I’ve read many, many blogs commenting the disturbing news about the adoptive mother of a Russian child that decided to return the boy to his native country because “she not longer wanted to parent him”.  I’m not going to write about this special case, but about how this is probably the result of a broken system, the adoption system.
I experience everyday the serious problems the adoption system has and I’m afraid that many more kids will continue to suffer from this. Adoption is not only a solution to infertility or to the desire of becoming a parent. It is a way to provide a child with a PERMANENT family, not the only way, probably not the best way, just one way.
All the process an adoptive parent has to go through has to be rethought. Why?  Simply because the emphasis has to be someplace else than where it is now. It’s not about how big is your bank account, how great and lovely person you are or how much you want to become a parent, but about how prepared you are to handle an adopted child. All adopted children are “special needs children”, no matter how old are they and where they come from and nobody talks about that with the prospective adoptive parents. You need to know what you are getting into before committing to adopt a child, and adoption agencies should talk about that with anyone wishing to adopt. It’s more complex than what parents are led to believe and you better be ready because your child is stuck with you and you with him for the rest of your lives. And the older the child gets, the bigger the problems that can surface. Every parent of a child knows that as time goes by the challenges a child puts you through become more and more difficult. When he’s a baby maybe it is just about get him to sleep the whole night, then it’s about discipline or maybe eating the right food, but the older the child gets, the bigger the problems. And when the “little one” hits adolescence the whole storm breaks loose. Imagine adding to the regular stuff any kid goes through the trauma of abandonment and adoption, the identity crisis heightened by cultural and racial issues.
The adoption system is seriously flawed, before and after adoption. The bad thing is that many parents realize that after the fact, when the damage to the child is already done.
I can only speak from my experience but it really surprised me how superficial was the adoption process. It was all about having the means and collecting papers, but very little about the responsibilities of an adoptive parent and the difficulties that will come once the child is home. I was told about attachment issues, but not about adoption trauma. Nobody discussed with me anything about preserving the child’s culture. Nothing about race and the challenges of being a transracial family. Nothing about RAD or that many older children have suffered abuse and may have serious psychological issues. And if I wasn’t told any of this, probably most adoptive parents aren’t told either. So, they bring the child home and… surprise!
Why aren’t we told? Because this will put a stop to many adoptions. 
And then comes post-adoption when you are in the middle of the chaos and you have to figure out all by yourself how to make things right, how to keep your sanity and help your new child. Oh boy, you are up for another surprise… because simply the adoption system won’t be by your child’s side. It’s really hard to navigate the system and to try to get some help or even answers to your questions. The society is not ready to deal with internationally adopted children, nobody knows what to do with them, even “specialists”. The doctors are nor ready, the school is not ready, the legal system is not ready.
I posted about the episode when we went to get our children’s passports (we are still fighting that one…), but believe me, that was just one, I have many, many more. 
Without getting into much detail, I will talk about something that happenened not so long ago to let others know that they are not alone, that the society is not prepared to handle these children and that parents need to be ready for the challenges ahead. 
Last year we contacted our local Early Intervention Program to ask for an evaluation of our child. They performed some tests and after that we had a meeting with them to discuss the results. Even when the evaluation showed some problems, they decided not to provide us with their service simply because they didn’t know what to do. So, they recommended to wait and see how things evolved and maybe perform another test “in a year”. And in the meantime what? Why not help or at least provide us as parents with some advice so we can help our children? They just considered that even with such an abnormal background of abandonment and institutionalization, and coming from a completely different culture they can’t help us. Sorry guys, you are on your own. We consulted with the pediatrician, who was quite surprised by the decision of the Early Intervention Program, and maybe didn’t completely believe us, but anyway he provided us with some names and contact information of other private specialists that could evaluate our child. So we decided to give it a try, but this time whatever we choose to do, it was going to be out of our pockets, since our health insurance didn’t recognize this professionals as part of their provider’s network.
There we went to get another evaluation, as if we didn’t already know already what was going to happen. We had two interviews with them and they were not cheap.
The results confirmed the first evaluation.
Anyway if we want some kind of help from them, we will have to pay it ourselves at a premium price. You maybe wondering if we started some therapy.
Well, no. Why? Because I have my serious doubts about these “experts”.
We saw big problems during the evaluation, and when they sent us the final “report”, it confirmed us that these people know very little about international adoption, multicultural families, and culture from other parts of the world in general. American doctors are not used to see other things than what they have studied in the books and are not very open to other cultures. So, how can they evaluate a black Ethiopian child living in a white Argentinean American family?
The evaluation was conducted in English with us translating into Spanish since that’s the main language spoken at home. Much of the test are prepared for American children born into this culture so they are useless in any children from any other culture. The tests assume that the child being evaluated has already incorporated all the aspects of American culture, such as certain “iconography”.
In the report they mostly wrote down what we told them, which is useless, and certain observations that show that they had no clue. They ignored certain aspects of Ethiopian culture to the point of labeling certain cultural behaviors as pathologies. Since the “specialists” are really so bad, but they are charging us as if they were the best, who’s going to help us?
Going back to basics… ourselves.
Yes, I have more knowledge already on the matter than any “specialist” and will keep working at home with my child much better that what the system can provide me. Fortunately I don’t work so I have plenty of quantity time with my children and that seems to be helping them a lot. We still have a second appointment with the Early Intervention Program, but I don’t expect much from them.
I guess I will keep on collecting horror stories from the system….
Adoptive parents, please be aware of all of this, trust your instincts and beware of the so called professionals. Please read this if you want to see how often the “system” doesn’t care or doesn’t know what to do with adopted children. 
Adopted children can live a happy life, but those taking care of them should be well informed, and they should get access to good care to overcome their problems.

AliciA