Russia Halts U.S. Adoptions – Fallout from the Hansen Family’s Decision

Adoption has everyone’s attention this week, it seems, with the stories circulating that Russia has suspended adoptions by U.S. citizens.  Or that, no, they haven’t.  All because one mom reached her limit and made the choice to send her son away alone on a plane, with a note, to return him to his birth country (unclear if it’s actually his country of citizenship any longer, since his adoption was completed and he may be a U.S. citizen now).

All the usual reactions are out there: outrage, blame, accusations of mental unhealth (child and mother & grandmother), hints at abuse, suspicion…

For those of us “in the adoption community” it’s another blow in an already-tenuous process.  I don’t even know how I’d be feeling if we were in-process to adopt from Russia right now.  But more than 11,000 would-be-parents signed a plea to President Obama and Russian leader Dmitri Medvedev to allow adoptions to continue between our two countries, not to let one family’s outrageous act wipe out thousands of other healthy adoption stories.  Maybe I would be one of them.

It’s just such a sad and jarring story – a commentary on the lack of general knowledge about the post-adoption resources available to families who find their children are struggling with more than they expected.  I fear it’s also a commentary on what many people think they’re getting when they choose to adopt.

Adoption is not “the same” as having a biological child.  It’s not better, it’s not worse, it’s different.  I’m totally willing to give this mom the benefit of the doubt that she tried really hard to bond with this little boy and to get him adjusted to life here.  The adoption process is long and tedious, and once you finally bring your child home, it’s just so good to be “finished.”  No one – or almost no one, anyway – goes in to an adoption process thinking they’d ever consider backing out of it later.  Surely not!  You want to parent that cute little face from the pictures – or that sweet person from the orphanage visit when he/she was just so charming you could hardly stand how much you wanted to snuggle them up.

It’s really easy to sit here on the outside and judge this mom (and grandmother).  How could they just send a little child away, across the ocean, to a foreign country, by himself?  With a note, like that explains everything?  What were they thinking?

Having encountered a couple cases of Reactive Attachment Disorder in the course of my clinicals – and now knowing a small number of families who have dealt with it – I am fairly sure that the time for thinking had long since passed.  “RAD kids” are some of the hardest to parent.  It’s entirely possible that this little 7 year old was threatening to kill family members, was violent, disrespectful, dishonest, seemingly limitless in his wild and hateful behavior. 

Not because he was a “bad kid” but because his prior experiences left him so threatened by a mother’s attempt at bonding that he was doing everying in his power to stop her from trying.  And he “won” – except of course he ultimately lost.  And now he sits on the other side of one more failed relationship, this situation no-doubt confirming in his young psyche that, “See?  It wasn’t true.  It wasn’t forever.  She didn’t really love me.  That’s why I’ve gotta take care of myself.”

Yes, he’s small and vulnerable looking in the media pictures taken since his return.  And he IS indeed small and vulnerable.  But clearly his family lost sight of that fact a while ago.  Not because they’re necessarily “bad people” either.  But they were clearly unprepared for him.  And then in their desperation for relief from their circumstances, they shelved logic and compassion and made a statement.

Boy did they make a statement.  What the world hears is “Americans think adopted children are a commodity, and if they don’t meet with our standards, we will return them.”

As parents in waiting, that THAT is the message the world hears right now is heartbreaking.  Because that’s not what most of us think.  In fact, that’s probably not even what the Hansens actually think.  They’re reacting to feeling betrayed by their agency and by the Russian contacts who referred them a child who was beyond their abilities to rear (though who knows if they even knew the extent of his issues), and possibly by this little boy himself who seemed so different at first and then changed so horribly.  They’re probably devastated that their dreams for adopting this little guy turned into a nightmare.  And they clearly didn’t know where to turn appropriately once they reached the point of desperation.  Or else they didn’t have the emotional capacity to try any longer.

I’m very sad for the Hansens.  They could use some compassion, I’m sure.  I’m equally sure there are other families out there in the same situations, considering the hard decision to disrupt their adoptions – or desperately trying not to - and they’re watching how we as a country treat this family.  And they never meant NOT to parent their children to adulthood.  They took the required training classes, heard about the risks but thought they had avoided them by checking off “no special needs” in their homestudy report, waited for years, finally received a child into their care and then – Crash! – reality hits.  Usually with a RAD diagnosis.  And a whole lot of violent, ugly, outragious behavior.

What would I say to them, “Try harder,” “Well you got yourself into this…,” “You should’ve _____, and you wouldn’t be experiencing ____,” ???  No.  No.  And No.  Not everyone is cut out for therapeutic parenting of a child with RAD.  And when a mis-match happens, it’s awful for everyone.

On the other hand, I am, of course, even sadder for Artem-Justin.  To be only 7 years old and already so hurt by the world that you can’t even think of trusting someone who says they want to love you and take care of you.  Then to have that fear confirmed.  Again.  To be sent away like an unwanted possession.  And blamed for it, like you’re the problem, when you’re just the kid, and there were adults all around. 

Undeserving, bad, unloveable.  On your own.  Trust no one.  Adults just let you down, so don’t let them close.  And all these messages below the surface level of your cognitive abilities, so it’s just this gut-reaction you have and can’t help.

I see a lot of posturing as I read all the different news accounts and blogs out there.  Well-meaning but possibly naive offers to adopt him.  Russia and our State Department going back and forth about what this means for the future of adoption.  Prospective adoptive parents saying they’ll do anything, sign any agreement, just to get their children.  News stories inflating the most minute details to run another story, ’cause wow is this one HOT.

And yes, it should make news.  But what’s going to stop this from happening again?  I haven’t seen that angle yet.

As Fred and I look ahead to our own next placement, knowing that our Salvadoran kids will most likely be coming from an orphanage as well, with all the associated developmental effects, it’s humbling to watch another parent crumble.  It’s scary to consider that we could find ourselves at home with children we don’t know how to handle, passed off to us as healthier than they are.  It’s not very likely; RAD is pretty rare.  But it’s possible.  And while I completely disagree with the wrong, thoughtless, and cruel way they handled their hopelessness, I think I may understand the Hansens at least a little.

You think adoption is going to be one thing.  It’s going to “complete” your family or some such idea.  And it is.  But not always the way you think it will.  Maybe my idea of “complete” is not God’s.  So far, it’s been a wonderful life with the twins; but what if it gets hard? 

Following the story of little Artem/Justin Hansen is, for me, another stake in the ground for our own adoption.  A time I can look back on in the future and say, “even there, I saw God’s hand preparing us.”  Because I just spent a few hours researching resources for post-adoption help and refreshed myself on all the scariness that comes with RAD.  And yet, I’m sure we’re meant to move forward.  Lord willing, we won’t need most of the stuff I just found.

Lord willing.

But the same God that brought us to the twins knows who needs us next.  And there’s no question He’s been faithful till now.  So we’re still waiting on the process to move forward in El Salvador.  And much like we vowed to each other on our wedding day, Fred and I are committed to parent all our kids for better or for worse, till death does us part.  Whoever they are and whatever they bring with them when they come.

I pray little Artem gets a (trained, informed and ready!) family who can make that commitment to him.  Scary as that might look for all of them for the first long while.