[blparent] new parents with some questions

[Lynn Zelvin]

Hi,

You have a lot on your hands. And what you need are other adoptive 
parents of older kids and the relevant resources.  Any advice re your 
son as a blind child that you get here is well intentioned 
and  appropriate for blind kids raised from birth but your sons 
issues will have  virtually nothing to do with blindness and 
everything to do with  his early abandonment,  possible other 
difficult experiences he may have had in his young life, orphanage 
living, adoption as an older child, the move to a different culture 
with different language, food, smells and everything else that goes 
with it, and potential other developmental issues. You will most 
certainly be dealing with attachment issues and you need to deal with 
them. this is normal - a kid who has nobody to attach to will not 
just attach to you. But these issues must be addressed and addressed 
up front. You will most certainly hear the term Reactive Attachment 
Disorder or Rad thrown around and it is way too soon to know if your 
son will have such a problem or if so, how severe, but you should be 
proactive about addressing these issues - all adoptive parents of 
older kids need to be. Whatever you do, this is not the time to try 
to stop your son from rocking or other behaviors or to try to potty 
train him.  It is a time for learning how to help him attach to you 
and for getting whatever testing and evaluations will be needed to 
properly address his needs in the future.

You need lots of help and support and you need it now.

What I know does not come from direct experience. I am mother to 
daughters adopted as late teenagers from the US foster system but I 
know your son's story from ten years of being on various adoption 
email lists, listening to other parents with adopted kids of all ages 
from all places, reading everything I could get my hands on, reading 
blogs by adoptive parents of all sorts and whatever other research I 
could do. I did this because I was contemplating different forms of 
adoption and had about a half dozen kids I pursued adoption of prior 
to my current path where I researched everything I could for their 
specific needs. Feel free to write me more off list. But I am hoping 
you will  use the resources I'm about to list to find other parents 
who can help you lots more. I do know of one blindparent who adopted 
a blind child from India and if you write me off list I will pass 
that info along also.  Note that when the term Older Child is used, 
it often doesn't really mean kids like mine but any kid adopted after 
about age two.


Here are the things you need to address, not necessarily in any 
logical order but as they come to mine.

1. You need to find out if the agency you used has any post adoption 
support services and utilize them all.

2. You need to connect with education resources in your community. 
Here is where others would know more than I do - I am not sure what 
age early intervention services stop and special education services 
start . But if early intervention services are available you need to 
make use of them. These services are often not geared towards older 
adopted kids especially adopted from overseas and the guidance of 
people who have that particular experience will be very important. An 
example of a relevant issue - It is not clear what your son's speech 
issues are. He may have receptive language and just not be verbal. He 
might even have been able to speak but with nobody listening to him 
just didn't do it enough for anyone to know. But that was in a 
different language. Apparently, kids, even kids twice your son's age, 
even kids who speak fluently all the time, begin to lose their native 
language very quickly after being placed in an environment where that 
language is not spoken. And before they can acquire a new language. 
Yes, it is very possible to have an intelligent ten year old who was 
speaking, and even reading, and writing in another language come here 
and fairly quickly be reduced to no language ability other than the 
beginnings of English. They are shuffled into ESL programs while the 
assumption with ESL is that it really is a second language instead of 
what will become the child's only language as the first was lost. So 
your son may be in a situation where he did have receptive language 
and now has nothing. Which is different than a five year old 
who  hasn't developed receptive language. But to the speech therapist 
or other specialist who only sees kids raised from birth by the 
parents they are now with, the two will look the same. I have a vague 
recollection of a parent  on one list who is herself a speech 
therapist having no idea how to evaluate the language issues of a 
newly adopted child, I believe a bit older than yours.


3. Perhaps most important, you need contact with the right adoptive 
parents. The lists I am including below may or may not  be the 
perfect fit, I no longer am on or connected to the country specific 
or age specific lists.  but they will have loads of parents on them 
with kids who have similar profiles to yours who can point you in the 
right direction. They are the ones who can tell you what worked and 
what didn't when it came to education, testing, medical services, 
etc. For all the yahoogroup lists, send a blank message to the given 
address and if the address doesn't work, let me know as these are 
lists I'm on currently and can figure out what to do.

Older child adoption list
older-child-subscribe at yahoogroups.com

The following is  a very active adoption parenting list addressing 
issues one topic at a time:. they archive the list in some way that 
people can read through the topics. I have never seen them because 
they are barricaded by the Yahoo use of captcha - those graphical 
things you have to copy to get in, but your wife can certainly take a 
look. Or just join and post the same thing you posted here but make 
sure you put OT for off-topic in the subject line
adoptionparenting-subscribe at yahoogroups.com

a small list for people adopting blind kids which is very low traffic 
but where I have definitely seen blind parents with adopted toddlers 
and kids with issues such as yours  -
adoptedblindkids-subscribe at yahoogroups.com

the list that I think will be most helpful and important is the Daily 
Parenting Reflections list. It is not specifically about adoption but 
most of the parents are adoptive parents and some of kids with your 
son's profile. It is about parenting traumatized kids and that  is 
exactly what your son is and exactly what he is going through and the 
reason for the behaviors you are seeing. I don't mean that I know if 
he experienced abuse or not, but all the things you know your son has 
lived through in his young life and probably more you don't know 
about are traumatizing and had effects especially during his early 
development.If you do nothing else, get on this list. Both you and 
your wife. If you are not religious, and not a Christian, as I am 
not, you may find more religious content than some other lists but 
that is just because that is where some of the parents are coming 
from and doesn't affect your ability to use this list. you won't find 
*any* negative stuff on the list, at least I haven't yet. The list is 
connected with a loving  approach to parenting traumatized kids 
called BCLC for "Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control". Because the 
more traditional approaches to dealing with attachment issues  stress 
things like control and consequences because just loving kids isn't 
enough.   Read that book also. Whatever approach you take toward 
dealing with your son's issues, this will not hurt and you will get 
really really good support.
DailyParentingReflections-subscribe at yahoogroups.com
There is a book that describes BCLC that I have a scanned copy of but 
have yet to upload to bookshare because it needs too much clean-up - 
mostly that there are columns of information that compare the 
traditional approach to the BCLC approach which are mangled and thus 
could lead to serious misunderstanding. But I can share it with you 
if you write me. The examples are more important than the mangled 
parts if you are prepared for what to read and what to skip or sift 
through. In fact, I have a collection of print books on various 
related topics that I bought and paid someone to scan for me. Some of 
the books I've uploaded to bookshare and some are on my computer 
ready for uploading when I get to them in my ever-growing to-do list 
so I'lll list the important ones below and if you don't see them on 
bookshare, ask me about them. And if you aren't a bookshare member 
yet, join now. some of the books I'm listing are not one's I have but 
which someone else submitted to bookshare. it is absolutely the best 
resource for reading material on this subject right now. NLS doesn't 
have these things. If you want the print books to purchase or borrow 
for your wife, let me  know and we'll see what we can work out and 
save you the cost  - some were expensive books.
the web site for the source of all of this is:
http://www.postinstitute.com/
I have not tried the videos so can't tell you if there are access 
issues but I don't think so.  And others I know recommend  them.
They also have a network of coaches trained in BCLC you can pay to 
work with if you get stuck but chances are you will get what you need 
from all the free support out there. It is definitely not a thing 
that will leach your money or anything - just a network of  people, 
mostly parents, trying to do something really positive for kids who 
have had hard early lives. I was given the print book for free so can 
pass it along for the same cost.

4. Reading material:
Here are  books that were either recommended to  me or which I 
personally liked that either are available electronically via 
bookshare or which I have scanned copies of.

Adopting the hurt child : hope for families with special-needs kids : 
a guide for parents and professionals
BY GREGORY C. KECK, PH.D., AND REGINA M. KUPECKY, LSW

Attaching in Adoption
Practical Tools for Today's Parents
by Deborah D. Gray
Learning the Dance Of Attachment
An Adoptive Parent's Guide to Fostering Healthy Development
By Holly van Gulden and Charlotte Vick

Our OWN
Adopting and Parenting the Older Child
by Trish Maskew.

PARENTING THE HURT CHILD: HELPING ADOPTIVE FAMILIES HEAL AND GROW
BY GREGORY C. KECK, PH.D., AND REGINA M. KUPECKY, LSW
also by the same authors
Adopting the hurt child : hope for families with special-needs kids : 
a guide for parents and professionals

parenting your Adopted Older Child
  How to Overcome the Unique Challenges AND RAISE A HAPPY AND HEALTHY CHILD
Brenda McCreight, Ph.D.


Welcome Home: A Guide for Adoptive, Foster, and Treatment Foster Parents.
by Christopher Alexander, Ph.D

When Love is Not Enough A Guide to Parenting Children with Reactive 
Attachment Disorder-RAD
by Nancy Thomas, Therapeutic Parenting Specialist

Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft
by Mary Hopkins-Best



Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft
by
Mary Hopkins-Best