, disruption is necessary, a private agency is best and least traumatic.
(Do I think a parent has the right to decide not to adopt a child who was misrepresented to them and has needs greater than what the parents think they can handle? Yes. Do it before the child is finalized)
Posted 14 Sep 2007 at 3:30 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
Two factors…
1) The hazy line between fostering and adopting accepted and promoted by child welfare systems. There is supposed to be an absolute difference between the two, especially legally, but in real practice there is not. Setting up a stark biological vs. adoptive dichotomy in attitudes towards “severing” from a child is wrong because there is also a third term in there in terms of kinds of relationships that can exist between adults and children.
2. Huge amounts of fear experienced by parents adopting from the foster care system. This includes fear of the children. By the training is done we have heard a ton of horror stories. Forward movement in the adoption process has to be done in the face of that fear and numerous stressful circumstances that can make the fear rise up like a tsunami. If private international adoption agencies stress the sweetness and light of adoption, it seems just the opposite from my point of view in foster care pre-adoption. Post-adoption support can range from good to nonexistent. From the stories I have heard of disruption in the foster care system, they have seemed like a failure of courage in the face of fear. Counties and agencies do little to address fear.
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 8:29 am ¶
dawn wrote:
I think much of the blame needs to be on agencies that do a poor job of preparing potential adoptive parents for the realities of adopting, as well as the resources in their area that can help both the parents and their child acclimate. I know that here in Ohio, I’ve met way too many parents who have no idea that there’s an international adoption clinic in our community that will help them understand the needs of children being adopted from institutions and what to expect in terms of attachment challenges. Too often agencies portray adoption — especially of toddlers and older children — as “instant family” instead of preparing parents for the very real challenges adoptive parenting can bring.
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 10:04 pm ¶
Ansley wrote:
Amen, sister! (All I have to say.)
Posted 15 Sep 2007 at 11:46 pm ¶
Scrapsbynobody wrote:
“the only voluntary TRP’s I come across in practice that are not medically fragile cases or consent to adopts are by adoptive parents who are “returning” kids they adopted from the system back to the system.”
This may be very true, but there is often a lot more than meets the eye. First, older children who come from the system are nearly always very fragile, damaged children. Quite often they come with poor documentation or information is even concealed from prospective adoptive families. In an effort to find the children homes, some workers downplay the real needs of the child. In other cases the children are quite honestly “lost” in the system. The right hand does not know what the left is doing, and a child is moved repeatedly without fully exploring why or what kind of damage it is doing to them.
In our case, one child in a sib group was far more disturbed than the others. They were not only endangering themselves and others in the house, but they were severely impeding their emotionally fragile sibs from moving toward health and happiness. We were very vocal about our concerns, but met with very little more than sympathetic noises from the placing agency. That is, until another sib reported to a doctor the harm this one child was persistently doing behind closed doors. Suddenly, the situation was of crisis proportions. Since we had not finalized yet, the child was removed from our care, and placed into treatment, back in the placing state. We were not consulted much about how we felt as a family, about disrupting a child we had been parenting for a year. Needless to say, it has been heartbreaking for everyone involved.
“Is it possible for an adoptive parent to be able to disrupt/dissolve and still be committed to that child? Or is the only way to deal with an adopted child with severe emotional and behavioral issues to completely sever all ties?”
Absolutely it is possible to maintain contact, and many adoptive families do. But much of that is up to the parties that take over the child’s care, and even the child themselves. If all the parties involved can work in tandem with one another, it is best for the child. More family is definitely better than less, and in our case, even if this child never returns to live with us, they will remain a part of our family. Their sibs are here being raised by us, and we will encourage and foster that relationship through emails, phone calls, letters and packages. Since the placing state is far away, we will try and visit when we can, but this will not be frequent. It is our hope that all of the children will become emotionally healthy and be able to pursue relationships with one another based on a firm foundation.
Posted 17 Sep 2007 at 7:00 pm ¶
Scrapsbynobody wrote:
Oh yes, and I of course I forgot the most important thing we can do. We can pray for this child every day, and teach her sibling to pray together with us.
Posted 17 Sep 2007 at 7:15 pm ¶
Lynda Avanzato wrote:
I agree generally with your post and the points you are making in it. I view a parent’s obligation to an adopted child is, (as it is for biiological children), as a sacred responsibility. I do seriously question however the statistic that someone told you that around 10-15% of children adopted internationally to your state dissolve and the child ends up in foster care. I can not believe the numbers are that high and if they were, I think it would be a national scandal. IT just doesn’t sound accurate……good post overall though.
Posted 23 Oct 2007 at 11:47 am ¶
anniecat wrote:
we were foster parents for over 10 yrs- (were because we can’t stand the system that creates some of these kids)
anyway fostered a little girl from 6yrs old on for 3 yrs, then finally got to asopt her- ( she was very difficult to say the least) we also have 3 bio kids- (all the same in my book since the day she came as a foster, then adoptive placement)
lets fast forward 1.5 yrs past the finalization- :0( within 1 month she began killing our animals- (can’t get rid of them we have a farm)
she urinates and defacates on anything and everything, she plots the deaths of the other 3 kids in the home, and the parents,
they have tried every psych drug in the world to help her- none work, she self mutilates, sexually acts out and gets everyone to feel sorry for her at the rest of the families expense- we have been told that we are “not very Christian -like” by the school- all because we wanted her placed in an SBH class (for safety and liability)
NONE of the Post adoption promises have been kept - Oh let me tell you the big secret- THIS KID IS FROM THE USA - many therapists will tell you that kids with this sort of Severe Reactive Attachment Disorder is ONLY seen in kids that have been brought here from 3rd world nations- please do not believe thier lies- or uneducated opinions-
She will be 11 in a month , and daily I pray to find a way to disrupt this for the sake of the other 3-
I hear you when you say that there are some instances where it is just not safe to leave the child in the home- thank you for that
but when we approach CSB they will not follow thru on anything- ( or there is this small catch- we get a whole $250 adoption stipened and med card / month- would it not be fair to just terminate that amount?- NO they want $800- $1000 / month for child support… you know she is difficult to care for… uh huh- in our state adopting a child is not to change the families socioeconomic status- okay- we bargained for a “normal amount” for a child- therapies for this kid are astronomical- and frankly unatainable at this point- so the child gets worse, the family unit falls mare into shambles … and for what - for social services to cry that they need more money?? It does not get to the needed points anyway…
…just food for thought for all of you who question disruptions (sometimes they are not just inconvieniences)
oh and just in case you wonder why we did it to begin with?- we thought we might be able to make a difference in the life of just 1 child- - we sure did - we made a major difference in the life of 3 of them- our birth children-
since I look and see most of the kids who are 18 that we have had are already in prison, and or had their own children taken from them????
Posted 24 Nov 2007 at 10:46 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Wow, I have to say that I agree with you in so many ways. One question, have you ever lived with a child that tormented your life dialy ?
Well, I do everyday. She is 12 years old. She has stabbed me in the leg, physically attacked other children in the home, has hit my 200 lb. husband twice, and hits me on a regular basis.
She runs away and does anything that she wishes. She is out of control. She has been involved with the police and I am miserable.
I love my daughter though. Every day is a new day, right?
She has been in therapy for 5 years now and is only getting worse each day. She was in a RTC for 1 year when I received a call to pick her up because she struck a staff member with a bat.
Is there legal protection for parents like me?
Why did I have to make sure that her abusers were punished for what they did to her. By the way, we were informed 18 months after the adoption that she was sexually abused and not a victim of neglect like we were originally told. Why did I have to sit through a trial and pick up the broken pieces afterwards? Is this not the job of trained social workers?
I go to sleep with my door locked and my other children’s doors locked because she states that she will kill us in our sleep. She threatens to kill us monthly and says she is going to burn the house down.
Any advice for someone like me? I have considered signing my other children over to my in-laws for their safety. By the way, she is not the only adopted child.
TPR is something people like me consider. I can’t sleep at night fearing she will strike me with a bat or kill me in my sleep like she states.
I am not a bad person, just tired and scared!
Posted 10 Feb 2008 at 10:19 pm ¶
Also Anonymous wrote:
Way to go, Anonymous! Thank you for daring to state the facts and reality of the hell those of us, like you, live every day. Although our daughter is only 5, she has been getting much worse, and not better, over time. She is quickly moving in the direction your adopted daughter has taken. I am so very sorry for the unreasonable burden you and the rest of your family are having to endure.
There is one other option that should minimize the direct daily emotional toll on your lives: ship her off to private (boarding) school. Expensive, certainly. The costs of this alternative screws your other children out of opportunities as available money goes to the higher-quality/high-priced school for your problem child. It also might teach them that reacting badly will be rewarded with an exciting education away from home. However, if the rest of your family is tight, your other children, would breathe a sigh of relief when the troubled child is away - only coming home on weekends and holidays should be tolerable. Final plus of this option is that it’s much cheaper than paying the government $600 - $1,000 per month for placement in the foster-care system.
BTW, Jee, if birthparents were so dedicated to preserving the family unit, then there wouldn’t be so many boarding schools around the U.S. and the world. It’s not as if boarding schools were created only for adoptive parents who want to disrupt but don’t want to risk having the family demolished by DCS/CPS.
Once burned by the government system that is supposed to help families, those of us in your situation have almost no alternatives…usually we continue to live the very private hell; continually admonished and ostrasized, and scrutinized by family, friends, and the communities that are supposed to help support us. All the while, the Troubled One continues to perform and dance for her adoring public.
Ultimately, there is no one, outside your immediate family, to turn to…to confide in.
And that’s when you must focus on survival mode. You, your spouse, and your other children are not possibly able to enjoy any quality of life. You, your spouse, and your children are all denied, by default, the love, attention, and positive energy you and they deserve. In the meantime, that “black hole” continues sucking the life and soul out of all of you. There is no possible rationalization that justifies an existance like this.
We have 5 beautiful, happy, and well-adjusted internationally-adopted children. Then, there’s our 5-year-old. Daily, she steals, breaks, hides, and throws away her sibs clothes, toys, pictures, et al. She continually (though unsuccessfully) tries to drive a wedge between my wife and me. She tries to get her sibs (mostly unsuccessfully) to do bad things to keep the home chaotic and anxious. Three of her sibs are very young and impressionable: they don’t catch all the subtle non-verbal abuse; such as when she yels “Hi, Mommy!”, in front of them and when their not looking, points her finger at us in the shape of a gun or sticks out her tongue at us. Then, when we react to punish her, it appears as if we are lashing out for no reason at our daughter.
All trash cans are searched daily. The largest is put on top of the clothes drier. We have to search her pockets and room constantly or things will disappear. At night, she will pretend to urinate in the toilet before going to bed, yet will, instead, hold it so she can stay awake all night. She’s been able to stay awake for 72 hours at a time with this trick. The results are disasterous for our family: She instantly tears into us each morning as we go in to wake her up - and it just doesn’t stop. We, then, have to force her to sit, every night before bed, on the toilet, listening for the sound of urination. You call this life?! This, along with eating and stealing misbehaviors are daily games for her.
Diabolical? Absolutely: Even when we’ve gone out for ice-cream as an after-school treat, she’ll gobble down her ice-cream and then scream at the top of her lungs. Her rewards are many: (1) She’s filled her stomach with ice cream, (2) so she won’t eat dinner, (3) her screaming draws attention from strangers, (4) the rest of the family is looked at accusingly, and (5) she disrupts the happy mood the rest of us were in - just rying to enjoy some freakin’ ice-cream. In all instances, she plots her actions around what will generate the greatest amount of return on her smallest investment.
When we adopted her, the foster mother literaly ran out of the room without even saying goodbye or hugging our new daughter - and it wasn’t because she was all blubbery from the separation. Much later, we learned her spine had suffered deep scarring and her leg was fractured in 2 places. Even in the arms of the foster mother, her arms remained straight out and she wouldn’t lean in toward the foster mother or us for a hug. She refused to eat at all (a game she continues frequently to this day). We’ve endured 4 years of projectile vomiting, urine and feces purging, pushing, abusive language, rage, and the like. And as I said, it’s only getting worse. Last week, she cut a sib’s hand with a knife she managed to find on the floor at a restaurant, and cut another sib’s arm with a pair of scissors.
Go ahead, Jee, make excuses and condemn us. We signed up for a child with any variety and number of physical complications, NOT emotional/behavioral bagage that is so great that she can not focus on anything other than controling and huring her family.
Until you walk a mile in our shoes, Jee, you do not have the right to judge us - the adoptive parents of a child with severe conduct disorders. As parents, our philosphy is to guide and coach ALL of our children through a full and enjoyable life.
We can’t even get 1 damn doctor to take us seriously - to get our daughter the help she needs. EVERY supposed “professional” sees her perform as a normally adjusted and bonded child. So, the doctors accuse us of having poor parenting skills as she is “obviously just fine.” We’ve had to secretly videotape her behaviors to get even a Food Therapist to believe us - and even then, her support was short-lived as our daughter quickly mastered the necessary skills to get out of going to Food & OT anymore. It’s just too draining.
We’ll be contacting our daughter’s adoption agency tomorrow. We’ve had enough - what I told you, above, about her behaviors is only the tip of the iceberg. I’m sorry to take so much of your time and space, but your readers need to know the truth about adopted children with conduct disorders as reasons for disrupting.
I am so, so, very sorry, “Anonymous.” Please know that you are not alone. There are many of us, but we can’t really come foward, can we?! There are so few true professionals trained to identify and then treat children like ours. It’s a sad state of affairs that our federal and state governments, that can’t even manage their own budgets and elections, somehow has the knowledge, capacity and ability to dictate to us how to be parents.
In summary, it is unreasonable to rationalize a position that 7 people must suffer and be traumatized so that 1 wouldn’t be traumatized by his/her disruption.
Posted 14 Feb 2008 at 12:31 am ¶
Ansley wrote:
Also Anonymous,
If you are directing your comments to “Jee” as synonymous with the original poster, my I respectfully point out her name is Jae Ran. She is Korean and it is considerably rude to break up the two parts of her first name.
That said, I do not believe your child has a ‘conduct disorder’ as you described it. It sounds to me like classic symptoms of Reactive Attachment Disorder. A traditional therapist or doctor will not be well educated enough to deal with her issues. You need to find her and Attachment Therapist. I’m not sure what part of the world you live in, but there is an excellent counselling center in Portland OR, Corinthia Counselling. I suggest seeing Dr. Kali.
At any rate, for all of the parent’s here with children suffering from attachment issues, a great place to start is the website, a4everfamily.org . There is help and healing for your children.
Posted 16 Feb 2008 at 8:57 pm ¶