Adoption Dissolution

My heart goes out to you, but you need to realize that you are doing the right thing for everyone involved. As I'm sure you've been told, there is no cure for attachment disorder and these children will destroy those around them. I'm in the process of adopting (hopefully internationally and a baby) but a therapist friend of mine is adamant that if the child has reactive attachment disorder there is nothing that can be done and the adoption should be terminated.

God bless you and your family. I wish you peace and healing.

Posted by: PJJ at 06/21/2008 04:58 PM

Jan: It has been a long time since your post here on Jan 2007. I will like to know what happened to you and your son. My case is similar to yours except that we are still trying to work to help with our daughter but I understand that making the decision that you made most be very hard.

Our family is in a very difficult situation to and wwe are facing similar issues: we became foster parents when our now adopted daughter was 3.11 years old. We were not informed of the potential effects that her early abuse and neglect would have in our daughter, neither that our daughter had lived with 6 different families before coming to live with us. Now she is 11.

she has been diagnosed with RAD, ODD, Depression, PTSS, borderline personality and enuresis. She is also cutting and we had found knives and scissors in her room. We cleaned and put everything away a while ago but she is getting them from somewhere else. It has been very hard. She cut herself badly and required 4 stiches. Next day she took the stiches off by herself. The DCF is now helping. For many years we could not get the appropriate help until we got a diagnoses on our own.

We are not contemplating dissolution yet, but today I found out about it in a post here about someone in Illinois. I will like to know if this is possible in case that we have to do it if residential treatment fails and she gets more violent.

Our life with her has become umbearable since she verbally abuses us constantly. Our home is so crazy with her behavior. She steals and lies like nothing. SHe is 11 but very strong/ 160 pounds and 5.6"".

We love our daughter but certaingly love has not been enough to help her heal. Nobody understand what we go through every day. We do not have friends anymore. It is like we are alone going through this very hard times.

She has always have enuresis and she wets everywhere; diapers are not enough. She has pee on my pillow, carpet, furniture, and every where. She refuses to do chores and there is no discipline that can make her do it. Her soiled clothes are everywhere, same when she gets her period, she refuses to use a S. napktkin so is blood everywhere. She also plays with feces and smears feces around the bathtub. She lies all the time and nothing that she says is ever the truth. Our home has become a battle zone. SHe tell us that she loves chaos and wierd. Her hatred is almost always against me but my husband has also experienced. Recently,she started cutting herself. We are concerned for her safety and for ours.We lock ourselves at night but she can pick the locks.

If anyone has been where we are, I sure will appreciate you input.We need a good residential treatment where she can get the help that she need in a controlled and safe environment. THe good ones around are more that 40K per year.

Dissolution seems to be a very controversial issue with many people blaming the adoptive parents for the situation. Some people posting here do not even know or acknowledge that a family facing dissolution could had already tried everything to help the child and that their own lives may be in danger by the child's increased violence. Most of the time the DCF does not share the child's real story with the ptotential adoptive parents, this was our case. The parents should also be told of the potential effects of multiple placements. I understand that we love her and that we had done our very best to help her for the last 8 years but her problems are beyond what we can safely and efectively deal with.

In addition, We are older and not so strong anymore. We are afraid that we could be casualties of these infortunate circumstances. we thought that we could change her with love but for anyone working with RAD this is not true at all. We are wiser and more experience. At 65 my husband does not have time left for 10/20 years of therapy. We are so lost on what to do. Thanks

Posted by: motheroftwo at 06/13/2008 12:02 AM

I'm sorry for your situation and hope you are able to find a solution that works for you and family. My heart goes out to you and to your son. I hope he can heal with another family.

Posted by: Crick at 01/17/2007 07:00 AM

It's Jan here. I just re-read my entry and noticed a big mistake. In the first paragraph, it should read that Tate's 4 year old sister was raped by the birth FATHER, NOT the birth mother.

Posted by: Jan at 01/15/2007 08:38 AM

I'm with you. My husband and I are in the process of terminating the adoption of our 11 year old son, whom we have loved and cared for since he was 6 months old. We were his FIFTH home by age 6 months, because we are white and he is black, and the Illinois DCFS wouldn't let a white family foster him until they ran out of black families. He already had a classic reactive attachment disorder by the time we brought him into our family, but we sure didn't know a thing about such a syndrome. We'd never heard of it, and nobody at DCFS bothered to mention it to us (of course). We thought the reason he cried constantly and fought taking a bottle was because we were doing something wrong, although all of our friends and family assured us that we weren't. It wasn't until the day of adoption 3 years late, AFTER we had signed all the adoption papers, that we then read that the baby's birth mother had used crack and alcohol during pregnancy, that his birth father had RAPED the 4 year old sister repeatedly while the mother did nothing, and that it's possible our baby was physically abused by the birth father. By the way, the birth father has been in and out of prison 6 times and recently died in jail when he swallowed a bag of cocaine he was smuggling, and it burst in his throat.

I have spent years and years reading up on RAD and FAS/E, as well as attended seminars by Dan Hughes, Dr. Ira Chasnoff, and other experts. Our son fits the classic mold, unfortunately, and his is even an extreme case because he is violent to the point that we have had to call the police to come over and intervene. Do you know how embarrassing it is to have the police here in broad daylight with all the nosy neighbors gathered outside to ridicule and berate us for calling the police on an 11 year old?

We have done everything humanly possible to help ourosn. Counseling (he refuses to cooperate). Hospitalization (he refuses to takes his meds and ends up being violent to the point we have no other choice). Even specialized foster care (we hired a top notch to take DCFS to court and force them to put our son in specialized foster care without taking custody from us). Nothing has helped. He is getting worse and worse each day. He sets a horrible example for our 9 year old son whom we also adopted after being his foster parents when he was a baby. (The younger son also has FAS/E but not so much RAD, and he is much happier and easier to raise, as long as he is not around the 11 year old).

Our 11 year old's psychiatrist has said he exhibits sociopathic tendencies, which we see more and more of each day. He truly doesn't seem to have feelings for anyone other than himself. At the very least, he is narcissistic. At worst, he could be a sociopath. But for certain, he is a wonderful, talented, creative, handsome, innocent human being who can't help the facts surrounding his birth history and early infancy. This is what breaks my heart. On those "good" moments, I think "Oh, we can stay together. We can do this." But then in, in a nano-second, if he doesn't get his way, he will lunge for our throats or crack us in the back with a folding chair or, worse yet, go after his younger brother in order to hurt us even more.

We will meet with our attorney this week, Wed., 1/17, to discuss getting paperwork started to rescind our 11 year old son's adoption. We are facing the fight of the century with DCFS, who will most certainly rake us through the coals as being quitters, deadbeats, and horrible parents to be giving us our child. They have threatened to have us arrested and charged with criminal child abandonment and to take our younger son from us if we go through with our plans. Our attorney is top notch and has successfully represented several Illinois families in similar cases, and she is not afraid to go up against DCFS.

What we need now is support, prayer, and encouragement that we are not the world's worst scumbags for doing this. I have cried so much the last few months, I can't believe there are any tears left. I cry because I feel SO guilty for giving up on my son, and I cry because I'm mad at DCFS for not telling us the truth before we adopted, and I cry because I don't know what will happen to him. Will he go to a bad home? Will he go to residential, where he may be hurt? Will he think he is unloved and unlovable? Because he isn't; he is loved enormously, with all our hearts. Will he end up in jail and/or on drugs? (Although this could happen even if we all stayed together.)

My heart is with all of you, and I feel sure that yours will be with me, too. You know, there are those among our "friends" and church family who do not support us and who think we are cruel for giving up custody of our son. They are few in number, thank God, but they have very big mouths and it's hard to ignore them. Sometimes, I think they're right.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for this website. Thanks for all us supporting each other. :)

Posted by: Jan at 01/15/2007 08:24 AM