Sometimes I forget how easy we have it with Nate. One of our blogger friends, Jim and Adrienne, adopted a 14 month boy from Russia last year. He was raised in an orphanage with little contact and multiple caregivers (as is usually the case in any country) and had struggles with attachment, trust, skin to skin contact and just plain love. I remember how aware Nate was at that age and that awareness continued to increase so I can only imagine the things that their son was going through. This couple had a recent post to describe the things that they experienced with their son and the frustration they've gone through in having to parent differently than most people do to gain their son's love and trust.
We did not experience a lot of these things with Nate because he was in foster care and had a great deal of one-on-one attention and care...and we got him at a younger age. I am grateful for that because it made things easier for both us and him after we brought him home.
You can check out J&A's post here: http://our-journey-to-parenthood.blogspot.com/
Please continue to keep them and other families in prayer as they strive to provide a loving home for orphaned kids.
UPDATE: Also wanted to note that chinese foster families are different from the U.S. There are several couples who live in a commune type environment (think college dorms/ suitemates). However, the kids are not shuffled from family to family..house to house like some are in the U.S. Nate was cared for by one couple and also had exposure to other "foster families" at the same time. Our adoption agent noted that they must have worked with him consistently and given him one-on-one attention because of his excellent coordination skills. That care and attention also made a difference in his attachment and how quickly he bonded to us.
2 comments:
It is extremely difficult to parent a child with RAD. I have a friend whose son has it and he was from the US foster care system. He is 7 now but when they met (not adopted) at 10 months that baby could not stand to be touched. Took her 8 months to get him used to her holding him and then she relinquished him back to the FC system (had to, out of state move) then she pursued adoption. Took another 18 months to complete that and he had 13 foster care placements during that time from 10 months to 3 years old.
Didn't mean to snag the blog.
It just kills me how kids are tossed from foster parent to foster parent. To me, that's not much different from an orphanage. Nate had one set of foster parents who had more physical contact with him and he didn't have the RAD issues...just grieved for about a month and so far, has been great with skin-to-skin contact, attachment, etc. I guess it all depends on what the foster care system is like.
Post a Comment