Deep thoughts

So I'm gonna write on something that I've been thinking about and am divided on and I'm wanting to see what readers (however few of them there are) think about it. I bet everyone has heard about the woman in Tennessee who sent her adopted son back to Russia. Here are the details that I've gathered - granted, these details are all from news reports, I have no personal knowledge of this family.

A woman adopted a 7 year old Russian boy. The boy had been in an orphanage, which are notorious for being bad - kids get little affection, often are not well taken care of, etc. Many children who come from orphanages in Russia as well as other places and even here in the US have emotional problems. This boy, who she named Justin, was no exception. He had very very severe problems, which the woman says she was not told about from the orphanage. Justin would throw tantrums (and not normal kid tantrums) when he didn't get his way, threatening violence, drawing pictures of the house burning down and saying he was going to burn the house down with the family in it, etc. The family went to a psychologist for help, but only the PARENTS went, they did not take the boy (which seems super odd to me). The last straw was apparently attacking his adopted aunt with a statue when she asked him to correct some math problems. Finally, the adopted mom said she could not take care of Justin anymore, so she put him on a plane back to Russia with a small backpack, had someone pick him up at the airport and drop him off at the education ministry in Moscow, and left him with a note that essentially said, I can't handle this kid anymore so I no longer want to be his parent (I can't find the exact quote). The woman is now trying to adopt a kid from Georgia, she says she was already in the process before she got rid of Justin. Because of this case, the Russian ministry has apparently suspended all US-Russian adoptions - here's a link to a news story on that. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100415/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_us_adoptions

I really don't know where I stand on this issue. On the one hand, I don't want to just outright condemn the adoptive mother. I mean, in her shoes, could I really handle a 7 year old child from a foreign country that was threatening to murder me and my family because I asked him to clean his room (that may not have been the cause, just hypothetical) or was attacking my sister with a statue because she said he had done a math problem wrong? Those are some pretty big issues and, in her shoes, I don't know that I'd be able to handle it.

You know, some may say that the woman is making up some of her claims to justify sending him back. I have seen lots of adoption cases where the child is adopted, either here or overseas, and is PERFECTLY normal and wonderful (or as normal and wonderful as any kid ever can be) and things are just great. But I've also seen cases where families adopted older children, though sometimes not even as old as Justin was, and they had problems. A couple I know adopted a boy and a girl from the foster care system, and while they don't have the psychological problems that Justin seemed to, the boy is behind a little bit developmentally than where he should be because of treatment as a baby and in the womb. That's a mild case, I've seen cases with some severe problems. A family friend adopted a little boy (he was about 2 I think) from Russia several years ago; this couple was AMAZING. The little boy had some very severe problems, obviously had not been given much affection in the orphanage, and there were cases where, like Justin, he would threaten his parents - if I remember correctly, he even threatened the mom with a knife at one point, he was like 3 or 4 years old. The couples marriage ended because of the stress of this adoption. There was also a family that adopted a little girl through the foster care system when she was 5. I know this family and the little girl really well. There were some problems there, ones that I didn't realize till later, and some drastic steps were taken to get her help. But that ended up as a success story, as the girl is now in HS and doing FABULOUSLY - like, even better than I did in school in some ways. So I know that adoption cases, while many can be incredibly wonderful, can also put strain on couples.

Here's where I get on the fence on this issue. In all of the cases I've mentioned above, the adoptive parents did not give up on the child, even when it would have made a lot of sense to do just that (i.e. when the child's problems ended up causing you and your husband to divorce). Now like I said, in the woman who adopted Justin's shoes, I don't know what I would do, maybe something similar. But at the same time, what a thing to do. The whole point of adoption is to bring a child into your family and love them as if they were your own. It can be a real struggle proving to a kid that, no matter what they do, you're not going to give up on them or treat them any differently than your biological children just because you didn't give birth to them. What a thing for this little boy to go through - he was essentially (and almost literally due to the note) told "You're not good enough, so we don't want you anymore, go back to where you came from". Would she have said that to a child she gave birth to? So why do it to your adopted son just because he came from Russia?

Furthermore, my friend Sarah made a really good point that the woman never took Justin to a psychologist, just the adults to learn how to treat him. Would she have done that with her own kids? Now the other side of that coin is that, if Justin was her BIOLOGICAL son, he probably wouldn't have these problems because they were born of neglect and the treatment at the orphanage. But still... something to think about...

The other thing that upsets me is that this woman has now caused an international incident, and because of her, Russia has suspended all US adoptions, which hurts so many other families who just want to bring their children home. That does upset me.

So I'm really divided on this issue. On the one hand, in her shoes, I don't know that I could handle the problems that this boy had either. I do believe he had severe problems, because I've seen cases before where children had these problems. But I still firmly believe in adoption and think that adoptive parents need to make it their daily mission to show the child that, no matter what, they will always be their mom and dad and nothing will ever change that, even though they are not biologically related. I feel for the woman but I also REALLY feel for Justin, who was told he wasn't good enough to be loved and accepted by a woman he called Mommy. And I feel for all the families that are affected by this now.

What do you think??