ADOPTION, A CAUTIONARY TALE

ADOPTION, A CAUTIONARY TALE
by Nancy (CA) (therabbitts@cox.net)
My husband and I adopted two children from birth. The adoptions were open adoptions and we had met the parents. My son is caucasian and my daughter Caucasian/Hispanic. They are both beautiful children. The birth parents filled out the health forms for the adoption process. There were some gross omissions. However, since the birth parents were 18, how much realistically can they be expected to know about their genetic background? It was complicated by the fact that our son's mother was herself adopted at age two. We were encourage by what looked to be two normal births with good APGAR scores.

Our son seemed to develop normally in the beginning. He walked very late though...16 months. He also potty trained late at 4 years old. By the time he was four, he was seeing a neurologist and was diagnosed with developmental delays of unspecified origins.

http://www.amfor.net/Adopters.html

In the meantime, our daughter who had the colic from hell the first 10 months of her life was not out-growing the terrible twos. We had moved on to the terrible threes. She could not be kept in a time out chair unless she was strapped in the car seat. By age three I was taking her to see a therapist who diagnosed a child/parent relationship problem. Her problems continued to dominate our family life. Our son's care which I might have pursued more aggressively was relegated to a lot of physical activity to help develop his deficit skills with balance, hopping, skipping, etc.

Our daughter continued to have a hard time of it and at age 6 she came to me with a red mark on her neck and showed me how she tried to hang herself. She cried that night for four hours straight. She was put on Prozac. Later she was diagnosed with ADHD and put on Adderal. She became extremely manic and at age 8 she chased her brother through the house with garden shears and ended up hospitalized. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and begun on medications for that.

My son had been diagnosed as ADHD and was also on medication for that. He experienced angry outburst almost daily and the physician's response to that was to further increase his medication. This year, my son now 13, was switched to a newer ADHD medication. Well, it made him psychotic and he ended up in the hospital and returned to us with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and Asperger's syndrome (high functioning autism).

Both children have significant learning disabilities. We fought tooth and nail with the school district to give us the much needed services. Still we could not avoid a legal action. The school district refused to acknowledge either of my children's diagnosis or include it in their IEP's (Individualized Education Plan). We have had to spend a lot of money on tutoring, private school, etc. and often at the expense of what would be more pleasureable activities.

Our son and daughter are doing relatively well now. We still have touchy and sensitive days rather frequently but nothing like in the past. The toll on our family has been enormous. My husband and I both have stress-related disease processes now. There have been days I wanted to call it quits. Because our adoptions were private, we get no help from the state. Having a lot of money to throw at some of the problems like education would be helpful. My daughter was also subsequently diagnosed with partial complex seizures.

In the year(s) since our children were adopted we learned some of the following: our daughter was born with cocaine in her system (hospital let us leave with her, never telling us), she has an older brother with lots of problems and raging. The mother of my son is a diagnosed sociopath. His father now in his early thirties is barely functional and his mother describes him as having been her "problem child".

I love my children and my life wouldn't be as enriched without them. But I would never adopt again or advise adoption....

I used to be naive enough to believe heredity and environment played about a 50/50 role in personality development but that is no longer true. I surmise it to be more like 90/10...

-- Nancy R. (CA)
adoptive mom to Evan, 13, bp and aspergers and Julia, 11, bp, seizure disorder and both with ld's