This is one of those things where you're happy that there are people out there doing good things so that you can live in complete and comfortable oblivion about the problem they live with and deal with and try to make better on a daily basis: a ranch for adopted children whose desperate families cannot handle them.
It turns out, a statistically small but growing number of adoptive families -- particularly those who adopted internationally -- are pushed to the point of wanting to give up their adopted child. They realize that their adoption agencies glossed over or falsified their child's history of abuse or living conditions, all of which wind up contributing to abusive and dangerous behaviors the children start exhibiting in their tweens and teens.
Which is how Ranch for Kids in rural Montana got started and also why it's therapy of hard ranch work and responsibility will likely be needed for years to come.
The Ranch isn't a first stop for adoptive families whose children are going through hard times, of course.
The LA Times:
Most had already logged countless hours in psychiatric units,
wilderness programs and residential treatment centers, searching for
answers to their disturbing behaviors. The goal is that, through
intense intervention and structure, their conduct will improve enough
that they can go home.
But some will never return, moving on
to new families. They are part of an expanding phenomenon known as
adoption disruption -- the official term for parents attempting to
return their adoptive children.
It's heartbreaking, as is this story in Newsweek a while back of an American adoptive mother who is in prison for beating her adopted daughter to death. Also a tragedy, also the result of a lack of real information about her girl's early childhood history, which may have been helpful in understanding and treating her subsequent behaviors.
The ranch, started by an American woman who lived and worked in Russia, where she also adopted her daughter, has a pretty good sucess rate. Of the 150 kids that have gone through the program, which is not cheap, only six have gotten the boot (all, incidentally, within the last year). One third of the kids go back home after their stay at the ranch, another third, usually teens, go on to Job Corps, a government program that trains them for work. The last third, sadly, wind up being relinquished by their parents.
Sometimes, the task of telling a child he or she will be joining a new
family falls to Bill Sutley, an electrical engineer by training. "I
just say: 'This is not your fault. You have a screwed-up brain.' And
then I do my best to explain why the current situation isn't working."
Which is when yet another group is called on: A Child's Waiting in Akron, Ohio -- one of the few adoption agencies that works with youth they did not originally place.
The kids are rated according to levels of difficulty and then the search for a new family or living situation is begun.
Truly, truly sad.
Does anybody have any experience with this or adoption disruption?
Photo: rainbowkids.com
