With the wait for an adoption of a child with no known medical needs from China reaching nearly two years now, many families already in the process are wanting to instead adopt a child with special needs. Sounds so great, right—and I mean, it is since these are children with medical issues who may otherwise have not found a home—but on the same hand, many of these families are adopting these kids because they are impatient and unfortunately occasionally do not prepare themselves for the adoption of an older child nor the lifelong impact these needs can have on the kids. People throughout the adoption community including not only adoption coordinators like myself, but also social workers and pediatricians, are finding the need to emphasize the importance of preparation and education to these families not only on the particular special need their child may have, but also on attachment and development of an older child. And surprise, surprise, many still do not heed this warning.
While it’s obviously still possible to parent a child without this foundation, it can make it more difficult for everyone involved. I’ve been witness to a family disrupting while still in-country because they felt their white faces had traumatized the two-and-a-half year old child to be adopted because she had tried to run away out of the room the first night they were together. Had they properly prepared themselves, they would have realized this would be a typical toddler reaction to such a situation, and thus could have dealt with it better. Furthermore, I’ve had families who have biological children and therefore feel they have all the necessary preparation from raising these children only to realize upon placement that the newly adopted child isn’t within the families’ expectations. Children are children, yes, however they fail to remember that their biological children were snatched from the environment they considered home and, without understanding why, given to adults of a different race with different smells, sounds, and food preferences. Of course an adopted child will not act as you expect, and s/he may not be developmentally on target due to neglect within the orphanage.
With so many families switching to the special needs track, I felt the need to put this info out here for any and all PAPs who are considering adopting an older child or child with special needs, and to remind you: prepare, prepare, prepare. It’s important to do this now because once your child is home you will not have the free time to do this research no matter how much you tell yourself now you’ll make time.
5 responses so far ↓
atlasien // October 5, 2007 at 12:03 am
Curious… roughly how many hours of training does your agency provide parents and what kind of curriculum is used?
As a prospective adoptive parent from the foster care system we have been given a 24-30 hour sequence then another 10 hours per active year per other government-sponsored events. I currently have 34 hours.
Jen // October 5, 2007 at 8:44 pm
atlasien as a good point. I can attest to the (sorry) fact that our agency gives nothing in the way of training to prospective parents and the home study agency we used was only minutely better. All of the preparations we are doing are on our “own” time, so to speak. Now don’t get me wrong, I am HAPPY to be learning about this! However, I would venture to say that most PAPs out there have utterly NO IDEA that they should be exerting a substantial amount of energy into this area.
For some strange reason it seems PAPs are more concerned with learning how members of their new child’s home country celebrate first birthdays, holidays, etc…
atlasien // October 6, 2007 at 4:39 pm
I cannot place so much blame on the parents. Some blame, yes, but they’re acting according to their natures, what they know of parenting from their own families, combined with media stereotypes.
To get people to behave a certain way, you can’t just hope they’ll do the right thing on their own. It’s like expecting a dog not to pee inside the house… without giving it any housetraining. Over, and over and over again.
If prospective adoptive parents need to be educated, requirements should be in place for them to be educated.
1) If the agency is a business, and the training and behavior modification is supposed to benefit the customers (adoptive parents)… then why do these people pay such humongous amounts of money yet receive such a terribly low level of service?
2) If the agency is a charitable facilitator, and education is for the benefit of parent, child, and society… why don’t they offer more training?
Either way the agency looks really, really bad. I am not criticizing you (the blogger), your honesty is refreshing, but from my perspective the bulk of the responsibility lies with the agencies and legislative regulation (or lack thereof) surrounding international adoptions.
I’m glad I got my own training. I don’t think it’s enough, and doesn’t substitute for experience, and the state system has its own horrendous problems… but for education, it’s still a million times better than what I’ve heard the vast majority of international adoptive parents (don’t) receive.
BABS // October 13, 2007 at 2:00 am
No offense taken. I suppose I write from the experience I have because I have not worked for another agency prior to the one I am at currently, and we at our agency offer 20 hours of required training–twice of Hague requirements. Even beyond that, we are constantly holding further training events and sessions which families can attend on a voluntary basis. However, sometimes regardless how much training we offer and require of PAPs to complete, they see the classes as simply another hoop to jump through without giving enough gravity to the subject or situation. This gets magnified by families switching to the WIC program because they are at times simply doing so to have a quicker placement.
You make a good point that yes, there are many adoption and social work agencies that do not prepare their families well at all, which is a crime regardless of their IRS status. After all, their role is to facilitate this process, and ensure that all parties are well cared for. But this cannot be the case if parents are not properly prepared.
I also agree that PAPs also seem to focus on simple, traditional information about their child’s culture rather than how to perhaps parent transracially. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is very important to be able to share with your child information of their birth land, and I don’t even want to get myself started on the issue of only teaching traditional things–things that may not even be followed by the modern peoples of that country anymore. However, I think many people don’t spend the time prior to adopting to really consider what its going to be like raising children that ethnically are different from the parents. And its easy to do for the first four years or so when children seem to be rather oblivious to the issue of race anyway. Then, they start going to school or something, and families are suddenly scrambling to handle these issues.
So, until all agencies start having more effective pre-adoptive education, and as unfair as it is, I think parents should still take the time to do the work themselves because in the end, its their family that is affected.
Kari // October 26, 2007 at 9:51 am
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people downplaying the seriousness of adopting a special needs child. Like “my daughter had VSD and it healed up on its own and we have never had to do anything!” That’s wonderful, but that isn’t what people should be expecting when signing up for a child with a heart condition, you know?!
Actually, I get a little creeped out by some PAPs who are “called” to adopt a child with a very specific special need. Like they just have to have a “heart baby” and wouldn’t accept a cleft-affected child. Seems weird to me.
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