[lorjie]

Hello:
My husband, 8 1/2 yr old and I traveled to Kaz. on July 4 to adopt a 5 yr old "healthy" little girl. Our trip was a nightmare and we returned to the US w/out her due to red tape, my daughter's visa expiring and we needed more money in addition to the fact that we were not prepared to be there longer than a month. My husband is preparing to go back this Tuesday to get her. She has RAD and has totally rejected me. We are fairly certain she has been abused sexually given some of the behavior she exhibits. I need some advice on how to handle her homecoming. She is scheduled to begin Kindergarten on Aug. 28. The principal thinks she should begin right away to be immersed in the English language. I have hired a native Russian to help her interpret and work with me on her adjustment to our family. She is a behaviorist as well as an interpreter. She bonded with my husband, tolerates my daughter, but wants nothing to do with me. My husband and I both work out of our home, but I am the primary caregiver and will be responsible for getting her to and from school, etc. I have totally rearranged my business to devote 100% of my time to bonding with her. I am very nervous about seeing her again. Our last encounter before she went BACK TO THE ORPHANAGE was actually a very good one, but I am sure she doesn't remember that. She let me hold her for the first time and rock her and give her a bath. It was great. I need some feedback quickly!! Thank you. Laurie

[dr. mom]

Homeschooling may be very hard with your business but if there is any way possible, I would encourage it. It doesn't have to be anything complex or involved! Because she has RAD, it would be optimal if she could adjust to the family and work on attachment issues in depth before shestarts regular school in a classroom setting. Good Luck with whatever you decide to do. It must be so hard to feel rejected by your child!

[lorjie]

No, I will not be homeschooling her. Kindergarten in our state is only 3 hrs in the morning. The rest of the day she will be with me. I really don't care if she learns the ABCs, etc. I want her to learn social behaviors. She will be attending a small, neighborhood school that my older daughter also attends.
Our interpreter is extremely familiar w/RAD. She used to work with refugees who emigrated to Russia from Armenia.
Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions!

[lucyjoy]

What's the hurry to start kindergarten? She could just as easily start next year when she's more settled. If you do decide to start her now, have her repeat or she'll struggle with English later. Also, she's likely to make poor social choices.
Imagine, someone came to America and took you to Russia. You don't speak the language. They give you a new husband and some new kids your suppose to take care of. You can't understand them and you can't ask anyone any questions because they don't understand you. Your new husbanddrops you off at this place your suppose to work and you have no idea what your suppose to do and all the other workers are looking at you funny because you aen't doing what your suppose to do. YOu need to use the bathroom, but you don't know where it is and can't ask anybody. That's how your child will feel. NOw, add RAD to that and the terror is unimaginable.

Make sure her room does not have too much stuff in it. Coming from an orphanage, it may overwhelm her. Keep her with you and spend a lot of time playing on the floor in small areas where she can aproach and interact with you. Talk softly, but speak a lot so she gets use to the sound of English and the safety from your voice. If she isn't sleeping with you, make sure she has an early bed time. Even if she doesn't sleep, she may need the calm down time and you definetly will need the break. Put an alarm of some sort on her door so you'll know if she wakes up or wonders. I put a baby monitor in my four year ld's room so I'd hear him if he got scared. Be sure to rock her a lot. Swinging is also good. If the wether is nice, take her outside a lot. Digging in the dirt can be very theraputic.
Make sure her therapists are attachment trained.

Please don't take this as a criticism.
I see that you are very committed to this, but you don't sound much like you want to. That could make things very tuff and your daughter will sense that and use it against you. If you don't want to do this, don't. Sorry for assuming, in most the disruptions I've dealt with, the dad's have wanted this, but the moms just went along hoping it would get better.

[lorjie]

Lucy:
I am not sure why you think I don't want to do this. Of course I want to do this and that is why I have spent numerous hours networking, researching and trying to figure out how to make this work for our family, keeping my other daughter in mind as my top priority, etc.
Your suggestions are all good and we have all of them in place except the alarm on your room. We are still trying to figure that one out. Her interpreter is going to school with us prior to the actual start date, every day until school actually begins to explain what is going to happen. The school system also has a Russian language person who will work with my daughter twice a week in the school setting.
So, that is what is happening. Thanks for your advice.

[nancygeoghegan]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

First off, here is an article that may help you with the arrival:

WHEN YOUR CHILD COMES HOME



1. Keep child close at all times

2. Infants should be carried or worn close to the body not carried in stiff carriers.

3. If you are comfortable and child is young you may want to start him sleeping in your bed or at least in your room.

4. Know as much as you can about child’s background and previous living conditions as you can.

5. Don’t overwhelm child with too many gifts and toys.

6. Let child know what your expectations are.

7. Teach child that relationships are reciprocal.

8. Hugs, eye contact and physical closeness.

9. Chores and limits are a good thing.

10. Know yourself—your attachment style, your vulnerabilities.

11. Get to know your child what are her rhythms? How does his temperament affect yours and vice versa

12. Know that separations and changes may be frightening

13. Don’t enroll child in a lot of activities.

14. Be a passionate parent—teach and model feelings

15. Prime attachment should be to mom and then to dad or to primary caretaker.

16. Holdings to promote safety and trust resulting in healthy attachment. Read HOLDING TIME by Martha Welch and have a skilled holding therapist or attachment parent trainer help you begin the process.



Written by Diane S. Feinberg, M.Ed.


Used with permission from:

Diane S. Feinberg, M.Ed.
16 Aventura Rd.
Santa Fe, NM 87508
505-466-4566
www.dianefeinberg.com
dianefeinberg@earthlink.net

[nancygeoghegan]

Actually, the attachment site I built for Adoption.com is not up yet so I will direct you to my personal site for info on bonding with a child with attachment problems:

http://www.attachmentdisorder.net/Nu...Activities.htm

This article may help as well - it can be used with older kids too.

Promoting Attachment Through the Senses



Babies under a year old are highly sensory beings. Because their primary intellectual task during the first few months of their lives involves learning to use all of their senses and developing motor skills, each of a baby's senses is finely tuned and he is acutely aware of any and all changes. His environment is defined by all of his senses--how things look, how things taste, how things smell, how things feel, how things sound--and through his experience of a familiar and predictable routine. While it's always best for children to experience a stable and secure environment from the moment of their birth, this is often not possible for babies who will be adopted. For children who must move from an environment in which they already feel secure, then, transferring attachment to a new parent will be enhanced by efforts to maintain as many familiar sensory elements as possible.
All of Chapter 3 ("We Have Lift Off") of my book Launching a Baby's Adoption (February, 1997, Perspectives Press) offers readers suggestions for addressing ways to incorporate the familiar into a newly-arrived baby's routine and into his sensory experiences. The book offers practical strategies for helping your child find his new environment familiar to his sense of sight, his sense of taste, his sense of smell, his sense touch, his sense of sound. But Chapter 3 of Launching a Baby's Adoption is far too long for posting here. We'll need to limit your "taste" of the book, then, to just two of your baby's senses. I've chosen to share with you some suggestions involving the senses of smell and touch.

Families adopting internationally and the professionals working with them seemed to acknowledge that change can affect even babies' attachments much earlier than have those working with domestic infant adoption. Magazines such as Adoptive Families and Adoption Today have through the years featured articles on the adjustment difficulties common to children arriving from India, from Asia, from South America. The symptoms discussed were the symptoms of grieving, as these children dealt with the loss of the familiar--familiar caretakers, familiar food, familiar sounds, familiar smells, familiar voices and language, familiar culture--and were forced to make a transitional adaptation. In a powerful example of David Kirk's Shared Fate theory in action, it has been those adopters who were, by virtue of the obvious in their family, unable to reject or deny difference and instead were forced to acknowledge it, who have led the way in dealing with this important adoption-related issue.

Being asked to maintain the familiar for the baby's sake is sometimes a difficult thing for new adopters to hear. In claiming for themselves the role of parent, new adopters had expected that as parents it would be their role and their unquestioned right to make decisions that new parents make about nursery decor and layette, about feeding, about a comfort cycle, about family routine, etc. Now being asked to "adapt" to a parenting style and routines already established by birthparents or foster parents or group home workers may remind adopters once again that their family's beginnings are different from the beginnings of families built by birth. They may balk at feeling out of control once more and vow to do things their own way despite suggestions from others.

Promoting attachment, however, lends itself to a whole style of parenting which fits right in with my strong view, expressed throughout Launching a Baby's Adoption, that adoptions must be baby-centered. Parents promote intimacy by responding to the baby's cues rather than imposing their own will upon Baby. The pediatrician and author William Sears, M.D., actually calls this style "attachment parenting." Dr. Sears writes for the general population of parents, and not only is his focus not adoption, but some of the things he writes may not feel particularly sensitive to adoption. On the other hand, I agree with Sears, who believes that this "tuning in" approach to parenting carries over into closer relationships between parent and child that will lead those children themselves to become better parents.

The older your baby is at placement with you, the more significant transition issues may be for him. Please try to recognize your resistance to being told how to parent as a left over loss-of-control issue and attempt to be flexible here. Over the long haul, your willingness to compromise during transition, to allow your child's experiences to lead you as his parent, and to gradually introduce your child to the new sensory experiences and routines which reflect your own preferences may result in fewer adoption-connected problems or differences later.

Some of the suggestions I share for sensory attachment are pro-active. They are things you can do to try to put your "personal stamp" on the environment in which Baby will spend his time before he comes to your home. Parents whose children will continue to live in an orphanage or in foster care in another country after they've already been "assigned" may find some of these tips useful, as may those whose children will move temporarily after birth to a domestic foster home and those whose children will need to spend time in a neonatal nursery. You may be able to send ahead some items that can help your child adapt to his family-to-be. Blankets, toys, pictures and posters, cassette tapes (nothing of heirloom quality or which would have irreplaceable family significance.) Even if this adoption does not come to be, what will you have lost by providing these inexpensive items? Other suggestions are re-active. These are some ways that you can adapt and retrofit your home's environment to include some of the familiar comforts of the place in which your baby lived before he came home to you.

OLFACTORY SENSATIONS

A baby's sense of smell is stimulated by a variety of odors in his environment. Every habitat, every workplace has an odor that is it's own. When you go back to your parents' home today, do you not notice upon entering that it "smells like home"? When you open your partner's closet, do you not smell him or her there? When you enter your workplace do you notice a familiar odor comprised of the product of that workplace (paints, toners, fabrics, papers, chemicals, the carpeting, the smoking or non-smoking and more.) Your favorite restaurant is permeated by, among other things, the cooking smells associated with the spices and other foods that draw you back there again and again. What distinctive odors are a part of your home--your baby's new home?

Observe or ask about your baby's previous environments. What colognes, soaps, powders, deodorants, detergents, fabric softeners, cleaning products, and cooking odors were a normal part of Baby's first environment? Might you and your partner use some of those earlier-known scents for a while in order to give your baby a sense of the familiar? Did incense scent the room? Use candles in your home. Sheets and blankets washed with the same detergent or tumbled with the same fabric softener strips as those used by a foster mom can make a new bed seem more like home. If you will be traveling to another country, you may wish to purchase local soaps or detergents to take home with you.

Whenever possible, ask to take home with you actual blankets or clothing with which the baby may be familiar. Frequently those adopting internationally will find that the foster parents caring lovingly for their Baby are so poor that they are hesitant about allowing the adopting parents to keep anything. Mary Hopkins-Best, in her new Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft (Perspectives Press, May, 1997) suggests planning ahead for this eventuality. Most foster parents and nursery supervisors are more than willing to trade old for new, she suggests.

Research seems to indicate that newborn babies quickly come to identify their birthmothers by smell--both through the phenomes generated by their bodies and the unique fragrance of their breast milk. If your adoption is an open one and your child's birthmother will have cared for him for a time, you may wish to ask your baby's birthmother to give you a tee shirt she has worn which you can wear (without washing her smell out of it) for several days at home as your baby gets used to you. If your child has spent several weeks with a single foster caregiver, you might make the same request of that person.

Therapist and open adoption expert Sharon Roszia observes for both parents and professionals that supporting and encouraging these kinds of interlinks in transitioning between birth and adoptive (or foster and adoptive) families can offer benefits to the adults, as well as the child, diminishing any possible feeling that one is "taking something away from" or "beholden to" the other and helping each feel that together they are a "team" working on behalf of a baby they both love.

VELVET TOUCH

Your baby's sense of touch quickly helps him respond to the shape of a trusted caretaker's body, the touch of her fingers, her rough or gentle handling, to a manner of being carried and cuddled (arms, backpack, frontpack, sling, rocking chair, hammock, etc.), to the softness of a particular mattress or the firmness of a sleeping mat, to the texture of clothing and bed coverings, or to the shape and firmness of a particular latex nipple or pacifier.

In some situations you may be able to send blankets and clothes, a supply of a particular brand of nursers and nipples to be used for the baby who will be yours. In other cases you may be called upon to adapt to the textures your baby has grown used to. Though you can't change your body shape, understanding that a baby may be missing the soft shape of his plump foster mother as he struggles to get comfortable against your flatter and more athletic frame will help you understand to what he's working to adapt.

Unfortunately in most international adoptions and with the domestic adoptions of a great many babies who are not newborns you are likely to find that agencies or institutions remain uninformed about the value of information about sensory expenses and transitional aids and processes and will not be willing to cooperate with your requests about transitional preparation. (We can always hope that within a few years Launching a Baby's Adoption will have changed all that.) Some don't want to offend orphanage workers or foster parents. You may even find some professionals apparently afraid of and resistant to your questions about the details of your baby's sensory and experiential life before adoption. If this is the case, all is far from lost! As parents your willingness to reach out for help if needed and, even more so, to be flexible and adaptable as you search for what seems to "feel" right between you and your baby is perhaps the most important element in building your attachment to one another. Where to turn? Why to a parent support group, of course, and its hundreds of families who have already "been there."

by Patricia Irwin Johnston, MS

Used with permission from:

Pat Johnston is an adoptive parent, an infertility and adoption educator and the author of several books, including Launching a Baby's Adoption, Adopting After Infertility, Taking Charge of Infertility, Understanding Infertility: Insights for Families and Friends, Adoption Is a Family Affair! What Relatives and Friends Must Know, and Perspectives on A Grafted Tree.

[nancygeoghegan]

Lor - you may want to contact Susan Ward of Hannah and her Mama - she adopted a little girl from Russia at an older age and Hannah is doing well now. Susan actually has a booklet that may be helpful. Her site is http://www.hannahandhermama.com and I am sure she would be willing to talk to you via email or even by phone.

You have been through so much already!!

When we adopted Nik from Romania - Lucy, he is from Focsani - we too had to turn around and go home without him because of paperwork problems - it was awful. We had a terrible adoption experience! Our agency just was not very good. Our second adoption was smooth sailing.

So, I have some empathy for what you probably are feeling now. I felt like it was my fault because I did the paperwork! It wasn't, it is the agencies fault and the homestudy agencies fault for not knowing our state law in PA.

You will be okay, we will help you.

Email me and let me know what state you are in and perhaps I can find a contact person for you who understands attachment disorder. nancygeoghegan@adoption.com

[lucyjoy]

Sorry, didn't mean to offend you. I must have misinterpretted your stress from having to leave your child there. Radio Shak(and other electronics stores) usually have door knob alarms for hotel travlers. We used those for a while. (only for kids who don't intentionally try to sneak out as they can be snuck around)
That way, you're sure to hear her if she comes out of her room. I use to be a light sleeper, but bonding with a new child can be very exhausting and I wanted to be sure I heard them if they needed something.

[dadfor2]

uh uh...not sure if your going to like this:

"keeping my other daughter as my top priorty."

bare with me for a minute. When a couple brings home their second child from the hospital, even though they love the first one, the new born child gets most of the attention. It just happens, its automatic. Its not that they dont love thier first, but heres the new baby.

The couple usually dont say, heres our new baby, but our first baby is our priorty. its just a thought

THe only reason im mentioning it, your new child is just that, your new child. IM sure you thought this out bringing a child with RAD in your home with your daughter. Im not sure how old your other daughter is, but she will have to make alot of adjustments. Your whole family will have to make alot of adjustments.

YOu got alot of work cut out for you, i think what lucyjoy was stating, is that be really prepared on what your getting yourself into. You can read all the books you want, but if you do not have the services in place by the time the child gets to you, you will be at a loss. I think Lucyjoys fear is that the child will be disrupted, and that will again be another issue for this child to deal with.

sorry, but i had to say something. Your other daughter will need to take second pace for a while, while this child gets comfortable. You can go out of your way to try to make her not feel this, but at times, there really isnt a choice.

AT bed time, your putting you daughter to sleep, your in her room reading a book, your new child starts tantruming, what are u going to do? chances are you will leave your daughter and go to the child that is tantruming. How does your daughter feel about that, night after night mommy leaving to go take care of the new child and she never gets the full bedtime story anymore. weather it be a tantrum, nightmare, these children need alot of care and alot of attachment time.

I guess what im saying is, please get your supports in place and really think this through, for your daughters sake. She is the one who will probably have more feelings around this then you guys.

this is just something to think about. I dont know all the details, but when i read, "keeping my other daughters priorty first" kinda got to me a little.

dadfor2

[lucyjoy]

"I think Lucyjoys fear is that the child will be disrupted, and that will again be another issue for this child to deal with. "

I've seen a lot of disruption because agencies don't properly prepare paople for the needs of children who have been institutionalized. And many moms have told me they knew from early on this was the wrong dicision for them but didn't know how to stop it once it had started. I have great passion for changing this so the kids don't suffer.

That being said, I obviously misinterpreted this mother's original statement and have no doubt she knows what she's doing. I just wanted to make that clear.

[dadfor2]

hi
im sorry if i seemed to mis interpert what was said by lucyjoy. However, maybe i should of just posted how i felt.

"my daughter is my top priorty." I have read so much on RAD. My child does have a dx of RAD, but im not sure if it is correct. He does have some attachment issues, which is very clear and he is a handful.

He has become aggressive over the last two weeks, and his tantrums are getting worse. Now, here we are. Maybe theDX of RAD was correct. Im not really sure. BUt he has become a handful. He had a tantrum from 11pm - 3am, on and off and for the life of me i couldnt figure out why. He woke up at 10:00 that night with a nightmare. When i came to him, he was scared and said he had a nightmare. I held him, which he likes, and then when he said he felt better, i got off his bed, and then whammo......the demands started and then the screaming and there was no turning back. The next day, i was going to take them swimming at a friends house, but halfway there, he just wouldnt stop screaming and swearing, so i brought him back. which of course he didnt like, and the tantrum continued.

I ended up bringing him to an emergency room. ON the way there, he had calmed down. While i sat with him waiting to see the doctor he asked "am i going to live here forever?" I nearly fell off the chair. Then i said "no, where just trying to figure out what makes you so mad"

then he said "i dont like when i get mad, i cant help it". I tell you folks, lately ive been thinking that this is not going to work. The social worker stated that he is comfortable with us, thats why he is acting like that (he never acted like that before...apparently, but that another story)

Clearly, he has no control over these tantrums. What has been happening, is im wondering how his 5 yr old brother is handling all this screaming. last week, i looked over at him, and he had his hands over his ears and he was rocking on the couch. Thats when i realized, that this might not work.

I guess i was having some conter-transference thing going on. I guess i was thinking about your daughter. picturing my 5 yr old sons face will leave a long impression in my mind. The thought of disrupting this adoption, is killing us.

im sorry if i put words in lucyjoys reply. I guess were just having a real hard time, and if this adoption isnt going to work, it will just kill us all, including his brother. We are planning on following through with everything, but i dont think we will legalize anything until he has more control. Write now, we can still get services for him due to he is DSS custody.

anyway, i guess thats it, were just going through a very emtional time, we have all our supports in place, but sometimes it doesnt seem enough.

dadfor2

[lucyjoy]

I do feel very passionate about avoiding situations that are set up for disruption, I just wanted to be sure this mom wasn't being singled out because I already made an assumption I shouldn't have made. She's done her homework and is very informed.

Sorry to hear about your son. I can remember having to restrain screaming kids in the late hours of the night and it's so overwhelming. Then your exhausted and have to get up and do it again. It's a tough battle, especially when you feel like you're meeting one kids need at the expense of another. Been there, too. It's a horrible feeling. What are you doing to take care of you while you're taking care of everyone else? You need to keep yourself filled up or you won't have anything left to give. If you haven't read the Nancy Thomas book or listened to the audio tapes yet, do. Trust me, at least it will help you reassure you that you really aren't crazy even though all tthat sleep depravation's probably making you feel that way about now.
And, as much as you don't like the idea, it is o'kay to decide the boys are safer apart then together.

Hope you have a better night.

[lorjie]

First of all Lucy - thank you for your support.
Dadfor - You have no idea what my family and I have been through the past six weeks. My other daughter is 8 and is also adopted (at 4 months old from China). My husband and I are college-educated and my business is in the educational field. We were given no choice with our new daughter. Our agency described her as "very well-adjusted, you will have no ATTACHMENT problems with her" Obviously someone was very poorly informed. We have had exactly two weeks to try to educate ourselves on the whole attachment problem. There is no way we have had time to interview therapists or anything. She has not been diagnosed with RAD, it is simply a guess on our part given some of her behavior patterns during the three weeks we did have her in Kaz. My husband is en route right now to bring her home and there are still no guarantees that he will come home on time with her - still experiencing major problems with our agency and paperwork. The reason I say we have no choice is that she is a lost, wounded little soul and we see alot of goodness and potential in her. It just needs to be brought out by us loving her and establishing a trustful relationship. My other daughter is a top priority for us because she was with us for the whole trip and witnessed the temper tantrums, hitting, total rejection of me, etc. She was deeply affected and is a changed person. So, if I have to split myself in two, I will. There is no way I am pushing her in the background. I am bright enough to know that we need to commit ourselves , especially me, to helping our new daughter adjust and fit in to our family and our lives. But my older daughter is just as important. If we truly felt we could not make a difference in our new daughter's life we would have turned around and given up. But we don't feel that way. We were just totally unprepared by our agency because believe me they told us on several occasions how darling our new child is and how she is the best behaved child, etc. I won't ramble on here but in just six short weeks our visions of a happy little family have changed. We owe it to my first daughter to include her and not push her away. Everyone has their own styles of parenting. We are hoping and praying that when she arrives home we will be able to tap into the right resources and support network for her. Enough said.

[lucyjoy]

"We were just totally unprepared by our agency because believe me they told us on several occasions how darling our new child is and how she is the best behaved child, etc."

This is what drives me absolutely crazy. the agencies know better then that, but they keep doing it.

If you have a chance and havent already, you may want to check out www.radzebra.org and www.nancythomasparenting.org
both have a lot of information and are run by people who have or are raising kids with rad(some international, some domestic)