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In my recent blog titled “Once you have been matched” a reader wrote a great comment regarding reading a child’s profile and case history.
Also look carefully for gaps, or holes in the information. It is better to play connect the dots, and try to get a whole picture BEFORE your child comes home, rather than when they are with you and in crisis.
That is a GREAT answer, and one I wish I could convince parents of, but it’s easier said than done. I am not being critical, believe me, I was that starry eyed optimistic parent at one time. My feelings about Sammy were, and these were the actual words that came out of my mouth “He’s a regular kid just kicked up a few notches.” Oh boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong if I tried.
Part of it was lack of education, but a great part of it was denial. I recently saw an interview with Ashley Judd. She was being interviewed about her husband, race car driver Dario Franchitti and his safety while racing. She talked about denial, and her description of denial was so on target. She said that denial stands for:
Don’t
Even
kNow
I
Am
Lying
And so it is with many of the parents that the Attachment & Trauma Network works with. They are in denial about their child’s issues, because to admit how damaged the child is more than they can bear.
Once I learned about attachment issues, I began to talk to other adoptive parents that I knew, which was pretty minimal at the time. There was one set of parents who had a child with issues very similar to Sammy, only their son was much younger. I tried to broach the subject with them and they did not want to hear what I had to say. Their response was to cut all ties with our family.
This philosophy leads into another saying I heard at conference back in February, and it has stuck with me since then:
Hope is not a strategy.
Simply hoping that our children will heal is not enough. We must be pro-active in searching for interventions for our children, finding the right mental health professionals, and being realistic about the issues our kids face BEFORE they enter our homes, or at the very least, have resources and contacts in place for when we need them.
I’m not sure you could have convinced me how traumatized Sammy was way back when. We were so desperate for a child that we probably would have overlooked things anyway. What a difference eight years makes.
We were a combination of “stars in our eyes”, and nervous and asking a lot of questions. We got a sib group of four, preadoptively. The older three are full sibs, and have been pretty much what we expected, based on their info and the training we received. The youngest is a half sib, and had a child profile shrouded in mystery. Lots of holes and gaps, and no one to ask to fill them in. We made the mistake of assuming her age was in her favor, and that she would be similar to her older sibs. NOT SO! She is so much more disturbed than the others, that she is endangering them, and is actually scheduled to be removed for more testing, and to formulate a longterm plan. It has been heartbreaking and grueling. In hindsight, we wished we had done things differently, but you don’t know what you don’t know. It is a hard job to be trained on the job for!
“In hindsight, we wished we had done things differently, but you don’t know what you don’t know. It is a hard job to be trained on the job for!”
Absolutely! It is certainly a learn as you go job, which is why I want to offer the things I have learned over the years!
“you don’t know what you don’t know”
My mantra too. And you can’t grasp that for which you have no frame of reference until you DO have a frame of reference!