Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Adoption Interrupted

I missed this while on vacation -- a three-part piece on adoption disruption in the Toronto Star.  Click for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.  You have to love the family profiled in Part 3:

Cathy Gilbert, 52, can bond with a child just by reading their biography.

The adoption support worker from Nanaimo, B.C. has four biological children and 12 adopted children — six of whom came from adoptions that didn’t work out.

She and husband Dave, 52, a marine instructor, started “serial adopting” when they realized some children with attachment disorders were being given back to children’s aid societies.

“We’ve had all of it, the lying, stealing, setting fires,” says Gilbert, who has had to padlock the pantry to keep food in the house, drive kids to school because they don’t behave on the bus and sent a teen to wilderness camp so he wouldn’t disrupt a family wedding.

This is not the way she expected to parent, she is quick to admit, but she has had to adjust as she has tackled serious behavioural issues with children who have been abused, neglected and abandoned.

One teenager has still not “attached” to her after a decade. But that’s okay, says Gilbert, as her need for parental rewards have been met by the other children and she is strongly bonded to that child herself.

* * *

But there’s never any doubt that they are hers forever.

“We’re in this for the long haul. This is what we do because we like kids and think they’re fun.”

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

These statements say it all --

"The family got the message that “we’d have to change, not the children,” says Bryan, who was unwilling to accept the behaviour.

“If I stole something at work, I wouldn’t have a job,” he says. “The only rules we had in the house were no lying or stealing and respect others.” "

Dude - you are not a small child who has been through the system, yanked from pillar to post, unbelievably damaged along the way. If you stole something from work you should be fired. You can't even compare yourself and life to what these children have endured. Please don't try, you selfish bastage pig.

ok, I'm a little perturbed....