Dec 05 2008
Disruption: an adoption perspective
A few weeks ago I was watching a 20/20 episode on adoption disruption. That’s term (yes, there’s actually a term) when you adopt a kid and decide to return them. I didn’t know you could just return a kid. Children are not, in my opinion, disposable, whatever their disabilities or difficulties. You can’t return them like you would a defective blender. Besides which, most of the kids in this episode were foreign born. What were their parents supposed to do? Drop them off at the embassy of their home country?
I didn’t like these people, at first. But then I saw their kids. One little girl tried to convince her kid brother to swim with alligators. Another threatened his mom with a knife (he was maybe 10 years old). Several attacked classmates. All of them had brain injuries or emotional damage from being in the orphanage where they were neglected or abused, or had fetal alcohol effects from their birth mothers.
What’s a parent supposed to when the kid they adopted are damaged? Who’s responsible? I would dedicate myself to try and help them, but would even I (who loves children more than life) give up at a certain point. I don’t know, but the parents seem much more sympathetic than they did at the beginning of the show to me.
