I strongly disagree. When one adopts an older child, you have no knowledge or control over what that child has been through up until the point they are in your care. They may have been through horrific abuse that has damaged them psychologically and have never attached to anyone. You are dealing with the horrific outcome of something that sometimes, the child has been permanently damaged by. I’m not saying that all older kids waiting for adoption are like this, but it can (and does) happen.

I have known kids who:

-were used for kiddie porn by their parents
-were passed to their parents “friends” and sexually abused
-were tortured and sexually abused
-parents used them to fake injuries to get drugs from hospitals
-were left without food or care for days at a time
-watched parents take drugs and make drug deals all the time
-witnessed a parent having sex with multiple partners
-were horrifically beat up on a daily basis
-witnessed parents/sibs having sex with animals
-found a parent who had successfully committed suicide
-were abandoned on the street and left to their own devices

When you have your own child or adopt an infant, even if they have issues of their own, you have had the opportunity to bond with them and be in charge of those circumstances right from the get go.

From my own experience as a foster parent AND a mom to a child with learning disabilities/dyspraxia, there’s a very clear difference.
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My wounded child was expelled from preschool for violence, suspended from kindergarten SIX times for attacking his teacher, and it got worse every year. We spent thousands of dollars on therapy, medications, medical tests, you name it, we tried it. Then, when I was pregnant with my daughter, he tried to stab my 7 year old son. I could not and would not continue to put my other chldren at risk. I will tell you, I would like to believe that I could never have placed him alone on a plane, but I can’t say that. If I wouldn’t have found a placement for him, with as little help as we were getting, I might have been desperate enough to do exactly that.

I am the mother of 10 bio. children. My husband and I adopted 3 siblings from Ghana in 2008. Fifteen months after bringing our children home, we discovered that there had been abuse between the siblings for many years (starting in their remote mud hut village).

We had 5 younger children to protect.

We knew that neither the abuser nor the victim could walk through the difficult process towards healing, if they continued to live in the same home.

We chose to find a new family for our son. We knew that he needed a family that did not have younger children.

Because our son had RAD, he was not attached to us. He was excited to go to a new family who could give him all of the “things” that he wanted. He loves his new iPhone, iPod Touch, Stereo system, etc… and all of the freedom his new family gives him. We hope and pray that they will be able to work through his RAD … that they will be able to provide the healing that he needs.

While we “stuck it out” through the rages … the lying … the stealing … the killing of birds … the running away … when we discovered the ongoing abuse …

We knew that our time with him was over.

We knew that we had to protect our younger 5 children.

We knew that we had to provide a safe place for the youngest victim to recover from years of abuse.

We have been judged and condemned.

We have been gossiped about.

We lost most of our friends, because they did not understand our decision.

We have had a CPS investigation based on false allegations (from someone that was mad that we had decided to disrupt our adoption).

We did what we knew we had to do.

Please don’t judge … unless you have truly walked in my shoes.

Laurel
(our story can be found in the archives of my blog, under “The Crisis”)
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I never asked for a child with special needs and I certainly never asked for one who was violent. However, he is my son and I would never send him back or find a new home for him. I find him help.

That said, I do understand the helplessness and depression one feels. Everyone wants a perfect child, right? And, when you can’t have one of your own and adopt you expect that child to fulfill your fantasies. When that doesn’t happen you’re left floundering.

It’s hard to overcome those feelings of despair as well as deal with the issues the child has at the same time.
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I agree that having a child legally adopted does make a difference in the level of responsibility expected. In our case, the social workers involved began calling us “forever family” to our girls, which also elevated things from a simple foster care situation (we see this as another mistake), since our girls did have the expectation of staying with us. But ultimately, trying “everything” to make it work means different things to different people since we all have different capacities.

I discovered two things that were beyond my capacity. One is to be a good parent to a child that was unlovable (and anyone who knows anything about RAD knows what I am talking about). I was a wonderful parent to our 4-year old, who I did love and experienced mutual attachment, but was a terrible parent to her sister. The other was to publicly carry and restrain a this 7-year old child of a different race, which was sometimes necessary for her own safety and what was recommended by our attachment therapist.

Although the setup for our situation was not good, I do think the way the ending happens is so important. Often these kids do not even get a goodbye. We did a special therapy session with tears and love and no blame in order to stay goodbye. I made them gifts to remember us by and researched their past to create photo albums that included the time before they were ever with us.

The whole putting a kid on a plane thing does seem weird, but perfectly safe and how can I judge knowing nothing about international adoption, what happened in their home or what their goodbye was like?

I don’t think that I have ever sent a comment on your site before but as a biological mother to two children and an adoptive mother to one I thought I would reply. If it was your birth child that was acting this way you would do everything in your power to do whatever you could to make life better for your child. Why should it be any different for a adopted child. Sure if you really want to you can give up your parental rights to your birth children and people will always look down on you for doing so , saying things like how could you just give up on your son/daughter. It shoudln’t be any different for an adopted child from what I learned from having to take the foster/adoptive parenting classes where I live unfortunately alot of kids that are in the process of adoption or have been adopted are returned to either the state if they are in states custody or given up for adoption because they can’t handle them….they got divorced….whatever reason. I just don’t feel as a parent that it should be so easy just to give up someone you are supposed to love and protect your whole life. I am sure everyone has their own opinion to this it is a really strong issue. All I can say is I would never imagine giving up on any of children, I love them all the same. My baby know’s he is adopted because I would never imagine him finding out from someone else. All I have ever said to him is your birth mom really couldn’t take care of you and I can but remember she loves you. When he feels different because he is adopted I just tell him to remember that means he is special because i got to pick him and that gives him a special place in my heart and he is back to feeling like himself, the loved/special little boy he is.