Understanding the Child with Special Needs

Before understanding the extent of these specific issues, it is important to acknowledge that adoptive parenting of a child with special needs is different from parenting a child without special needs. Although adoptive parents may face many of the same childrearing issues as biological parents, adoptive parents of children with special needs face numerous issues related directly to traumatic experiences of the child. Adoptive parents often find that this significantly alters the balance of the family system, resulting in overt stress and disequilibrium, sometimes to the extent that the child is returned to foster care or to the adoption agency.

The demands and stress that result from the adoption of children with special needs result in approximately onefifth to onefourth of the adoptions being reported as unsatisfactory and contributes to the approximately ten percent or more of these adoptions that disrupt. Conversely, research shows that less than 1 percent of infant adoptions disrupt, demonstrating that the issues facing these infant adoptive parents are significantly less.

John Bowlby's writings on attachment suggest that early separations, discontinuity of loving care, and unresponsive or abusive care have a lasting impact on a child's attachment framework. From this perspective, many adopted children have less than optimal beginnings. As parents transition into parenting these children, they are often faced headon with the repercussions of these beginnings. Internal states of fear resulting from the early care are most commonly communicated through the child's negative and rejecting behaviors.

These behaviors are a byproduct of the break in the attachment relationship, which has left the affected child without the ability to calm themselves and in a state of constant stress, unable to control feelings of anger and frustration. As a result, many adopted children with trauma histories are often characterized as aggressive, defiant, controlling, and lacking empathy.

Stress from the Disconnect

These problematic behaviors between the child and the parent can then quickly lead to problematic relationships and a cascade of the issues identified earlier, such as financial stress, marital stress, extended family stress, and physical symptoms. As the child works to attain safety through avoidance of the very relationship that the parents are working to develop, tension, fear, and discontent can quickly create stress in all aspects of the parents' lives.

The child's internal blueprint for relationship says that love equals pain, rejection, and abandonment. When parenting a child with such a definition of love, adoptive parents soon find that conventional parenting techniques are profoundly ineffective. Too often, parents find themselves in a state of helplessness and at a complete loss as to how to handle the behaviors. These negative attachment behaviors can then leave the parents feeling emotionally depleted and depressed. Homes become chaotic. Friends disappear. Parents become isolated. Jobrelated stressors become more difficult to handle. Stressrelated physical symptoms become evident. Changes in selfimage shift from confident and complete to insecure and empty. Even for experienced parents, who have raised biological children in the past and believe that they are fully prepared for the children's lack of responsiveness can find themselves overwhelmed and feeling as if their lives are out of control. The entire household can switch from a state of light to a state of utter darkness.

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