Early Childhood Adversity & Toxic Stress

Here's a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics that adoptive parents might find relevant to their children's early years: Early Childhood Adversity, Toxic Stress, and the Role of the Pediatrician: Translating Developmental Science Into Lifelong Health.

A good summary of the theoretical basis for the report:

The accompanying technical report represents an ecobiodevelopmental(EBD) framework for understanding the promotionof health and prevention of disease across the life span that builds on advances in neuroscience, molecular biology, genomics, and the social sciences. Together, these diverse fields provide a remarkably convergent perspective on the inextricable interactions among the personal experiences (eg,family and social relationships), environmental influences (eg, exposures to toxic chemicals and inappropriate electronic media), and genetic predispositions that affect learning, behavior and health across the life span. Applying this EBD framework to the challenges posed by significant childhood adversity reveals the powerful role that toxic stress can play in disrupting the architecture of the developing brain, thereby influencing behavioral, educational, economic and health outcomes decades and generations later.

The report is not adoption-specific, but seems highly relevant, especially to post-institutionalized children.

China: Banning Names That Identify Orphans

Hmmm, I thought China had done this a couple of years ago, but China Daily reports a new rule that bans names that identify a child as an orphan:

China plans to forbid orphanages from giving children names that may prove discriminatory against them later in life.

Names to be banned would include those with a political connotation and those that reflect the place or nature in which the child becomes orphaned or abandoned, said an official from the Ministry of Civil Affairs this week.

"We don't want children who grow up in orphanages to carry labels that imply they are different from those who have parents," said Chen Lunan, children's welfare deputy director at the department of social welfare and charity promotion.

He added that the ministry is amending regulations on the management of child welfare institutions to ensure that only the 100 most common Chinese surnames are used for naming children. The new rules are expected to come into effect later this year, he said.

"I think she's adopted. . ."

We met an adorable African-American 2-year-old named Lila last night at a restaurant -- she was quite talkative and shared her name and age happily.  She was there with her white parents. 

My kids noticed her immediately, and Zoe said, "I think she's adopted."  I agreed that that was likely, but I asked why she thought so.  Of course, it was the mismatch between parents and child.  So I said, "I bet people look at us and think you're adopted for the same reason."

Zoe was insistent that that wasn't true -- people probably just think she has a Chinese dad or maybe a grandparent who is Asian!  "Why, then," I ask, "are you so sure Lila is adopted?  Maybe she has an African-American grandparent."  That provoked eye-rolling and the mom-is-an-idiot voice:  "I just KNOW!"  Oooo-kay. Hard to argue with that one.

Infants as Orphanage Loss Leaders

We're all familiar with the retail concept of the loss leader, right?  If you've ever been led into a store by that advertisement of that incredibly attractive and low-priced widget you've always wanted and then find yourself buying tons of other stuff, you know what a loss leader is.

I was reminded of the loss leader when I read this quote from an orphanage director in Ethiopia in an article in Christianity Today (that just happens to be where the article is -- I'm not trying to draw any inference that Christianity is behind this!):

At the Kidane Mehret Children's Home in Addis Ababa, Sister Lutgarda Camilleri said . . .[t]he new government rules have resulted in Kidane Mehret receiving fewer infants, which means less attention from would-be parents across the globe since infants are much more easily placed. And that means less support for the majority of aging orphans who won't be adopted. "When we had babies, people came here and when they came, they would sponsor these older children," Camilleri said.

So those who have been commenting on this post, to say that adoption often leads adoptive parents to care about others in the country -- are you sympathetic to the sister's lament?  Is this how you envisioned it working?  Is it a wholly positive good that international adoption works this way?

I confess I'm troubled by the quote, though I know as a practical matter that the sister is right in how it works -- once adoptive parents adopt from a country, they have a motivation to help that they didn't have before. But it strikes me as a bizarrely utilitarian argument when made from the sending country's end -- an orphan becomes a tool, a sacrificial lamb, to create that motivation that will help others. 

And it's easy to see how that would create strong incentives to offer to internationally adopting parents the most "attractive" orphans for in-country adoption -- as young as possible, healthy -- to stimulate interest and support in the children who would have the most difficulty finding adoptive families in country. 

And another incentive is created -- to procure those "attractive" orphans whatever the cost, despite the overflow of truly orphaned and needy children already in the system. That answers that familiar argument that coercion and purchase and kidnapping isn't necessary in a country like Ethiopia where there are already 5 million "orphans" in institutional care (Case in point here: "[W]hen I read that some people are “concerned” about the rate of adoption among children from Africa because people are “trafficking” in adoption, I am truly amazed. Does anyone really think that people are stealing babies and children to sell them for adoption? Are there not enough babies and children already orphaned by AIDS and other diseases in Africa?")

Reactions?

Understanding In-Country Opposition to Intercountry Adoption

Thought-provoking and reflective piece at the Mennonite Weekly Review:

It’s been just more than two years since a magnitude-7 earthquake struck Haiti, killing approximately 250,000 people, leaving thousands of children orphaned, overwhelming a nation already in crisis. Kristen Howerton, who has adopted from Haiti and was in the country when the earthquake struck, wrote a great, heartbreaking post on “Rage Against the Mini Van” about the state of adoption in Haiti two years later [she was responding to a CBS News report I posted here]. Thousands of children are languishing in orphanages, not because no one is willing to adopt them, but because of administrative red tape.
Some of those barriers to adoption exist because Haiti (like many other countries) doesn’t particularly want to give up their children. And honestly, can we blame them? Sure, it’s easy for us to look in from the outside and lambast Haiti for not throwing the escape hatch wide open. Those kids need families, and they need families now. The stories are heartbreaking, the images haunting. The current state of affairs is unconscionable.
On the other hand, I can understand why some people in struggling nations aren’t big fans of international adoption. From their standpoint, wealthy outsiders pluck vulnerable children from the poorest of the poor — people so desperate that they are willing to give up their babies, grandbabies, nieces or nephews — and absorb them so thoroughly into a new life and culture that in all likelihood the child will never look back. Adoption may help one child, may bless one family, but it doesn’t do much to address the systemic problems that created and continue to feed the orphan crisis. It doesn’t do much to bless the ones who are left behind, the ones who now need it most.

The author proposes that more families should consider that maybe "that fabled 'red thread' is God’s way of pulling you toward a country, not a child."

Israel: Weighing Adopted Persons Rights v. Birth Parents Rights

This article in the Jerusalem Post synopsizes a thoughtful opinion from a family court judge, weighing the adopted person's right to know his birth parents with the birth mother's right to privacy:

The Tel Aviv Family Court said on Sunday that a 41-year-old man adopted as a baby should have the right to know the identity of his biological mother.

In 2010, “P.,” who was adopted at the age of five months, turned to the Family Court for help after both his biological parents refused to consent to P. knowing their full names and identities.

While by law the state cannot disclose a biological mother’s identity to an adopted child, unless she agrees, Judge Esther Zitnitski Rakover said she would order the Welfare Ministry to contact P.’s mother and attempt to clarify “her moral obligation to meet with [P.] and help him close this chapter of his life.” 

* * *
“If you aren’t adopted, then you won’t be able to understand it,” P. told the court. “To live as an adopted child is in some ways to live in some sort of degraded way for your whole life... You have parents and you have brothers and they don’t know about you, and you have to live with that every single day.”

Judge Zitnitski Rakover said that the case involved two substantial conflicts of interest: the basic human right of an adopted person to know his roots and his biological parents; and the biological parents’ right to preserve their privacy.

The court had to find the right balance between these two opposing interests, the judge said.

“In weighing between the biological parents’ right to privacy, and the child’s basic right to determine his roots, it seems to me that the child’s right is more worthy of special exceptions,” Rakover said.

The judge described the right of an adopted person to know the identity of his biological parents as “part of a basic need inherent in human nature, so a person can build his own independent identity.”

Laos: Adoption Trafficking Investigation

Here's a news report about a retired official investigated for selling babies into international adoption:

Laos is investigating a retired justice ministry official for allegedly selling adopted babies to Americans, Canadians and Australians for thousands of dollars each, a report said.
The official is accused of seeking out unwanted babies in poor, rural areas, obtaining adoption papers and selling the infants, all aged between one and two years, on to foreigners for up to $5,000 each, according to Radio Free Asia.
He has been taken in for questioning and the adoption process for children thought to be caught up in the scam has been suspended pending the results of the investigation, RFA reported.
Mike Pryor, press officer at the US Embassy in Laos, told AFP that Laos "suspended foreign adoptions on January 9" but did not offer any specific reason for the move.

"Adopting a child for sale... is a crime related to human trafficking, no question about it," a government official told RFA.

The justice ministry is probing how the scam worked, including whether the birth parents sold their infants, which can constitute a human trafficking offence punishable by a three-to-five-year jail term, the official said.

It was not clear how many children were involved in the alleged adoption ring.

Laos is not a Hague Convention country. The number of children adopted from Laos to the U.S. is small:  6 in 2011, 7 in 2010, 8 in 2009. It would be interesting to know when this retired justice ministry official started working in adoptions -- there was a rather large jump in adoptions in 2009 -- the previous year there were 3, and then it jumped to 8. Though the numbers are small, that jump seems significant.

Another interesting quote from the article that caught my eye:

Laos is listed as Tier 2 -- out of three -- in the US State Department's 2011 anti human trafficking report. . . . The US however said the government had 'never administratively or criminally punished any public official for complicity in trafficking in persons.'

This incident, even if proven true, shouldn't be a ding against Laos in the 2012 anti-human-trafficking report, since our State Department doesn't consider buying babies for illegal adoption to be human trafficking.  Sheesh.

Madonna, Child Saver

Madonna was interviewed by Anderson Cooper on Thursday; in case you missed it she explains why she adopted. 

Montana Ranch Last Stop for Adopted Kids

I posted before about this ranch in Montana where adopted teens with FASD and/or RAD are sent.  Here's another story, some interesting quotes from the kids:

Alec Cole, a precocious 13-year-old with striking eyes and an olive complexion, recently arrived at Sterkel's ranch for his second stint. Born in Belarus, Cole spent the first three years of his life in an orphanage, where abuse and neglect compounded the effects of FASD, which can affect impulse control, intelligence and, in Cole's case, physical characteristics like height.

When a Florida couple adopted Cole, they assumed he would assimilate into their family with liberal doses of love and affection, but the damage had been done before Cole ever had a chance, and his ability to trust adults has been undermined.

Over time, his behavior grew increasingly aggressive and unpredictable, and the family reached a tipping point when assaults and threats of violence against his parents and adoptive sister became commonplace.

"I kicked, fought, cursed, yelled and did all kinds of wrong things to my parents," Cole said, reciting the litany of reasons his adoptive family had for sending him to live with Sterkel, and for spending what amounts to a college education in the course of his therapy.

He has made progress at the Ranch for Kids, but not without frequent setbacks. During one violent outburst, he attempted to attack a staff member with a 2-by-4. Still, after living on the ranch for two years and following a visit from his family, Cole went home to Florida for a yearlong trial period. His violent meltdowns reemerged and the family determined he was not fit to live with them; he returned to live with Sterkel last month.

"I'm not saying I don't appreciate my other set of parents, but it's hard being given away," he said.

* * *

Some of the children spend several weeks or months with Sterkel before returning to their families, and the outcomes are sometimes positive. Others, like Cole, require years of respite care just to develop basic life skills.

Others still leave the ranch only when they reach the age of 18 and their adoptive families no longer bear legal responsibility. Those young adults often enroll in the federal Job Corps training program, Sterkel said, but without a structured "next-phase" environment, their futures are grim.

"We have well-meaning families who adopt these children and believe that love and affection is all it takes," Sterkel said. "They expect challenges. They expect malnutrition and lack of love, but they do not expect a child who has permanent brain damage, who cannot bond. We can correct their behaviors, but we can't put their souls back in their body."

Having navigated the murky waters of an international adoption, Sterkel says most families she encounters are patient and committed to their adopted children; however, some simply surrender their children to the ranch's charges.

* * *

Zhenya Wood, 16, gave up on school before coming to Montana, but a winter digging ditches and performing manual labor alongside Davidson has changed his outlook.

"I'm not much of a ditch digger or a rancher, so I'd like to give school another chance," he said.

A victim of FASD, Wood lived in a Russian orphanage from the age of 3 until 7, when a Pennsylvania couple adopted him. "I don't have a lot of happy memories," he said, recalling the orphanage as "dark and unclean, with bad food."

Wood's mother died three years ago and his father sent him to Sterkel after the teenager's behavior became uncontrollable. "We were just holding on after my mom died, and I realize that my dad doesn't deserve all the crap I've given him," he said. "But these teenage years are tough."

Wood says he believes his father can sense a change in him during their weekly phone conversations, and his goal is to return home.

"I sure hope so. I've forgotten what he looks like," he said.

Chinese New Year, Chinese School Edition

As the Mistress of Ceremonies reminded us at the beginning of Chinese School's New Year celebration, Chinese New Year lasts 15 days!  So despite our various celebrations to date, today we had one more!  That's pretty much the entire student body of Chinese School, singing Gong Xi, Gong Xi, a traditional Chinese New Year song.

Zoe's class presented traditional New Year greetings, and Maya's class presented traditional New Year customs.

For the last few weeks, Zoe and Maya have been going to Chinese School early to learn traditional Chinese folk dance.  Today was the first performance, and they did a very cute umbrella dance.

Believe it or not, that last shot of the two girls together was the last part of the actual dance, not posed! But I couldn't resist the opportunity for posed shots after the dance, of course!

After performing, it was time for fun and games for the kids.  That means Chinese yo-yos and calligraphy.

Finally, each child received a lucky red envelope from her teacher, after responding (in Chinese, of course!) to a traditional Chinese New Year greeting!

Still No Adoptions from Vietnam to U.S.

The State Department has announced that,  despite Vietnam's ratification of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, the U.S. will not yet approve adoptions from Vietnam:

The United States has determined that it will not resume intercountry adoptions in Vietnam on February 1, 2012, when the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption will enter into force there.

Despite Vietnam's initiatives to strengthen its child welfare system and ensure the integrity of its domestic and international adoption process, it does not yet have a fully Hague compliant process in place. We continue to caution adoption service providers and prospective adoptive parents that, to ensure that adoptions from Vietnam will be compliant with the Convention, important steps must still take place before intercountry adoptions between the United States and Vietnam resume. Adoption Service Providers should not initiate or claim to initiate, adoption programs in Vietnam until they receive notification from the Department of State that it has resumed adoptions in Vietnam.

Twins, Adopted Separately, Reunited

Two girls adopted from Indonesia to Sweden discover they are twins:

Non-identical twins Emilie Falk and Lin Backman - strangers until last year - were separated nearly 29 years ago when they were separately put up for adoption in Indonesia.
According to a DNA test the pair had done two months after reuniting in January last year, there is a 99.98 per cent chance of them being sisters.

A complex string of events led up to that revelation.

Both women were adopted from an orphanage in Semarang in northern Indonesia by Swedish couples, but there was no mention in either of their documents of the fact that they had a twin.

When Ms Backman's parents left the orphanage with her all those years ago, the taxi driver had turned around and asked them: "What about the other one, the sister?" and they jotted the girls' Indonesian names down on a piece of paper.

The name helped Ms Backman's parents track down the Falks back in Sweden, and the two families got together a few times when the girls were babies to compare notes.

"They went through the adoption papers, but they didn't think we were very similar and there was a lot in the papers that didn't add up ... And there were no DNA tests back then," said Ms Falk.
Among the discrepancies were different names for the girls' fathers. And although the records showed they had the same mother, the families eventually decided that this too was an error.

The two couples in the end wrote off the idea and eventually lost touch.

Although their parents had told them the story as children, both Ms Falk and Ms Backman later forgot about it. Growing up, neither was interested in information about their biological background, so they never asked.

"But when I got married two years ago I started thinking about family and my adoption, and when I asked my mother she told me this story again, and I decided to look for Lin," said Ms Falk.

She had a name and began searching through a network for Indonesian children adopted by Swedish families, and found Ms Backman on Facebook.

"I am born on March 18, 1983 in Semarang and my biological mother's name is Maryati Rajiman," Falk said she wrote, and quickly received the reply: "Wow, that's my mother's name as well! And that's my birthday!"

Wealthy Man Adopts His Adult Girlfriend

Well, isn't this a special use of adoption?!  A polo tycoon has adopted his girlfriend so that he can hide his assets from the family of the man he killed in a drunk driving incident:

When a man wants to spend the rest of his life with a woman, he often extends an offer to her to become part of his family.

But International Polo Club Palm Beach founder John Goodman, 48, did so in a very unorthodox way.

The multimillionaire trust-fund heir adopted his 42-year-old girlfriend Heather Laruso Hutchins last fall, after being accused of drunk driving in a 2010 accident that left 23-year-old Scott Wilson dead.

Goodman is being sued by Wilson’s parents for wrongful death. According to police reports, Goodman ran a stop sign on February 10, 2010 in Wellington, Florida and smashed into Wilson, sending his car into a canal.
 

Scott Wilson, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Central Florida, was killed in 2010

Circuit Judge Glenn Kelly had previously ruled that the trust funds set up for his two biological children were off-limits in the lawsuit, according to the Palm Beach Post.

Court papers show that Goodman adopted Ms Hutchins in October of last year, CBS12.com reported.

‘My reaction was that it was both awful and brilliant,’ Belray Beach adoption attorney Charlotte Danciu told CBS12.com.

The adoption papers state that Hutchins, now a legal child of Goodman, is immediately entitled to at least a third of his trust.
* * *
Judge Kelley wrote that the events are taking the court ‘into a legal twilight zone.’

Ms Danciu agreed. ‘Unless you intend to create the parent-child relationship, you are violating the letter of the law,’ she told CBS12.com.

Courts usually disallow the use of adult adoption in this way.  Like lawyer Danciu said, without intending to create a parent-child relationship, it really isn't an adoption.  That's the grounds for denying adult adoption in cases involving gay couples looking to legalize their relationship in a world that denies them marriage.

So is it incest for Goodman to have sex with his newly-adopted daughter?  According to this gossip site, the Florida incest statute does not mention sex with adopted relatives, only relatives of "lineal consanguity," which means blood relationship.

But Florida's statute is really in the minority;  a majority of states say it's incest when there's sex between ancestors or descendants by blood or adoption. That's what the Texas Penal Code says.  So I guess my advice to the Goodman pater and fille is to research the laws of all states they visit, and refrain from sex in most of them.  Sigh. That's not legal advice I ever thought I'd offer to anyone.

Adopting Out the Children of Illegal Immigrants III

ABCNews has done a piece on the Missouri case I blogged about here and here and here, where a mother who was in the U.S. illegally was stripped of her parental rights while in jail for immigration violations so that her son could be adopted by an American couple, and tries, also to put it in a broader context of immigration:

A tug-of-war over a five-year-old boy is at the center of a national debate over parental rights and immigration, and a sign of what critics say is a growing trend in which immigrants are being deemed unfit parents because they crossed the border illegally.
* * *

According to a report from the Applied Research Center, "Shattered Families," as of the summer of 2011 an estimated 5,100 children in 22 states were in foster care after their parents were either detained or deported. Immigration attorneys and children's welfare advocates say a small but troubling number, like Jamison, have been put up for adoption to American families after their birth parents were stripped of their parental rights.

* * *

Bail Romero's "lifestyle, that of smuggling herself into a country illegally and committing crimes in this country is not a lifestyle that can provide stability for a child," Circuit Court Judge David C. Dally wrote in his 2008 decision terminating her parental rights. "A child cannot be educated in this way, always in hiding or on the run."

Dally's judgment had held no mention of Seth Moser's own criminal background. According to court records, Moser, as a teenager, served almost a year in jail after pleading guilty to a felony count involving possession of stolen property. According to Bail Romero's court filings, Moser also has admitted to drug use.

* * *

The Mosers argue that it is better for Carlos to stay with them, not in Guatemala with his mother after her impending deportation.

"In terms of best interest, I mean, that almost goes without saying," the Mosers' attorney, Joseph Hensley, told the court in 2008, according to a brief filed by Bail Romero's attorneys. "[This] child is an American citizen. The mother is a Guatemalan citizen, and she will be returning to Guatemala. ... I think the best interest standard always weighs very, very, heavily in favor of my clients."

Bail Romero says she's thankful to the Mosers for taking care of her son, "but, as Carlitos' mother, I need him to be with me," she said, "because I'm his real mother."

Willful Blindness: Avoiding the Truth of Corruption

At Rh Reality Check, a review of Erin Siegal's book, Finding Fernanda, about corruption, trafficking and child adoption in Guatemalan adoption (there have been lots of reviews of the book out there, and I haven't posted about every one, but this one seems to be a value-added because the review's author is quite knowledgeable about Guatemalan adoption, too):

However, when Alvarado and many other women’s stories of child abduction for adoption went ‘public’ it seemed everyone in the intercountry adoption community was rooting against 'the truth.' It was unthinkable that some of the beautiful children who had been adopted from Guatemala came to their adoptive families from sinister pathways. ‘Orphan’ adoption is viewed by most as an honorable act and to suggest that children are not truly orphans (and may be trafficking victims) is more than impolite to most people. Unfortunately the historical context and story of Guatemala is far too complicated for such fantasized notions about ‘orphans’ to always be true and when interrogates the facts, a grotesque reality unfolds.

Siegal pulls together many of the facts in her book, often allowing them to speak for themselves. The villain, an executive director of a notoriously bad adoption agency in Florida, gives the reader some insight into the inner workings of a ‘Christian’ woman who uses faith to manipulate her clients as needed. Then, there is the more subtle manipulation of the US Government, ranging from the US Department of State to the many Senators and Congressmen who demand that their constituent’s adoptions be completed—regardless of fears of fraud, coercion, and abduction of children for adoption.

* * *

Then there are the hopeful families who pay outrageous sums to adoption agencies, sometimes ranging upwards to $50,000 USD. How is it really possible that these families honestly believe that such a sum is anything other than the fuel that fed the fires of graft and greed in Guatemala? This is a nation where the average worker makes $2 daily and extreme poverty is almost an understatement.

Doesn't paint a very positive image of international adoptive parents, huh?  Not that I question the veracity; unfortunately, we've all had experience with adoptive parents who don't want to know the truth about adoption corruption.

Adoption as a Political Tool in Russia

At Foreign Policy Blog, a post about how international adoption plays as a political tool in Russian domestic politics:

On January 18, Russia’s Ombudsman for children, Pavel Astakhov, and Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, stated that they would seek an official moratorium on adoption of Russian children by American families. Cooperation on adoption between the two countries has seen its ups and downs following the pattern of U.S. -Russia relations, but the public discourse on international adoption has also served as a tool of Russian domestic policy to strengthen control over Russians and to spread anti-American attitudes. As a result, the discourse is rarely focused on creating constructive policies that can address problems persisting in the international adoption process.

The announcement is very likely to revive public discourse on the abuse of adopted Russian children in the United States. The timing is not coincidental as a new wave of blameful declamations is preceding the upcoming presidential election in Russia. Once again Russian authorities seek to use old tools and practices in strengthening national unity by pitting ‘us’ – Russians against ‘them’- foreigners via offensive adoption rhetoric.

* * *

[M]edia-promoted public discourse on international adoption serves as a very effective pre-election tool that conveniently diverts attention from the existing everyday problems. It serves to create an ‘outside enemy,’ while seeking to bolster unity among Russian people and to position Vladimir Putin as a strong leader of the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ community.

Adoption & Abuse

Sometimes it's HARD to decide what to blog about.  My usual problem is not finding something to post about, but in deciding what NOT to post about.  Believe it or not, I don't actually blog about everything that crosses my mind or my computer screen, though some days I know it seems I do! 

I've been trying to decide whether to post about an article, which is a followup to something I posted about before, but couldn't decide if it was "new" enough to bother.  And I admit, I'm sometimes leery about posting on topics that annoy readers (doesn't always stop me -- UNICEF, anyone?!), and this one seems to. But when a recent news story caught my attention, I figured I needed post again on the topic of adoption and abuse.  It is important enough.
Remember a while ago I posted about the spike in reported cases of starvation abuse of adopted children in Washington state? The article noted that the state was appointing a study group of experts to study the issue of child abuse in adoption, to determine whether there is a link between adoption and child abuse, what causes it, etc.  I think the unanswered questions are important enough to report this followup that lists the questions the group will be trying to answer:

• Are neglect and abuse, including withholding food, on the rise? And are they more prevalent in adopted homes?
• Are changes needed to foreign or cross-race adoptions procedures? Or in the foster care adoption process?
• Do child welfare agencies maintain adequate long-term data on adoption outcomes?
• Does a push to have more foster children adopted sooner created risks to child safety?

The story that made me think I should post these questions?  This one about the death of a child at the hands of her prospective adoptive father:

A Fort Drum soldier wounded in Afghanistan in 2009 admitted Tuesday that he killed a 4-month-old girl he and his wife were trying to adopt by banging her head against a hard surface and throwing her into a crib.

Jeffrey Sliker, a native of Middletown, R.I., could get 15 years to life in prison at sentencing on March 14 — almost a year after his arrest at the couple's home near the military post in northern New York.

Sliker, 23, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Laurne Clark, also known as Mollie Sliker, who was found dead with a head injury after Sliker's wife alerted authorities.

Prosecutor Cindy Intschert said Sliker told the judge "he had had very little sleep, he was getting ready for work, the child was crying and he became frustrated."

* * *

Defense attorney Sheila Crowley said Sliker was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The most important thing now, I think, is to figure out what we can learn from these cases to try to prevent them in the future. 

Yes, I know biological parents also abuse children, so it can't be exclusively an adoption problem. But what can we do in adoption -- better screening? better preparation? better post-adoption support? -- to prevent abuse?

I think the study group, which expects to issue a report in May, is asking the right questions. What other questions do you think they need to answer?

Special Needs Adoption From China

The Chicago Tribune has a story today on China's Waiting Child program:

When Megan and Keith Nakamoto started the China adoption process in 2005 they knew they could be in for a wait. Three and half years later, the Lincoln Park couple decided to switch from the traditional Chinese adoption program and adopt a special needs child.

"Who knows? We probably still would have been waiting. It's almost like you see this goal and you want it so badly, but it gets harder and harder and you think it's not going to happen," said Megan Nakamoto, 48, who welcomed her daughter, Tessa, in 2010. "We switched to the special needs program, and then you have a new hope. Then, it's scary all over again because you're adopting a child with special needs."

Experts say more families are choosing to adopt special needs children through China's Waiting Child program, which releases children with minor and significant health issues in as little as a year. Adopting a healthy child from China took one year to 18 months in 2006. Now it can now take more than six years, straining both prospective parents' patience and pockets.

"I think now the biggest change we're looking at is that there are families who are willing to adopt special needs children. That really is the wave of international adoption," said Bob McNeill, an adoption worker at Sunny Ridge Family Center in Bolingbrook.

In China, international adoption for special needs kids is about the only option for permanent family.  Disabilities are considered curses on the family, and is the primary reason for abandonment of special needs kids.  They are, because of that stigma, highly unlikely to be adopted domestically in China. Sometimes, adoption to a Western country is the only way for the child to get needed medical treatment since China puts only limited funds for such treatment in the hands of orphanages. So it's a good thing, isn't it, when internationallly adopting parents choose the special-needs program over the non-special-needs program, right?

One of my perpetual concerns about special needs adoption from China is that folks might be more interested in getting a child quickly than in actually parenting a child with special needs. The desire to "jump the line" by switching to special needs may not be adequately thought out. Prospective parents might be overly optimistic about what special needs entail.  I'll hear prospective parents say things like, "It's just albinism;" or "It's easily corrected with surgery."  Really?  Did you know that albinism comes with an increased risk of congenital heart problems?  Did you know that cleft palate repair might involve a series of surgeries, not just one?  Did you know children with cleft palate often have hearing problems? Have you thought of how you will facilitate attachment when you immediately subject your newly-adopted child to painful surgery with a recovery period that will have you saying no to them frequently, preventing them from touching their mouths, denying them certain foods?

Of course, lots of parents handle special needs like champs.  But are the "line jumpers" really prepared? Does the family have the time, money, health insurance, ability to take off work, emotional wherewithal to handle special needs?  Consider this post about remarks Amy Eldridge of Love Without Boundaries made about unprepared special needs adopters:

Amy also said that adoptive parents need to be prepared before adopting. When they have seen disruptions of adoption in China -- where adoptive parents decide not to go through with a special needs adoption even before returning home -- it's usually because they have not been adequately prepared. She received a call from a family who had switched from the NSN program to the special needs program to adopt a cleft child who had been an LWB child. LWB had repaired her lip, though her palatte repair needed to be done when she was older. Amy knew the child was perfectly healthy, chubby, interactive -- everything you'd want from a institutionalized child. The dad said to her, "Do you know that when she drinks her bottle, milk comes out of her nose?" Duh, yes, Amy knew that and the family would have known that if they had read ANYTHING about cleft-affected children. 

I'm also bothered that those with potentially the least resources -- single parents -- only have the option of special needs adoption from China.  Yes, I'm a single mom and I'm handling two kids.  But given the fact that I'm the only wage-earner in the house, making it difficult to take off for long stretches of time to care for a special needs child; that I have lousy health insurance and don't have t he option of putting the kids on my spouse's plan; that my extended family in the area is only my mom who, as fantastic as she is, is still only one person; that I'm really bad about asking for help; I wouldn't be a very good parent for a special needs child.  That is often -- but not always, I know -- the case with single parents

And if adopting one special needs child would be difficult, how difficult would it be to adopt two at a time?  China used to restrict adoption to one child at a time, except in cases of twins/triplets/etc.  Now, for some hard-to-place special needs kids -- called Special Focus kids -- China allows adoptive parents to adopt a second child at the same time.  That second child can be healthy, special needs or special focus. Here we go again -- in the case of special needs children who potentially need the most support and attention, you're allowed to split your limited resources (EVERYONE has limits on their resources) between two newly-adopted kids, with all that that kind of transition entails. And I've heard prospective adoptive parents talk about this two-fer program as if a healthy child is the "reward" for taking a special needs child, as if the special needs child is the price you have to pay for jumping the line to get a healthy child fast.

Reactions?  What have I gotten wrong?  How to solve these problems?

Ethnic Identity Formation in Chinese Adoptees

A Harvard student has started a blog to let us follow along as she researches and writes her senior thesis on ethnic identity formation in Chinese adoptees:

My name is Alexa and I am studying Sociology and Global Health/Health Policy at Harvard. I'm writing my senior honors thesis on ethnic identity formation in children adopted from China. I'll be using this blog to document my progress and share my research leading up to the publishing of my thesis in March, 2012.

Judging from Friday's post about parents' strategies for raising Chinese adoptees, you'll find lots of relevant and interesting information:

Parents’ socialization strategies face two central tensions:

• The tension between sameness and differentness within the family
• The tension between Chinese and American identities.

Richard Tessler (1999), a scholar of China to U.S. adoption, outlines four models of socialization. My research will investigate what factors influence parents' choice of socialization strategy. The four models are:

• Assimilation: focus on American culture (rejection differences)
• Acculturation: focus on Chinese culture (acknowledgement of differences)
• Alternation (or bi-cultural socialization): balance American and Chinese culture, with the goal of making children feel comfortable alternating between cultures (acknowledgement of differences)
• Child choice: parents allow the child to decide which strategy to pursue (My research will not address the child choice model, as I believe that even if the parents want their child to lead the way in identity formation, the parents’ actions and attitudes exert huge influence on the child’s choice.)

If  you're interested in the subject of parenting strategies used by white parents who are parenting Asian children, you might like this post, which explores another research project on the subject.

Asian American Dolls

And I mean real dolls -- not calling Asian American girls and women dolls, which is completely yuck. And now weird guys with an Asian fetish are going to come to my blog.  Sigh.

At the Jade Luck Club blog, the best dolls for Asian American/Pacific Islander girls. The blogger is surprised by all the dolls available, because there weren't many when she was a child:

In browsing all the doll choices at Amazon labeled Asian, I was struck by the multitude of Asian baby dolls. These did not exist when I was little. I wonder if this market niche will continue to grow as the Asian market overseas has more purchasing power. I was also surprised by the specificity of the dolls: Asian baby with Down’s Syndrome (?!) and also Tipi from Laos. Interesting, huh? What do you think of all these choices? And, do your kids have a favorite doll? Please share!

So go add to her list! Our most recent Asian doll purchase was a porcelain doll.  I don't know why, but Zoe has become very interested in porcelain dolls. She's always loved dolls (Maya is more into stuffed animals), and at age 11 still loves to play with her baby dolls.

Once when we were looking at dolls she mused, "I wish there was a porcelain doll with dark hair and a panda!" Ding ding ding!  I knew I'd seen one on some website somewhere.  Didn't track it down again in time for Christmas, but got it for her anyway! Here it is, one of Zoe's new favorites: