Adoption/Attachment Studies

Hopeless. That’s how it felt. Nothing we did made a big enough difference. My dream of becoming a mother was fading fast. We spent so many years preparing to be parents. Then it took two years to finalize our adoption. Our son was nearly 10 years old when we adopted him from Kazakhstan. The “honeymoon” didn’t last very long. The rages lasted for hours. The violence was unbelievable. I still have scares on my legs from when he would attack me like a wild animal. Ceiling fixtures torn out. Computer monitors thrown. Walls kicked in. Chairs smashed. The destruction was, well…expensive. He would torture our animals. Every little thing set him off. I would get spit on regularly. He would even urinate… [more]

Yesterday while I was on the road I made good use of my time (and played with my new Bluetooth earpiece) and returned several phone calls. One call was to one of the most awesome moms I have met in this gig … the mom I wrote about in this post. In a nutshell, her son has serious attachment and trauma issues as a result of repeated medical procedures. He’s not yet three years old, but he’s quite angry. He sees his mother as both the source of his abuse (she took him to doctors) and his protector. She is still struggling to find the right kind of help. Several things she shared with me really bothered me. First of all, she articulates… [more]

Part One Part Two Part Three Concluding this series on how better services would be provided to our children if the juvenile justice systems and child welfare systems worked together, the final point is: Attorneys representing youth often lack a firm understanding of the youth’s experiences with the child welfare system and the effects of involvement. Apparently many judges interviewed for this article stated their belief that more attorneys need to be well-versed in both juvenile law and child welfare law. Often it is the trial attorney (typically a public defender) who presents a case in court, but he needs to understand the impact being a “system child” has on his client, as well as how to “work the system” and find the best… [more]

Part One Part Two Continuing with the series addressing the difficulties in establishing collaboration between child welfare systems and juvenile justice systems, the second point addressed by the author of this article states: Youth in foster care often appear in court without family or child welfare representatives. I guess I must run in special circles, because the vast majority of families who have crossed my path are doing everything they can and then some to advocate for their kids. However, I have come to realize that it is those extra-special families who are interested enough in their foster kids to go the extra (thousand) miles who do search out resources. Apparently there are many disinterested foster families. Youth interviewed for this article state their… [more]

In the previous post, I addressed the difficulty state and federal governments have in getting the juvenile justice systems and the child welfare systems to play well together and make what is in the best interest of the child their first (collective) priority. Continuing my discussion of the article written by a Children’s Rights advocate, the author (Leslee Morris) cited Children’s Rights research that suggested four areas of concern. A youth’s involvement in the child welfare system may contribute to delinquent behavior. The first paragraph under this heading discusses the frequent moves experienced by youth in the foster care system, and how they were separated from their biological families. The article states the children “did not feel connected” and had an… [more]

There are some final thoughts I would like to share from the article entitled: The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning Gold into Lead. The authors of the ACE Study have come to completely embrace the concept that negative early childhood experiences have a profound impact upon one’s adult life—both physically and emotionally. Furthermore, the authors point out how rarely the medical/professional community recognizes or acknowledges this correlation. The authors compare this dilemma to the relationship between smoke and fire. They point out that firefighters long ago learned the relationship between cause and effect; thus they carry water hoses to fight the fire within the building, rather than fans to blow away the smoke emanating from the burning structure… [more]

Continuing with my discussion about the ACE Study… it is interesting to note what the authors of the study consider to be their two most significant findings: that adverse childhood experiences are “far more common that recognized or acknowledged”, and that such negative early childhood experiences “have a powerful relation to adult health a half-century later.” If you read the breakdown of the categories studied, you realize most of our kids were not exposed to only one negative experience. Most of our kids (and most of the folks in this study) had multiple “traumas”. In fact, the study reports that one quarter of the participants were exposed to two of the adverse experiences, and one out of every 16 participants experienced four of… [more]

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study is an ongoing evaluation of the effects of less-than-optimal childhoods on adult mental and physical health. I am fascinated by this study, for it is proving to be a good indicator of the price our society pays for not addressing the needs of our children when they are still children! How many of us have lobbied and begged and pleaded and cajoled and threatened and sued our schools and mental health professionals in an attempt to get them to sit up and take notice of the special needs of our children? Why is this such a mystery to so many people? How can anyone expect that a child who grows up in or is exposed during critical… [more]

I receive a steady stream of electronic newsletters. There’s the Children’s Bureau Express and the publication that originates from the Evan B. Donaldson Institute. The Child Information Gateway has an e-newsletter. And here’s one called the NRCFCPPP (National Resource Center for Family-Centered Practice and Permanency Planning.) It was through these informative newsletters that I learned about the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. The Kaiser Permanente HMO and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are collaborating on a major research project to study the effects of negative childhood experiences on adult physical and emotional health. In an article titled: The Relationship of Adverse Childhood Experiences to Adult Health: Turning gold into lead, it asks the question… How does this happen… [more]