Any Happy Stories Post-International Adoption?

First off, congratulations on wanting to explore adoption, and on doing a lot of homework to prepare to adopt.Remember that horror stories are what people want to read about in the newspaper or watch on TV. Cases of severe RAD -- kids who try to stab their parents with a carving knife, molest their siblings, throw the cat out the window, lie outrageously, set fires and do other damage to property, and so on -- are far more "newsworthy" than stories about happy adoptive families parenting normal children. It is easy to conclude that most kids who are adopted have severe RAD, if you don't get a more balanced picture.The fact is that severe RAD is actually pretty rare. Yes, some adopted kids have it, and it can deplete a family's resources, strain parents' marriages, endanger other children in the home, and so on. But that is not the experience that most families have, whether they adopt domestically or internationally. I've probably met a couple of hundred adoptees, including my ex-husband and a first cousin of mine, and I've met only two that struck me as probably having a significant attachment disorder. One is, unfortunately, my cousin, adopted domestically at birth, by my very loving aunt and uncle, a nurse anesthetist and an anesthesiologist who tried their very best to help him. He never seemed to have a conscience as a child; now an adult, he has served time in federal prison for defrauding people, threatening a judge, and so on. He has self-medicated with alcohol and drugs, though he had access to all sorts of mental health experts. He neglected a wife and baby outrageously. And he has tried to con relatives into providing him with financial resources, even though he had a large trust fund set up for him before his parents died. The other individual, I'm not really sure about. At the suggestion of some other adoptive parents, I visited the beleaguered Mom, who was considering dissolution of her adoption, and brought her dinners. I met the internationally adopted preschool aged child, who seemed a little odd, but I wasn't sure if I was seeing attachment disorder, mild autism, or simply a child who was more of an introvert and loner than her (also adopted) brother. I am not a clinician -- just an adoptive Mom -- but I suspect that a mental health professional could have diagnosed her and developed a treatment program if pathology was present. She was not hurting anyone; she just wasn't relating very much to anyone. That's not usually how attachment disorder presents, but it could.I also met an internationally adopted child who might have seemed attachment disordered, but who was clearly a victim of a fairly severe fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. She had no impulse control and no ability to understand cause and effect; she also had severe learning disabilities. At the time she was adopted from Eastern Europe, there was very little understanding, among adoption professionals and parents, of the prevalence of prenatal exposure to alcohol in adopted children, and of the forms it can take. Some children with FASD have virtually no symptoms; others may have significant brain damage, causing very obvious intellectual deficits, abnormal behaviors, and so on. And FASD is not confined to countries of the former Soviet Union. Alcohol consumption by pregnant women occurs in most or all countries -- even in countries, such as Saudi Arabia, where the sale and use of alcohol is banned for religious reasons. FASD has been diagnosed in kids adopted from countries where most Americans assume that it does not occur, like Guatemala and South Korea. The diagnosis usually doesn't come until the child has been adopted and brought home to a new family, in international adoption, given that many countries don't recognize it as an issue. Also, many of the behaviors associated with FASD do not become obvious until the child is of school age. As an example, if a toddler tries to run into a busy street to retrieve a ball, that's pretty normal toddler behavior; however, if a ten year old does so, he/she may have a problem with impulse control and an understanding of cause and effect. Or if a three year old can't tell you how many Legos you will have if you start with five and give two to a friend, that's reasonable; however, by age seven or eight, if your child can't do so, a problem with quantitative reasoning may exist.Also, you need to understand that attachment disorders fall along a spectrum from almost non-existent to very severe. Many children come home from overseas, never having gotten enough attention to learn to appreciate hugs, to make eye contact, to rely on parents for comfort when they fall down, and so on. They may cringe a bit when you try to cuddle them, look away from you when speaking, or try to be stoic when they fall down. This type of attachment disorder is usually curable simply with time in the new family and a few simple strategies for promoting the desired behaviors. As an example, some families play mirror games with their young child, to get him/her to look at a parent, first in the mirror and then directly.Some children benefit from short periods of therapy to deal with behaviors such as lying outrageously, and wind up with fairly normal conduct. Other children need more extensive therapy. But only a few are so severely disordered that they cannot live in a family, and must go to a residential treatment facility for anywhere from a few months to several years, because they are a danger to themselves and others.Frankly, I haven't seen much evidence of even mild attachment issues inmost of the children the children I have met. Most of the adopted children with whom my daughter grew up were pretty normal, healthy kids who have done well in school, had good friends, and so on. My child, and the daughter of a friend of mine, were treated for depression in their early teens; my daughter took medication for a year or so, and the other child had hospitalizations and an eating disorder. But we know a lot of non-adopted kids who have these challenges as well. My daughter can recount stories of her non-adopted friends, many of them Chinese, who were cutters, were in therapy, took medication for anxiety and depression, and so on. It's something that "goes around", nowadays, among adolescents, and especially among adolescents who are in highly competitive academic programs. I have also met one adopted child, now a young adult, who is in the process of becoming transgender. Born female, but never very comfortable with girly things, he now lives as a handsome young Asian male; he may start hormone therapy soon, and hopes to have surgery in a few years.. While he had some depression before he figured out his true gender identity, he seems extremely happy with his decision to become trans. Thankfully, his family is extremely supportive.But frankly, if you met my daughter, you'd never know that she struggled with depression briefly. She's attractive and personable. She's rarely ill. She does well in school. She is very career-oriented, and actually took a year off to work full-time and live on her own, to increase her maturity and prove to herself that she could be independent. She has done her own taxes, learned how to select a health insurance plan, and studied apartment leases with great care. She chooses friends well. She has been in a relationship with a young man from another country for almost two years. She loves animals, and is especially good with horses and dogs. I believe that she has some deep seated anger at her birthparents, but she is not ready to address it; hopefully, someday, she will explore her feelings with a good therapist. However, she does surprisingly well in life, and we have a good relationship.And if you met most of the adopted kids I know, you wouldn't be able to distinguish them from their non-adopted friends. They have age-appropriate behaviors, love their parents, attend school with no more than the usual gripes about homework, hang out with friends, occasionally get their parents a little angry, listen to pop music, belong to clubs, volunteer, learn to drive at some point, and much more. Some have visited their birth countries, with their parents, and seen the orphanages where they lived.All in all, it takes a certain amount of faith to decide to have a biological child, as you never know whether he/she will inherit your Dad's artistic talents, your husband's Mom's business acumen, your great-aunt's mental illness, or your husband's great-uncle's asthma. It takes a slightly bigger leap of faith to adopt a child whose history may be almost totally unknown to you, putting your trust in strangers in a foreign country to refer you a child that you can parent. But in either case, if you really want a child, you make that leap -- after some careful study of the worst case scenarios, as well as of the best case ones. And, lo and behold! It's amazing how often you get the child that is absolutely perfect for your family.Sharon