Pitfall # 1 – People Just Don’t Know What Trauma Can Do

Pitfall # 2 – People Don’t WANT to Acknowledge that a Child can be Traumatized

Pitfall # 3 It Must Be the Adoptive Parents’ Fault

Pitfall # 4 – If Your Message is Adopted/Foster Children are At Risk for Trauma & Attachment Disorder…Prepare to Be Shot!

Ok, if those of us parenting traumatized children can get beyond the daily challenges of raising our children and work through the incredible pain of being blamed for our children’s problems, then we will likely reach a place where we want to “pay it forward” to help other families have things easier than we had. If we find the help, the support and the resources (after searching in the desert for so long), we feel both obligated and grateful enough to share.

Noble intentions…but not very easy to do. First, we must realize that the rest of the world still doesn’t “get it”. And that it’s very painful for them to look on trauma. No one wants to think about horrible things happening to children or about those horrible things significantly impacting their lives.

So, the harder you try to tell someone and the more vocal you are…the more likely you are going to get shot down. My friend Nancy (the RAD magnet) can tell you that she’s been vilified in many arenas for years. Yet…

If you can don your asbestos suit and keep pressing forward, true advocacy can make a difference. Attachment Disorder is highly controversial in many circles. Yet, fewer and fewer people who are in the business of adoption will deny that many children are traumatized prior to adoption. They will go on to list behaviors that are symptoms of attachment difficulties and sometimes even suggest interventions that are attachment therapies…but profess that Attachment Disorder doesn’t exist or isn’t common.

Now, as advocates, we could get furious about this…knowing that all children in foster care or orphanages are at risk, likely having experiences trauma, and likely to exhibit some attachment difficulties, emotional delays or other developmental lags that strain relationships. OR, we could realize that the tide is turning ever so slowly.

More pre-adoptive parents are receiving information about healthy emotional development, warning signs of attachment problems, and how to find resources. Even as attachment therapists are still being persecuted in some circles, they are being quoted in others. The truth is that trauma is at the root of impairments in attachment. No one really knows why some children develop full-blown RAD and some don’t. Nor do they know why some look autistic, some look hyperactive (ADHD) and some become sociopaths…when trauma is at the root of it all.

The word is getting out there, though…even if the adoption community hasn’t fully embraced the attachment community yet…it’s starting to happen. Meanwhile, if you’re going to advocate for traumatized children and their exhausted and overwhelmed adoptive/foster parents…prepared to get shot (or at least shot at).

Still – it’s worth it!


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