III. More About the Children Available for Adoption, Page 8
Children with Limited Life Expectancy
Most of the above sections also apply more or less to the subject of children with limited life expectancy. Many mental and physical disabilities carry with them a prediction of a somewhat shorter life. But there are some conditions which are worse than that: they mean inevitable death in childhood or early adulthood. Some such children need adoptive homes, and some very special families are able and want to care for them. There is nothing more devastating in life than to lose a child. Children are meant to outlive their parents and it goes against nature and sense for them to die first. But they sometimes do, from accident, sudden illness, suicide or degenerative disease. Some families, for example couples who have already raised born-to children, would be able to adopt a child whom they knew would probably not live to adulthood, to give her a family’s love and individual care to make the most of her shorter life.
These children are likely to need intensive medical help at least some of the time, and you may need special training or to live near a hospital or hospice. It doesn’t mean protecting the child from the world; such children want to participate as fully as possible in normal life as long as possible. These children will usually bring with them extra financial help in an enhanced adoption allowance.
Abused and Neglected Children
These are the children whose deaths make headlines when effective social services intervention is too little and too late. But there are very many more such children where intervention comes in time, although not as early as it could have. Most of them are older and have endured years of emotional, physical or sexual abuse (and maybe all three), or severe neglect by incompetent, mentally ill or just plain wicked adults, and their physical and emotional injuries can be horrific. Others are still babies whose only sin was to cry too much or soil their nappies too often, resulting in broken limbs, burns or permanent brain damage.
A study in the mid-1990s of 61 UK permanent placements of children aged five to nine found that only 14 of them had no confirmed history of abuse or neglect. This would be a maximum figure, since some of the children would probably have suffered undisclosed abuse, and it also excludes emotional abuse. Children may be removed from their birth families for one kind of abuse and placed in new families without anyone knowing about other kinds of abuse.
These children will often be old enough to clearly remember their past lives of abuse or neglect. Others will have deeply repressed memories. They may take some time to accustom themselves to their new surroundings, many aspects of which may be strange to them. But I doubt if even badly neglected children will expect to store coal in the bathtub or wash their clothes in the toilet! It is more likely that they will at first move to one of two extremes: revel in the independence and privacy, or be unable to cope with it and want to maintain a lot of their past routines: sharing beds with siblings, or keeping the same diet, for example. It is up to the new family to try to accommodate their needs as much as possible, gradually and lovingly encouraging them to make the most of their new possibilities, however long it takes. Maintaining order and discipline where children have lived in chaos or been subject to violent or inconsistent discipline can also be a struggle. But children need structure and consistency with love, and they will respond. Not that that is enough. You (and the child) can’t and should not expect to have to cope on your own in overcoming abuse. Most of these children will need long-term and intensive help from one or more different kinds of professionals: medical doctors, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, occupational and play therapists, special education, respite care, etc. Be sure you get a guarantee of help.
Adopting a neglected or abused child is in an important way a greater social good than other kinds of adoption. Child abuse is a cyclical thing. Adults who were abused as children are more likely to abuse in their turn than are adults who were not abused as children, although by no means do all abused children grow up to be abusing adults. Few abusers can change their ways, even if they want to (which most of them don’t). Taking children out of an abusing situation and giving them loving parents who will help them grow up to respect themselves and others doesn’t guarantee to break the cycle, but it is the most effective treatment available. And breaking the cycle of abuse and neglect means saving future generations from repeating the sins of their parents, which in turn benefits the community at large.
© Roger Ridley Fenton
