[hadams]

There are some things you can do to perhaps lessen the risk...but not remove it.

You can have the information you gather on your first trip reviewed by an experienced IA physician. Although I have read posts about parents who did this and still ended up with children who needed a lot of intervention.

Their are different combinations of events that can make some children more prone to being RAD than others. Length of time in an institution, and the quality of care in an institution can sometimes be used as measures for probability of RAD.

You can, by involvement on other groups, like the Yahoo regional groups, network with other parents who have adopted from the same orphanage who can give you some insight into the accuracy and completeness of the health information presented. They can also give you information on the quality of care.

You can become very familiar with age appropriate milestones, and know what to look for in terms of growth and skills in children the same age as your referral.

You can seek out a program that allows you a lot of time to visit with your child on the first trip, so that you will have more opportunities to assess your child.

But when all is said and done, it is still a gamble.

FAS is a spectrum disorder. A child could be profoundly affected or simply have problems doing math. The quicker the diagnosis, and the more intervention that is done, the better chance the child will have to succeed.

RAD is a label sometimes applied differently by different people. Many would agree that all children who are adopted after being institutionalized will have attachment issues. Issues do not equal a disorder. Some parents, though diligent use of attachment techniques have turned a child with a RAD diagnosis into a loving engaging part of their family. Other families continue to struggle.

We are working on attachment issues, and probably will for years, yet neither of my children is RAD.

My heart always aches a little bit when this topic comes up. I remember being on your side and thinking the same thing: what if? Can we handle it? And, although I once had those same thoughts, now they make me cringe a bit.

I may have thought I wasn't prepared to parent a child who had such and such a diagnosis. Or had such and such a disorder. Now, I am parent of two children, and I am their parent regardless of diagnosis or disorder, and I will be for the rest of my life. Am I more prepared? No. But it doesn't matter.

There is nothing on my one-time list of things I wasn't prepared for that couldn't happen to either of my children tomorrow. A fall on the head, a freak fever, a car accident, whatever. So, do I stop being their mother because I am not prepared to parent a child with a wheel chair? No, I build some ramps, get my upper body strength back, and shuttle my child to physical therapy appointments 5 times a week.

Would it be easy? No. Would it put an incredible strain on my family, my marriage, my relationship with my other child? Yes. But would it be the end of my family, my marriage or my relationship with my other child? Not if I could help it.

I think better than worrying about not adopting a child of special needs, a better approach might be preparing yourself to parent a child of special needs. If my child has this diagnosis, I will need to do this, this and this. These are the community resources available to me. This is the internet community available to me. This is the best clinic around for dealing with these issues.

The information you gather will help you in assessing your referral, as well as prepare you to get help sooner if needed.

When we adopted our son, it was back in the day when you got a video of the child. Our little boy, eight months old at the time of filming, was filmed on the floor of his orphanage, in an ill-fitting ill-matched multi-layered outfit of onsie pajamas. He was rocking back and forth in a crawling position, but not crawling. He wasn't filmed sitting up. He drooled. He played with a ball in front of him passing it from one hand to the other, tracking it with his eyes.

We watched the video with our Denver Development chart in front of us, checking for this and that. There were so many things we couldn't check off...we watched again and again, trying to decide if the way he held his back leg was just the pajamas or if it was stiff or something.

After about the fourth or the fifth viewing, we started to notice his gurgle/giggle. We noticed the sworl in his hair, and wondered if it would be a huge cowlick (it is). We noticed how he flinched a bit when someone in the room banged something, and started to wish they would stop scaring him each time.

After we had seen it a half a dozen or so times, we started to say "what could someone say to us that would make us NOT want to take this boy home, to give him a chance, to love him, and care for him, and shelter him?" We went from looking for reasons to turn him down to daring anyone to try to get us to turn him down.

From that point on, for us, it simply didn't matter. He was and is ours, forever.