XIV. Moving in With You: The Honeymoon
Behaviour and Attachment Disorders
There are several groups of specific and serious psychological or behavioural problems which afflict adopted children more than other children, and which can severely affect their ability to allow themselves to become your child. I have singled them out for special treatment in this book because, barring a child’s death or a disruption, they are the worst thing that can happen to an adoptive family. I am not advising that you refuse such a child, but if you do decide to go ahead, you need all the information and help you can get, and it is imperative that you go ahead with your eyes wide open. With ADHD especially, there can be definite plusses in parenting such a child, as well as problems. Each of these conditions includes a range of symptoms and can range from mild to severe. Especially in their less severe forms they may not be apparent to social workers, prospective adopters, or even short-term foster carers, so you may not be told the child has them. Some may only develop after the child comes to you. They can result in an adoption breaking down or in the destruction of your entire family unit. They have relatively recently become recognised as specific disorders in this country so you are likely to have difficulty finding professionals who recognise and can treat them. Consequently you may be confronted with professionals who refuse to believe they exist and instead blame you as parents, as will your extended family, friends and the general public. They are also very difficult to treat. Living with a child with any of these conditions in a severe form (they can be mild or severe) is like living in hell, and you may at times wish that you, or your child, were dead.
Because these conditions are so pervasive and serious, and are potentially so damaging to everyone in the adoptive family, it is imperative that anyone adopting such a child know beforehand what he is getting into. It is however virtually unheard of for a social worker to describe a child waiting for a new family as having any of these conditions. What you will usually get is something about “challenging behaviour” or needing “clear and firm boundaries”, “needs an adoptive family with plenty of energy”, “finds it difficult to play with children of a similar age”. Anything like this is a Big Red Flag.
The major long-term worry for parents of children with any of these conditions is that they will wind up behind bars or in mental institutions or on the streets. But while this is a real possibility, in that a large percentage of the prison population has at least one of these problems, most of these children do manage to stay out of gaol, although their adults lives are usually abnormal to a greater or lesser extent, and they may never learn to make the kind of permanent, reciprocal, loving relationships the rest of us take for granted. People with severe cases can and often do cause real psychological damage to their families both as children, and later as parents.
© Roger Ridley Fenton
