Private "Re-Housing" Adoptees

[Rommie]

I read this series with a huge amount of horror-link

The jist: a bunch of people when faced with adopted children realize the kids have problems they can't or don't want to handle, go onto the Internet, and randomly give the child to that couple. No legal paper trail, no background checks, no nothing... and there's pretty much nothing illegal about it.

WTF?!

These kids sound like they're being treated like pets, not people, let alone small vulnerable people who have been through a lot and were uprooted from their culture to a new one. Actually these days I believe adopting a pet is way more complicated.

Words fail me.

[Swift]

Wow

[gethen]

And Americans are outraged when Russia suspends adoption of children by Americans. It should be prosecuted as child abandonment. Unbelievable.

[SciFiFisher]

People want to adopt a perfect child. Or at least one they feel they can accept. Unfortunately, what they often get are very damaged children. It is not unusual for adoption agencies to lie about a child's age until after the papers are all signed and the adoptive parents are "trapped". Children often are severely damaged with huge psychological issues. And there aren't a lot of resources to help these parents.

I have seen cases where psychiatric facilities sent home suicidal teens because the family didn't have insurance or any way to pay for the hospitalization they recommended for the teenager. The advice to the distraught parents was "well, just watch them 24 hours a day until the current crisis passes".

This was after recommending that the child be hospitalized....until they found out the family couldn't pay. So, imagine what these adoptive parents go through when they become afraid for the other children in their house?

Not all adoptive parents deserve sympathy. But, as people keep telling me. There are no "black and white" rules that apply for every situation. (really not mad but this emoticon seems to capture the frustration nicely)

[Rommie]

Don't get me wrong, I have sincere sympathies for people who realize they're in over their head with a kid who has issues that were lied about etc. But then it seems pretty obvious that this is something people interested in adopting older children would find as a possibility from minimal research, no?

That and there are some descriptions if you go to the site that are things like "we've had him 5 days and it's not working out for us." No shit, Sherlock, I'm pretty sure any kid who doesn't even have issues is not going to immediately act perfect in a new environment like that.

Mental health services in the USA are atrocious in many cases. But I'm really just not impressed by someone who can't do their research before doing something so major like adopting a child.

[gethen]

I have a family member who adopted a child who turned out to have (mostly hidden) mental and emotional problems. Her life has been a continual struggle for her family. So I'm not forgetting that when people adopt a child, it isn't always the perfect match they envision. What I don't understand are those people cited in the article who went through the difficulties involved in a foreign adoption and then dumped the child on people they did not know, did not know anything about, did not try to learn anything about. One couple gave the child only five days to begin adjusting to her new life and then gave up. Before the internet this would have been like putting an ad in the classified section of the local newspaper. Like Rommie said, children are not pets.