Posted on 04/09/2010 11:01:16 AM PDT by marthemaria
Edited on 04/09/2010 11:04:10 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
A U.S. mom sent her adopted seven-year-old Siberian son back to Russia alone because she did not want him anymore, it emerged Friday.
Artem Saveliev was taken from a grim Russian orphanage in September last year and given a new life in Tennessee.
(Excerpt) Read more at myfoxdfw.com ...
That would be a sad situation. However, sometimes I wonder if it might not be best. The kids in Eastern Europe are told that when they come to America we kill them and sell their organs. I don't understand why they spread these tales. Even the adults perpetuate them. I am an adoptive parent of an Eastern European child, BTW. She's like my own flesh and blood, a wonderful child.
Right, so it’s better to leave these kids in Russia to be abused rather than let Americans, who are desperate for kids and not able to deal with the red-tape and shortages of American kids, come and get them and give them a great life./sarc
We all hear the horror stories about crazy kids coming out of orphanages (and can you not understand exactly how they got nutty?) but I have known a number of them (as a teacher and an aunt) and haven’t know any who were more or less insane than any other kids.
I am just so sad for these poor kids who had the bad luck to be born in crapola circumstances and then are all branded as psycho trash because of the behavior and ethics problems some orphanages have. It’s a sin, and if this woman screws up the chance of other kids being rescued by loving American family’s because of her immature handling of this situation, pox on her!
It said Russia, that would be Siberia.
I am disgusted and horrified by you BIL’s experience. That is such a shame for them to want to help kids, and end up with emotional monsters. However, I notice that they were dealt with by agencies who help with family’s who can’t cope, and not left to fend for themselves in a strange city airport.
I am not advocating that this woman needed to have a psych kid living in her house if that was truly the case. I am objecting to how she handled it, and how all adopted children are being branded as “not worth the time”.
Children must have ‘good enough’ parenting (not perfect but sufficient) during the critical years generally believed to be ages 2yrs - 4yrs. During this ‘window’ the child must bond to a parent, usually mom but can be other family or guardians, and then ‘grow out of’ being bonded to see themselves as a separate, individual person.
If this kids have little to no contact, this critical phase of development does not happen. It is sometimes possible to correct some of the damage up until teens (ethically, in the US, psychologists often declare 18 as the age past which this kind of damage can not be reversed). A child ‘warehoused’ in an orphanage or anywhere else and abused etc. is likely to be so thoroughly wounded that the personality, who the child was going to become, dies but the body lives on.
Once an adult, there are no techniques or therapies known to repair this damage. A child has one chance to ‘grow’ a personality - after that - therapy cannot give a personality/conscience to a child. Therapy works by addressing the personality, cultivating the conscience. But for severely damaged people - there is no one ‘there’ for therapy to address.
Basically you have an adult with the uncompromising wants, needs, tantrums of a 2 year old in the body of an angry, calculating adult. It can be quite scary. I too have read of sociopaths stalking and tormenting their families and these individuals cannot be treated/healed.
A child with this sort of damage typically has personality disorders. Inability to bond with people, lack of conscience or compassion, tireless rage, pleasure in tormenting others etc.
It is possibly to see clear signs of sociopathy in children - if she’s read or seen the kinds of horror stories (horribly abused children adopted into homes where the abused child begins setting fire to the house, stating the desire to kill family members, found stalking siblings with scissors, tormenting small animals etc.) - then she panicked and sent him back.
I do wonder why this was the method of escape she chose. We still have ethically responsibilities to those who have no conscience or capacity for compassion - I am just not sure what those are or how they are expressed. Did US orphanages refuse to adopt him - is it not possible for her to put him up for adoption in the US? Would she be financially responsible to pay for him to live in a treatment home? The child would be damaging to other children - where does one safely raise a rage filled child who cannot love and has no conscience.
Of course, to place him for adoption in the US is to hope that some other family face the stalking, rage, destruction of a baby abused right out of existence and into sociopathy. I wonder what paths, if any, she pursued before she chose to fly him home.
But the ‘one-way-ticket-home’ seems the harshest method I can imagine.
I did not say it was better to leave the kids in Russia...I was merely pointing out that the Russian govt is not doing their job in keeping the kids safe...no matter who adopts them.
Russian orphanages have been and remain in shambles....that is what we are talking about here...NOT kids from the US.
Google - "Russian Orphanages Conditions" and see what you come up with
Some kids are evil.
Oh, I am sorry, I was actually responding to someone above you who said it would be fine to ban adoptions. I accidentally responded to you with the first part of the message because I had just read your bit, and got emotional blinders on!
So are some adults, and dropping a seven year old off at an airport, no matter what the woman was dealing with, and expecting him to just survive and take care of himself was also evil.
I actually used to teach a kid who was definitely evil, and I won’t teach anymore because he really made me sort of jaded, so I definitely do NOT think that all kids are angels. Snort. Not even close. But this woman made what she claims was an intolerable situation into a criminal (or at least amazingly unethical) one.
And really, isn’t passing judgement on people a main part of being a Freeper? :)
That was it! Very sad show as I recall.
Eloquently described - I wish I read yours before I posted my ramble.
Love the quotes you used. I especially liked your description of the anger. I have a very hard time explaining to people what it is like to confront that sort of anger - those who have not dealt with this abnormal anger perceive those of us who have as behaving in a fragile manner, unwilling to face normal anger in normal people. I don’t have any children but grew up around some with this kind of damage. I spent decades trying to love and accept these people right out of their rage but no amount of patience, love, and acceptance ever blunted the endless wellspring of rage that would gush forth from them.
There is something utterly shocking about the rage of a person without conscience, instead of the psyche wrestling to contain hurtful words and actions, you witness the intellect striving to cause as much harm to others (emotional, physical, psychological) as possible. There is a tireless quality about this rage - it never sleeps but is sometimes found distracted and focused on someone else. It would take astounding energy for a normal person to exert and display the malevolent rage found in this kind of person but those with this kind of deep, permanent damage seem to find exercising their rage on others to be refreshing, restoring. This is why some people describe this kind of damage as vampirism - the wounded, crushed soul sucks the life out people around them - feeding on them but never being restored to life themselves.
I can’t imagine the combination of the energy of a little boy and the energy of one with this kind of damage.
And I do know Russian orphanages are rotten, I said my sister adopted a Russian boy four years ago, and she is now trying for another baby from another country. Luckily, her son is amazing, despite the circumstances.
From the AP:
Speaking from the home in Shelbyville that she shares with her daughter, Nancy Hansen said a social worker checked on the boy in January and reported to Russian authorities that there were no problems. But after that, the grandmother said incidents of hitting, kicking, spitting began to escalate, along with threats.
“He drew a picture of our house burning down and he’ll tell anybody that he’s going to burn our house down with us in it,” she told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hdX2aH94-cG6tnHX748IeHKU9oAwD9EVM2480
This hardly sounds like an evil kid. Sounds more like a kid trying to deal with a bunch of stuff. An angry kid without coping skills and without sufficient language skills taken to a new country. Kicking and hitting and one picture. All of which occurred in the last 3 months. Hardly sociopathic behavior.
Kicking, hitting and biting are bad, and I feel for people who have to deal with kids with behavior problems, and I am not trying to pooh-pooh parental difficulties.
However, if the AP article is correct, it really highlights the awfulness of dropping this kid off to fend for himself.
I totally agree. These are pretty normal coping behaviors for a kid whose been through a lot. She should have expected this.
I am intrested to see if anything happens to the woman. Maybe someone should send her to another country where they speak another language and see how she copes. (I know the kid went to his home country, but who knows how much language he retained after not using it for six months. My kids used to speak Swedish like natives, and six months after coming home they were pretty clueless.)
A coworker and her husband adopted two twin boys from Russia when they were two. It was a horrible experience for them, and they really did their best. The boys were so unmanageable they had to be institutionalized in this country. Unfortunately, she became widowed. She visits them, but they can’t come home for any length of time. At least they weren’t sent back to Russia.
Those kids are given very basic care if they are lucky.
My niece was adopted from Korea. She had wonderful foster care there. She had no problems bonding with her parents.
I got so teary-eyed reading articles on the Russian orphanages....I had to take a walk afterward....
My friends children also adopted from South Korea and the little girl, even though she has a cleft palate, has been well cared for, too bad the Russians are so awful with their child care.
“It seems many of these kids have no physical or emotional contact and when adopted out have severe problems.”
I’ve watched several programs about this on 20/20 or Dateline over the years. The kids are violent, destroy the house, attempt to kill the parents, etc. The parents don’t know what to do....they constantly live in fear. It is so sad.
I read that this kid told the adoptive parent that he was beaten with a broomstick at the Russian orphanage. Then he told her he would kill her and set the house on fire.
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