So far on this adoption forum I have heard nice flowing....?

Question

happy stories about your adopted child/children. Is there anyone on here who experenced a total adoption nightmare? Like the child was uncontrolable or had mental illness or worse?

Answer 1

Children and parents in the adoption triad are just as varied as any other child and parent.  So of course there are some with mental illness, challenging behavior, medical issues, etc.  But we need to be very careful to resist the temptation to label children or aparents or bio parents as if adoption determines who they are.  We are complex people and adoption is just one part of who we are.

Answer 2

My mom tells a long-ago story of a lady who lived on her street that had adopted a baby.  As the baby grew during that first year, it became more and more obvious that the baby was mixed race.  Since the aparents were not OK with that fact, they returned the baby to the adoption agency days before the baby turned 1 year old.  To me that is a real horror story!

Answer 3

I know a lady who adopted the newborn daughter of a crack addict, and the child has had some behaviorial issues.

I also have a relative who adopted two foster sons who have been nothing but trouble.

However, I know plenty of parents whose biological children have been nothing but trouble.

So, it is a crapshoot whether you adopt or have your own. Either way, you get what you get!

Answer 4

All I know is I had an abusive set of parents who adopted me .

Answer 5

Well one in four adopters RETURN their adopted child, and nullify the adoption.

Adopted children are abused at higher rates than non-adopted children raised in intact biological families.  But adopted children are not allowed to 'divorce' their adoptive parents or cancel their adoption.  We're stuck.  For life.

It's always the adopters who have all the good cards.

Oh, and yes, you hear the 'good' adoption stories.  Because you're hearing from aparents of small children.  They're dealing with children--who don't yet employ rational thought or critcal thinking.  When these folks have adopted teenagers they'll be give a run for their money (literally!).  It all starts to unravel then.

Answer 6

My aunt adopted 6 children almost 7 before she died from cancer from foster care.  The 7th child we still keep in contact with and consider her family.  She adopted kids from ages 5 to 13yrs old.  

Out of the 7 kids only one child had severe problems.  The funny thing is he was my bio cousin from my father's side that was adopted by my family on my mother's side.  So yeah he was severely abused.  He was raised on a leash and feed from a dog bowl.  Basically imagine a little boy being raised like a dog for the 1st 5 years of life.

My Aunt and Uncle adopted him at 7 yrs but the older he got the more violent he became.  They worked with him for years in counseling.  Nothing seemed to work, then he grabbed a knive and kicked the bedroom door down saying he would kill them all.  The police came and then he was sentenced to live in a mental institution until the age of 18.  The family visited him every weekend.  Shortly after he got out he died.  He was skateboarding on a highway at night and was hit by a car and died.  Some abuse is so deep and damaging i don't think you can ever fully recover from.  This is a pretty extreme case.

Answer 7

The first kids I ever knew to be adopted, looked nothing alike. The Amother couldn't stand the one that different from them. His Afather took up the slack and tried to protect him. Her other adopted son, died, and she completely lost it. Wish it had been the other one, unfortunately, his father had passed. No one to shield him from that one.

A friend of mine and her brother were both adopted. She adores her Amom. She is a wonderful lady. She doesn't get along with her Afather at all. The son is spoiled equally by both parents.

A friend adopted through a church that is adament that all married couples have as many children as possible. She doesn't work, he's blind. He is creepy. Puts on the show at church and is a hypocrit to the 9th degree. He's been written up for sexual harrassment at work. Plays the "blind" card ALL the time. How this happen, I'll never know, but he actually had an affair with another women, therefore, the baby they were about to adopt through their church was given to someone else. He can't keep a job, they are always on church welfare. The child they received cried every minute of everyday. I couldn't stand to be around him. Constantly throwing fits. The Afather couldn't stand him. The Amom, seemed to be doing everything she could to help him.

Another couple adopted a child and same kind of emotional problems. They wish they had never adopted.

Someone I know, has an adopted sister, and she hates her. The sister has some emotional problems and seems to be the cause of all this family's problems. So she says.

A friend from boarding school and her two brothers, were adopted. Their dad was a horrible alcoholic. He's dead now. She gets along with her mom now.

Those are all the adoptee stories I know.

Answer 8

There have been stories in the news as of late about children adopted from other countries whom the adoptive parents have decided they cannot parent.  These children are relinquished by their adoptive parents.  In these cases I've seen in the news, the children are suffering from RAD (reactive attachment disorder.)

On the flip side, there are also bad situations that have occurred simply  because adoptive parents, like non-adoptive parents, come in all varieties on the spectrum of great parents down to absolutely lousy parents.

I know I've mentioned by best friend, also an adoptee, whose parents were bad alcoholics.  They would get dropped off at home by limo from parties so drunk that when her father went to drive the babysitter home, he would have my friend (who was in her early grammar school years) sit on his lap to steer the car when he drank too much.  Talk about putting one's child in danger.

In her college years, my friend was in a sorority.  The sorority held a mother-daughter party.  Her mother got so drunk she urinated on the floor.

My friend went to see a counselor.  She decided at one point in counseling that she wanted to talk to her parents in front of the counselor, as she felt their drinking was too much for her to handle anymore and felt she needed to back away from them if they  didn't quit.  They both flat out told the counselor that my friend could just walk away from them because they weren't going to quit drinking.

Anyway, you don't know if an adoption is going to work out or not.  Sometimes, they just don't turn out so great for whatever reason.

Answer 9

I work with troubled kids, many of whom were adopted, so I've got hundreds of them for you.  A huge percentage of them are due either to attachment disorders or intra-uterine drug and alcohol exposure, which creates organic brain damage.  In other words, it's not the kids that are "uncontrollable" - it's the adults around them that made them this way - THEY were uncontrollable! Most kids, with the appropriate treatment, and a good mix of boundaries and unconditional love, can overcome these things and self-regulate (i.e., they don't need to be controlled from outside themselves).  I bet you anything that if their parents had the same treatment, the same options, they'd be able to self-regulate, too, and the kids wouldn't even have ended up where they are.  It's a vicious cycle.  I'm hoping to be a stick in the spokes.

Answer 10

I didn't adopt, but am an adoptee & I had an adoption nightmare that ended with child protection taking me into foster care at the age of 11 where I stayed until I aged out at 18

Answer 11

I've heard from a person who adopted one child, was very happy, and adopted another child and said she regretted it because it changed everything for the worse...  (basically, she was complaining about being a mother to a child who needed her).  That story sickened me.  I felt so bad for the child who got such a rotten parent.

Answer 12

"Well one in four adopters RETURN their adopted child, and nullify the adoption.

Adopted children are abused at higher rates than non-adopted children raised in intact biological families."

I'm having a hard time believing that one in four adoptions end up disrupted. Can you share where you got this figure?

Also, I often hear the argument (from anti adoption people) that adopted children are abused at higher rates than biological children. Do you know of a study with figures that actually supports this?

Answer 13

Why would you want to hear bad experiences on this subject when it is nice to hear good stories.

Answer 14

My parents and their next door neighbors at the time adopted within weeks of each other.

The little girl who was placed with the neighbors had some serious issues once she hit her teens.  She was a chronic runaway, and involved with drugs and alcohol.  She had a baby at 14 or 15, and committed suicide within weeks of her child being placed for adoption.

It happens.  I think if she had been being raised now, instead of then, she'd have been diagnosed with chronic depression,which was almost certainly related to her adoption.  I remember visiting them when I was ten, and being told by my mom that I was not to mention that this girl was adopted, because mom didn't know if she had been told yet.