CW's take on pre-adoptive homes

Reading a file - no matter how detailed - is no substitute for living with a child 24/7. Especially when the pre-adoptive parents have no other children, the reality of what it takes to parent a child can be a shock. Since your FS is a toddler (terrible 2's) it may well be that he is "tried out" in several homes and the pre-adoptive parents then decide that they want infants only!I was originally open to 0-6 years, but after fostering a six-month-old baby for a week I revised my forms to read 2-5 years and ultimately adopted a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. I was lucky I could foster first and discovered that babies were not for me.

I think kids are moved from pre-adopt homes because we want children so badly, we are willing to accept a lot on paper. Bad behaviors, exposures, histories, etc. Once the child is in our home, we learn QUICKLY that maybe we can't handle what we thought we could. That said, I am the happy adoptive mom of a child with a RAD dx and I know how tough it could be. Glad to be educated :)

Ditto this. Prospective adoptive parents (IME) are so eager to get their forever kiddos that they are willing to overlook A LOT on paper because "how bad could it really be?" They just have no idea, and I'm not sure there is blame to place anywhere. I've also known prospective adoptive parents who have bio kids or who have adopted infants, and they want to adopt a 5 or 7 or 11 year old, and then are upset that it's not the same as "almost immediate" bonding to an infant/very young toddler. I know at least one family who was upset enough to disrupt, but the others definitely thought about it, and questioned whether or not they should continue to parent.

I get what you're saying. I agree that it is completely different when you live with a child just like it's completely different when you give birth. It can be overwhelming but you make adjustments and make it work. This is not a foster home, this is an adoptive home. It should not be a "rent-a-kid" situation. What happens when you adopt internationally? You don't get the opportunity to "try out" your child, and there is much less information given about the child then there is with domestic adoptions. Every additional home that a child lives in leaves permanent damage to the child. It is a shame that this happens so frequently. Yes, a foster home is completely different than an adoptive home. It is great that you knew what age worked for your family before you committed to an adoptive placement.

Keltic from what you have posted I think our thoughts on the matter are very similiar. My children were hard. Heck they were theraputic level when they came and they were only 7,3 and 11m. Do I think that they are theraputic? No. They just need a bit more then the average child and we had to do a lot of educating of ourselves. We never thought of disrupting. I agree that there isn't enough training (real experience training) for adoptive parents. There are so many unrealistic expectations. I "teach" for our agency as a parent advisor during their training sessions. Some of the questions I recieve are rediculous!! I don't believe the statement "there isn't ever a stupid question." YES THERE IS!!! I find that families are more interested in how much subsity, insurance or if certain children can share rooms. How am I suppose to tell you if your bio child will be ok with sharing a room? I can't tell you if your home is large enough. I am not going to live there!!!We are an open book as far as our adoptions go. We give real information on what it is like to parent our children. We are dealing with FASD, PTSD, RAD, ADHD and PTSD. (all fairly common with children in foster care) So we do have some great advice. We can't make people want to get educated. All we can hope for is that they will "hear" us when we do speak of the realities. Both the good and the bad. I do believe we can blame someone. It isn't the agencies or the children. It is the adoptive parents that haven't done enough research. Both about themselves or the possible situations that come from adoption. Some also in the back of their minds think that adoption through foster care has a trial period. I don't care if it does in the states eyes it is wrong. No child should have to get bounced around because they didn't "fit"

To the OPs question from our experience and information: it happens ALL THE TIME! Our approach has always been along the lines of "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit" (as my DD says! :evilgrin: ). This is NOT the approach most adoptive parents, apparently, take. Our STBAS came to us from a broken placement (the put in their notice the day after christmas, nice! :grr: )...his GAL told us that she has THREE other cases currently in the same situation. DHS is refusing to allow us to fast track finalization "just in case" (yes, just in case we CHANGE OUR MINDS!!!) because they have had a rash of disruptions post finalization. Parenting other peoples kids is hard (H.A.R.D!!)...older kids take time to bond, they come with all sorts of baggage and we (the APs) have to deal with lots of stuff that doesn't feel good. But kids aren't or shouldn't be placed in a "try before your buy" situation. It freaking PI$$ES ME OFF!!! I have been very interestedly reading other's take on this and feel better that I'm not alone in feeling this way. But what can you do??

The stats on this and other sites show that about 1 in 5 adoptive placements disrupt, and that the frequency is generally correlated with the child's age (lower age = lower disruption rate). I find this number staggeringly high, and also believe that the system is as much to blame as the pre-adoptive parents. In our case, we have visited with our kids over 25 times in the last two months and had several overnights, some multiple, at home. We talk with the kids on the phone, attended TPR hearings, scheduled appointments, etc. Why don't the agencies mandate visits for bonding and smooth transition prior to placement? I'd like to see the numbers on disruptions based on pre-placement visit time. My guess is there are far fewer disruptions when pre-adoptive families get to know the kids well before they are moved from their current foster home.On edit, I'd like to add that we would visit far more often if it weren't a 200 mile round trip. We've seen the kids as much as possible, and thankfully they move in next weekend!

In England the figures are 1 in 3 adoptions disrupt- I think thats both before and after the adoption order. It's an incredibly high figure, very upsettingBut, I don't place all blame on the adoptive parents. Disruption isn't usually a decision taken without many tears, and huge heartache and guilt. Yes, there are some people out there like o2b30again said, who are just disgusting, BUT most are not. Most of the disruptions I know of occured after the parents experienced behavior that was beyond their ability to cope with at the time. They were recently placed, overwhelmed by this, experiencing post adoption depression in a lot of cases - and many failed to get the help they needed from Social Services to manage their childs behavior and care for themselves until it was too late.My oldest daughters adoption disrupted. Her parents should never have been able to even try - they were misled by SW's with their heads in the sand, who omitted much information from them. Maybe some are lucky enough to see a file, I, and my daughters former parents, and nearly all the other couples who disrupted, got what they were told about. They wouldn't have been able to see the file, even after finalization, not without a huge fight at least. Often parents are informed they cannot see the file because it contains confidential information about the biological family/parents, and it would break their privacy rights if the file were seen. So the adoptive parents do not ever find out a huge amount of information. And my daughter was placed in a home that would not be able to cope with her. Emotionally traumatized children can display behavior beyond what parents can cope with, especially if they did not know the child displayed this behavior, or were actively lied to and told they did not. What new father can be expected to cope with near constant either sexual advances or violence towards him? After not being told about it, and after saying they could not cope with a child like that!Now, I would like to see more understanding from prospective adopters that love is very rare at first sight, and most new parents do not love their children for a long while. That attachment takes time, and 'fake it till you make it' are the key words. It took me a long time to say I loved my Gem. But many new parents beat themselves up and feel great upset and guilt that they feel ambivalance or even dislike towards their longed for child. ITS NORMAL! Not a reaason IMO on its own to disrupt, BUT the help needs to be in place for new families overwhelmed by a reality that I don't think it is possible to fully prepare for. You cannot fully understand unless you have lived it.So whilst there are some very selfish, stupid people out there, I don't think most people who disrupt fit that description. We could reduce the disruption rate by providing more post adoption support of good quality in the immediate weeks and months following placement. A lot of people i know would have been to carry on if they had had the support to do so. I do not blame any parent in such a situation. It's a tragedy for both the parents and of course the child, and going around vilifying people does no good. JMO

I agree something has to be done to prevent this. More support after adoption is a great idea. Maybe there also needs to be something done with the matching process also. Not really sure how it works but obviously there is something very wrong here if so many homes are disrupting. Adoptive parents must be more informed not only about what the child's issues are, but also about what the child NEEDS to heal and flourish in their new home. My first placement went to an adoptive family who didn't have a clue what it was like to parent a hurt child, they just wanted a child! The kids have suffered immensely for it. So sad.

DH and I have not gone through the MAPP classes yet (hopefully June!). After an information meeting last month, we stayed behind to talk to the SW who ran the meeting. I wanted to get her take on the needs of our county, without having the stupid questions every three seconds. I knew there would be one or two, but I was a little dismayed to see how many different ways people could ask the question "when can I adopt a baby?" or "what happens if we don't like the kids?". In my mind I cannot conceive of sitting through three months of training and not KNOWING WHAT FOSTER CARE MEANS....or that the kids are ALL traumatized to some extent! So, my question to all of you is: Do the social workers do enough in the training to let people know that very hurt, traumatized children are the norm? I get that some kids have very hard diagnoses, and that people can get in over their heads...but is there no training on this? Is it not explicitly stated that children from foster care 1) are not pets from the pound you can pick and choose? and 2) that foster kids will not feel indebted to them, and therefore grateful for a home? I am not trying to be flippant. It's just appalling and disturbing that people can sit through all that training, and still treat foster kids like clothes they can try on and return when they don't get the right "fit". :grr:

When I got my training I feel they were very clear on the needs of foster chldren. A few participants opted out after a few meetings. In fact I was starting to wonder whether I could handle the kids and have been surprised at how normal the kids I have had have been. Even my first who the caseworker described as very difficult and was moved to a behavioral placement was not as bad as I had expected from class! In fact if I had been in this for adoption only I would have dropped out. As it is I am foster/adopt with the primary plan of fostering only but wanting to be prepared to adopt if a child in my care became available for adoption. That said, I have personally lived through infertility treatments and the absolute desperation to be somebody's mother. For many of us, the desire to be a parent is not just a want it is a need and there was a time I would have done anything to be a parent. It use to make me so angry to read stories of abused kids or parents with more kids than they could support when there I was desperate to parent and could not. I knew at that point foster care or adoption was not for me because I was simply too desperate to be rational and would not have been able to say no to any child I was offered---I had to be somebodies mother. After so many miscarriages I was not even able to decorate my son's nursery until two weeks before he was born and only then because my sisters came and did it with me (forcing me to do it). Why---because I could not bear to have it all taken away one more time. Unless you have been there it is hard to understand the desperation of infertility and the need to have a baby.

In my experience, adoptive parents don’t just bail when the going gets tough. We adopted internationally, and are currently a foster-adopt home. We know a lot of other families who have adopted, as well as a number of prospective adoptive parents. I have never encountered what you're describing as this flippant "let's try them on for size, and then send them back if they don't fit" attitude. I do know a family that disrupted an adoption several years ago, and it was not a decision that they made lightly. They still feel tremendous guilt and sadness. But it was a decision that they had to make for the safety of their other children. I would agree that States and agencies don’t educate adoptive parents enough about attachment and how to parent traumatized children. And for the most part there is ZERO post-adoption support. When we asked our agency for support after we adopted our now 5-year old DD from Guatemala, they basically told us that their involvement ended when the adoption was finalized. We consulted with an attachment therapist, and eventually worked through it. But there were days, when DD’s grief and rage was directed at me, that I just wanted to get in my car and just keep driving.

Wow! I had no idea there were that many disruptions. While we haven't been matched yet as a foster-to-adopt home, I feel confident in our private agency's program. That is part of the reason I went with a private agency versus the county although I may be waiting longer for a placement. They do a great job of educating prospective parents in all the issues we may face. Yes, it seemed like the worst case scenarios were presented - almost as a scare tactic, but I think it gave us an idea of the brokenness the children experience. Our agency also has a very thorough post-adoptive support system in place. My caseworker is very honest when we inquire about children. She will tell me up front - no, these aren't the kids for you. She knows which issues we can support and which we are not prepared for. In her 15 plus years, she has only had 2 disruptions in her agency.

Kelltic, something I don't understand about this. You said:Yet that is the decision you have made regarding every child who is placed in your home, is it not?

No it isn't. I am not an adoptive home.