Before adopting from Ethiopia we had read a lot about attachment, race, Ethiopian culture, etc, and we thought we were fairly well prepared for what was waiting for us. Besides, we had the previous experience of parenting a child…
Even with all that, we were surprised that everything turned out to be so different and that the many things we learned about didn’t work with Feromsa.
The first two weeks were very hard and we couldn’t find the way to control the situation and much less to to deeply connect with our child.
Even when Feromsa wasn’t rejecting us, he had continuous behavior problems. Temper tantrums, crying spells and aggression were a daily constant that were added to the normal things you can expect from a child his age. It was like fighting battle after battle but without having the right weapons, so we all ended up losing, us and him. That was when we realized that sometimes love and good intentions are not enough and that you need more knowledge, extra information, and a different approach to the problem.
So I started to do some research and read books to find another way to help my son become part of our family, so he stop sabotaging every try of integration.
One of the books I found that turned out to be very useful is titled Parenting the hurt child - Helping adoptive families heal and grow by Gregrory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky. It’s not the only one, but it’s the one that gave me the starting point to unravel the adoption mystery.
It’s not a book specific to international adoption, but adoption in general and even when it deals with “hurt” children, any adopted child has some kind of trauma behind. The older the child, the bigger the weight he carries on his back and the more difficult the adjustment to the new family can become. The book has the premise that every adopted child has a abandonment trauma, and sometimes neglect or even abuse.
Every change of environment, being it moving from a family to another or to an orphanage represents to the child a new abandonment and a new wound that creates more mistrust.
To compare it to an adult experience, let’s imagine that we fall deeply in love with a person that ends up cheating, hurting or leaving us. If we have a second relationship after that we will approach it with some kind of mistrust and it would be harder for us to trust again. If that person also hurt us we will probably approach any new boyfriend or girlfriend waiting for the moment in which he/she will cause pain to us. We will be ready for the deception, the pain and the abandonment, so we will try not to get too close. We will even provoke the situation of abandonment since it happened to us before and we are sure it will happen again and think that it’s better to take the first step, to take control; a destructive pattern has been established.
For a child it is similar, it is a survival mechanism, he creates distance, he tries to keep control over the situation and looks for the rejection because he is sure that another abandonment is coming.
About Feromsa, since he already went through at least three different caregivers, it is easy to notice that the forth time won’t be easy and that he will fight to keep control. All the time keeping his distance, controlling, making us angry, breaking the relationship. For these children, the traditional parenting doesn’t work, they are kids that have nothing to lose, they already lost everything. Discipline, time out, shouting or even try to speak with them doesn’t work.
It is after all a fight for control, to show him that it is us that have it and that he should trust in our judgement, that these adults know what they are doing and will take care of him.
This book has a list of “techniques”, to call them in some way, that work and those that don’t.
We decided to give it a try and I can tell you that in three days we accomplished what we couldn’t in three weeks.
A child that gave control back to us, that lowered his guard, that let us help him and is not fighting all the time. I couldn’t believe it.
I’m not saying that he overcame all his problems, but he got over the worse and he let us in, he gave us his hand so we can help him grow, heal, and love.
Probably not all the kids will have the same reaction, and it depends on the past experiences. Feromsa is a child that obviously hasn’t been abused and that only suffers from abandonment and maybe neglect, so that’s why it’s easier to gain trust, but I’m sure that had we continued with out initial approach, we still would be fighting or maybe looking for help from a professional.
But understanding the root of the problem made it easier to know what actions we should take and that gave us confidence and sped up the process.
That’s why it’s important for those who are going through a similar situation to calm down, have patience and look for the resources to understand the problem, to be in the child’s shoes. What he is doing is nothing personal, it’s not about us, he’ll do it with any parent, it is just the way he learned to relate to people according to his past experiences.
It feels great when the child opens the doors to his heart…

AliciA