Why don’t some families approach their original placing agency if a disruption is looming? I clearly remember the reaction my family received when we made the decision to disrupt the teenage girl. We had not even finalized yet, so the legalities of it were much simpler. We were treated like we had failed. Perhaps we had, but many, many factors contributed to that. We were actually dealing with TWO agencies, the local placing agency and the international agency. The international agency still retained some legal standing in terms of the custodial care of the girl. She was flown to their main office in another state, and that is the last we “officially” heard about her. We were “persona non grata.” It was as if we had ceased to exist. The local social worker informed me there was no way I could have three emotionally damaged kids; therefore, the problem was clearly mine. In my opinion, if she represented a responsible placing agency (at the time she was a one-woman operation) she would never have approved us to adopt a teenage girl in the first place. In retrospect, I realize we were truly in over our heads already, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know! Not only did this local social worker not provide any support, but she also contributed considerably to the emotional damage I suffered as a result of the disruption. Ironically, this same social worker’s agency was used by one of my three recent disrupting families. It isn’t difficult for me to understand why this particular family did not want to seek much assistance from their original agency, especially since while their child was in the temporary care of the agency he was so badly hurt he ended up in the hospital for six days.

It is true that Tressler Lutheran Services in Pennsylvania has made a public statement about disruptions and the issue of re-placing kids. Tressler Director Barb Holtan wrote an article that appeared in the March/April 1999 Tressler Family Connections newsletter. In that article she described her distress over the increasingly frequent calls from parents who were disrupting Eastern European kids. The calls began in February of 1994, and by March of 1999 Tressler had been asked to re-place 78 children-more than one request per month for a steady five years. The ages ranged from 8 months to 15 years, with equal gender distribution, and the calls came from 27 different states. Barb noted the following about the callers, “The families who call are sad, angry, scared, disappointed. The behaviors of the children have brought them to their knees. The behaviors they describe are all so similar and pretty much can be found on the checklists for Reactive Attachment Disorder.” That article was written two years ago! Has the situation improved? I think not! Is Tressler “actively” seeking to provide services to these families? Are they developing a “sub specialty”? No! They do place many kids with special needs and they require interested families to take specialized training, but they certainly don’t need to develop new sources of available children.

“It may not be easy but a child isn’t a puppy going back to the pound.” Of course a child isn’t a puppy. Any dedicated child welfare worker or adoption professional would agree with this. Any responsible placing agency or person involved in placing a child would cringe and immediately disqualify any prospective adoptive parent who appeared to have this mentality. It goes without saying that prospective adoptive parents should be totally committed to their as-yet-unidentified, totally unknown future sons and/or daughters. In my opinion, this is, unfortunately, terribly idealistic. This type of “forever commitment” isn’t even a guarantee in biological families, much less adoptive ones. And to expect every family to make a lifetime emotional, physical and financial commitment to an extremely difficult, non-reciprocal, possibly dangerous child, especially a child who disrupts the family from the very beginning is unfair. Most folks who develop serious relationship problems with a child at least have an opportunity to feel love for the child before the problems become unmanageable. And these new adoptive parents DO want to love their children! They didn’t casually decide to be a benefactor to an Orphan Train rider-they actively pursued the opportunity to parent this child. They WANT to be parents. They certainly didn’t ask to be in a situation where they find themselves unable to love their much-sought-after son or daughter or provide for their specialized care.

Some families DO manage to acquire affection for their child, even in the face of constant negative behaviors. They don’t want to disrupt the placement, although they begin to realize they may not always be able to “share space” with their child. The concept of residential placement-“parenting from afar” and still feeling like a parent-is difficult when one is considering a pre-teen or teenage child. It is nearly inconceivable to realize a family may be unable to live with a child who isn’t even old enough to be potty trained. So when someone tells me, “There are resources out there. The parents need to use the resources,” I want to know what I am missing? Gail Trenberth and I started the Attachment Disorder Network (ADN) because when our families needed those resources, they were mighty difficult to find. After I was emotionally beaten and physically ill, I was fortunate enough to be referred to the one local therapist who understood attachment issues and 7 years ago actually introduced me to the “big picture.” ADN is not the only resource out there. There is a myriad of wonderful folks who support adoptive families before, during and after their placements. But the support system currently in place in the United States is nowhere near adequate to handle the escalating crises of disrupting families.

© Nancy Spoolstra, DVM

Credits: Used with permission from:

Nancy Spoolstra, DVM
Attachment Disorder Network
www.radzebra.org