The adoption world, the media, and outraged citizens from many countries are reacting with horror at the news of the single adoptive mother from Tennessee who put her 8 yr old Russian-born son on a flight all by himself with a note that she no longer wanted him. As the story has unfolded it has become quite evident to me that there has to be much more to the tale than we are as yet being told. Still there is all sorts of speculation. I hope that the pieces of the puzzle soon become known. As tragic and astonishing as this woman’s actions were, and as understandable as it is to me that Russia would be very wary of placing more children in the United States, there are simply too many wonderful, healthy, dedicated American adoptive families who do not deserve to be lumped into a negative category with this woman from Tennessee. There are also far too many needy children who deserve permanent, loving homes. It is, however, imperative that all parties in all countries involved in placing the kids conduct themselves with transparency and full disclosure about the children’s psychological problems and past histories. This is the only way to ensure that the most qualified adoptive parents are found for the children.
Today I read a comment from a well-meaning woman who wrote on one of the adoptive parent lists to which I subscribe, that she has adopted several children and two of them, also from Eastern Europe, have significant problems. While she was by no means condoning what the Tennessee adoptive mother did, she was saying that if we have not walked in the shoes of someone living with a very disturbed adopted child, we cannot possibly know the state of mind in which this mother found herself and should not judge her. This is difficult for me to accept and grasp, though, because the act of putting this child on a plane back to his homeland demonstrated a total lack of concern or compassion for the child. I would indeed consider this child abuse and at the very least, risk of injury to a minor. In addition, it demonstrated that the adoptive mother had little or no grasp of the disastrous effects her actions would likely have on countless other children and waiting parents. In spite of the fact that international adoption is a very costly, time-consuming and rigorous procedure with many pre-requirements to be fulfilled nowadays, this adoptive parent of the Russian boy failed to have her consciousness raised during the pre-adoption process. I do not know whether this was because she did not receive sufficient education and preparation, or because she was in some way oblivious to the realities and chose to focus on her own unrealistic fantasies and needs. It is also possible that the pre-adoptive screening failed to uncover some more serious pre-existing situation that surfaced under the pressure of parenting a child with probable serious emotional disturbance.
I am not in any way suggesting that people who find that they have to disrupt their adoptions are dreadful people, or that it is an unforgivable act. Such an attitude would be more likely to come from someone who has not lived the life I have and who has no idea of how intense and often impossible it is to meet the needs of some severely disturbed children placed at an older age. I have lived a life of constant involvement in, and dedication to the world of adoption for nearly 40 yrs. I believe in my heart that adoption is forever. Yet, though I have successfully parented and raised to adulthood, four children, three of whom were adopted, I am someone who was sadly faced with having to make the horrible decision to disrupt an intended adoptive placement a very, very long time ago. Not only am I an adoptive parent, but I also have had almost 29 years of experience on the front lines while running a full service domestic and international adoption agency. I have worked in the past with WACAP, the placing agency from the State of Washington involved in the adoption of the Russian boy, and have known them to be a competent and reputable agency. I do not know the local agency in Tennessee that evaluated the single mother of the Russian boy, or what kind of post placement support and help was available to this parent and to the rest of her family, or if the adoptive mother took advantage of it.
I do know that some prospective families are incredibly naive in their thinking that love can erase the effects of years of abuse, neglect, birth family dysfunction and institutionalization. Still it is the job of adoption professionals to thoroughly screen, educate, prepare and support the parents who undertake adopting children with such special needs. There is NO such thing as adopting an older child (beyond infancy) with no special needs. I don’t care how pristine and fairy tale-like the information provided on a child may appear. I also don’t buy as a justification for someone doing such a selfish and inhumane thing, that the parent was not fully informed of the child’s needs and therefore, was not prepared, or was simply overwhelmed and “not thinking clearly” when she decided to return this boy, alone, to Russia. Believe me I know that adoptive parents do not always get the full story and background on the children, particularly from other countries. I know too, that some older children can take years to make a true adjustment to a new home and family, while some never do adjust and carry with them very serious issues for the rest of their lives.
Our Family’s Story:
Over 30 years ago for a full year, my late first husband, our two other kids (at that time) and I, lived with and did our absolute best to love, a severely disturbed 10 yr old we were planning and hoping to adopt. After a short time in our home he began to act out in violent ways. He often went into a trance-like state and did not know what was going on around him. We found him sleepwalking a number of times, with hands poised around the throat of our sleeping 7 yr old. He broke whatever was in his path and blamed the other children. He acted out sexually at times and was always flashing me and being suggestive when nobody else was nearby to see it. He had a fascination for knives and matches, had horrible mood swings, drastically changing his demeanor and sometimes in a matter of minutes, went from smiling sweetly and playing quietly, into violent rages where he threw things and threatened anyone and anything in his line of vision. He urinated and defecated in our other kids’ clothes hampers and toy boxes, told the school we did not feed him to get them to give him an extra lunch and on and on and on. We found out that the agency in another state had lied to us about the reasons he had not been able to remain in his other homes. We were his ninth family, but we were manipulated into believing that the others were not as capable or as caring as we were and had other deficits. When we later did some homework and contacted a couple of families he had been with (against the wishes of the placing agency) we learned that we had been duped and that these families had actually been very loving and competent people with considerably greater experience with troubled kids that we had at the time. We learned that the placing agency had clearly withheld information on past violent behavior. We learned that he had harmed and threatened several kids and a teacher at his former school. Our lives were a nightmare while he was in our family and the restrictions and monitoring he required changed the entire atmosphere and flow in our home. Still we, who had been active advocates for parents and kids in our state, had written legislation, run groups assisting agencies with parent recruitment and counseled prospective adoptive parents, felt like failures and even like bad people. We were absolutely heartbroken that we could not parent this 10 year old the way he needed. We just could not perceive of ourselves as people who could give a child back, but we really began to fear for all of our lives. When the third therapist we took him to said he would most likely never adjust to a family and needed to be residentialized for treatment as quickly as possible, we presented to the agency that we would be willing to continue being his family, would visit him, support him through his treatment, but he could not live with us at the time, based on all of the professional recommendations. They refused and said it was ALL or NOTHING. WE worked on his life book with him, took him to the therapist to help him try to understand why he could not stay without scapegoating him, talked to him, comforted him, cried with him, and did our best to nurture him through the next weeks. The worker avoided our phone calls, nobody else from the agency responded to us and the worker did not keep her promise to come to prepare him for the leave taking. It was a call to an attorney, or so we believed, that finally prompted an appointment to be set for the pick-up of the child. We did all of the work of helping him say goodbye and transitioning him to the next move in his sad life. We would never have dreamed of putting him on a bus or train or driving him to NY to the agency and dropping him off. We would sooner have lopped off our fingers with a meat cleaver. We took turns standing guard at night, to ensure that he did not wake up and try to access knives or matches. We sometimes watched him as he slept, both of us crying with pain for him and with fury at the system that created all that had had happened to him to damage him so severely. We felt about as bad and initially as guilty as anyone could feel about the terrible thing we had to do to him and to our kids by disrupting the placement. Still we knew that we could not go on and were finding ourselves drained of the ability to manage his behaviors and to help him, let alone to meet the ongoing needs of our other children.
It took us quite some time to heal. It took the support of our friends, family, our adoption community and a family therapist to deal with what had occurred. It nagged at us that we were the healthy parties in this awful saga and we were haunted by the probable additional damage to this boy we had once hoped to call our own. Yet, as we saw how quickly our family returned to “almost normal”, we realized that we had made the only decision we could have made. We were able to once again engage in family cuddles and other fun sharing times that had been almost impossible when the other child was with us, because of the hyperactivity and at times, rage, and other behaviors that these times created. We received a couple of very confusing and thought-disordered letters from the boy after he left, but we were not permitted to send him letters or to inquire about him or his progress. This caused us much grief. We consulted several attorneys, but my husband had lost his job and we just were not in a position to take the situation further legally. We needed to move on with our lives and this we did, later adopting another child prior to my first husband’s diagnosis with multiple sclerosis. (I later adopted a fourth child after I was widowed.)
Therefore, I would be the last person to easily condemn or judge the family in Tennessee for determining that they ill-equipped to parent the Russian child. I do question just how long they had expected it to take for him to adjust and to feel secure in their home. Six months is really a very short time in most cases. We expected at least a few years of ongoing therapy, and knew that the past issues of our child would recycle at various times, maybe forever, even after he had settled in to our family life. We simply did not expect to have such a violent child placed with us and that was something we had already stated was not an appropriate match for us, since he was joining us as the eldest child. There are some naïve people out there who immediately presume the worst things about a family that chooses to disrupt or dissolve an adoptive placement. I know that there may be good reasons in many cases. However, it is just beyond my ability to comprehend that any family could be as cold and uncaring as to ship a child back to his home country, all alone with a note they don’t want him any longer. I don’t take seriously that the child seems “normal” to observers thus far, and even to the psychologist in Russia because kids with attachment disorders are quite adept at putting on an act and sensing what kinds of responses are expected of them in settings where they are not under pressure to conform to the structures, routines and affection of a family.
I sincerely hope there is a complete investigation into the circumstances surrounding this case and this adoptive family. I pray that the Russian Government will consider all of the successful placements of happy children who have found loving homes here in the United States. Some of these families are people I know well, having personally worked with them and their Russian adopted kids in the past, during the pre-adoptive and/or post-adoption periods. Mostly I pray that young Artyom, or Justin, as he was called here, gets help and that he is not placed too quickly into a family that also has unrealistic expectations for him. I don’t know that this child can take another disaster.
Ruth Z Deming says
exceedingly well-written and thought-provoking, iris. your article explained the other side of the story of little justin, who, btw, had an adult accompany him to russia since his adoptive mother had paid someone $200 to do so. you should submit your story, as is, to the ny times, it deserves a wider readership.
Iris Arenson-Fuller says
Hi Ruth and thanks as always. My understanding is that the mom paid someone who was a stranger and who was not screened or checked out in any way, but nonetheless, it seems an uncaring, selfish and crazy thing to do. What remains to be seen is what avenues she explored to get the child help. Also, since her adoption from Russia was a final decree one, the child was legally hers and therefore would have needed to go through the legal process in her own state with a termination of parental rights and a search for another appropriate home by the placement agency and the local authorities. Each state has slightly different rules around that.
Bob Vance says
Sounds like you still have some very strong feelings about your own experience, Iris, and rightly so.
The permanence of the kinds of wounding that can take place in children who are not given adequate attachments from the frst moments after birth is terrifying to me and heart breaking. As I work woth adults who end up as life-long users of the highly intensive community mental health services my agency provides, I can testify to the ongoing misery these people have to endure in their own lives and cause in others.
Unfortunately, more and more, the only option our society provides is entirely punitive. The urge to de-institutionalize those with persistant and life long mental illness has turned from being an excellent therapeutic model (and still is for those who can tolerate and be tolerated in community living) to being a mere cost saver for those who are terrified of procuring an adequate tax base to provide these folks with the log term treatment they require… so they end up in juvenile detentions as children and prison as adults. I have talked to a medical director of a large state prison here and he bemoaned the inadequacy of the prison systems for holding (an interesting term for what is actually done!) these folks. Often whole sections of prisons are dedicated for these hard to diagnose and harder to treat people… they are often without clothes, interaction, or any attempt at therapeutic intervention. Truly back to the asylum model of care under the guise of necessary incarceration!
Iris Arenson-Fuller says
Alas, I do have strong feelings even so many years later about our experiences. I often wonder what happened to this boy, who would now be in his mid-forties. There is a part of me that wishes I knew and another part that does not. You certainly do see the end result of these problems and others in your work. Of course, not all of the clients within the mental health system or the prison system had these kinds of histories but many come from severely damaged families and if we don’t start doing more intensive work with the kids and stop not only the familial neglect and abuse, but what I call the system abuse, our problems with the adult population will escalate even further. It is indeed a horribly punitive system, as you mention.
I suppose the story behind this poor Russian boy disturbs me all the more because of the widespread ramifications that may affect other waiting kids and families, but also because the resources, information and support systems available to prospective parents and to adoptive families with kids in the home is far, far greater than anything available to me and my first husband when we went into older child adoption. We were among the pioneers in the country. We were very active in a parent support group though and part of an offshoot group of those who had adopted troubled older kids, but there were still judgments made about us and not as much help as we would have liked. This single adoptive parent had so much more out there she could have tapped into for help, support and advice and apparently did not, or so it seems anyway.
This is why I am shortly offering some telesupport groups for adoptive families at different phases of their process. There are Internet lists to be sure, but this will be a more personalized, focused kind of thing. Even people who live in rural areas will not have excuses because they will not even have to leave their homes to participate if they wish to do so. I also recently had a lovely introduction to someone, a grandmother, whose daughter placed a baby for adoption many, many years ago and was moved by the emotion she showed even after so many years. I will shortly be offering support forums and coaching groups to this underserved population too, of birth parents and grandparents who are years down the road from the child placement but could still benefit from support and creative ways to deal with that long ago life-changing experience.
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
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Sharon O'Neil Liljedahl says
Well written Iris. Spoken from the heart and with love always.
Iris Arenson-Fuller says
Thank you for reading. This whole incident has stirred up quite a lot and in the end, will hurt other kids and families, or has the potential for doing so.
Iris Arenson-Fuller says
Hi, I don'[t see a comment here but thanks for mentioning my article on your site. This is in response to your pingback.
I am an adoptive parent, ran a licensed agency for nearly 29 yrs, ( We are shortly closing by choice as it was my “baby” and I am ready to move on) and I am a Certified Professional Coach and have a coaching practice, specializing in Big Life Changes, Hard Choices, Second Chances. Among my coaching niches, adoption issues, choices, loss if various types and bereavement, which are big areas of focus.
Best of luck on your adoption journey and I wish you succes.
http://www.visionpoweredcoaching.com
Coming Soon also:
http://www.expertadoptioncoach.com &
http://www.petlossgriefcoach.com
(Both divisions of Vision Powered Coaching)