Adopted Russian boy sent back

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I understand what you're saying, Nan. I'm on your side. I'm just saying that if she was grossly misled as to the nature of the child, that too is reprehensible.

This is just sick, kids aren't something that you rent and return when you are done! I doubt that the child really meant it that we wanted to burn down the house, I know when I was a kid, I'd get pissed at my parents many times, even kick and scream, but never anything more then that.

If the child really did have any mental issues, the mother should have had him evaluated by psychiatrist, the fact that she sent him back just showed that she just wasn't dedicated enough to be a mother to begin with....

Yes, perfectly well-adjusted children can sing songs like 'Joy to the world / the teacher's dead / we barbecued her head...' (as an aside, adults who have forgotten what it was like to be a child shouldn't raise children) Maybe this boy really is psychotic, but it is also perfectly possible this was fairly normal behaviour blown completely out of proportion.



Yes, to me the obvious question is: what were they thinking? Such uprooting, which wouldn't be a problem with an infant, is rather obviously a big deal for an older child. Surely it should have been blindingly obvious to everyone, including the authorities, that such uprooting could easily go wrong? Even well-adjusted adults can have problems with such uprooting. It may not be the root cause of the boy's problems but it surely didn't help.

My gut feeling is that the woman wanted a perfect, healthy blond, blue-eyed kid and that wasn't locally available. Otherwise she could have adopted an older American child, or an infant from anywhere.

There was a period here in NZ when couples were adopting kids from those horrid romanian orphans. some of those kids developed severe behavioral problems in adolescence, despite now being in stable homes with loving parents. the source of their problems has been traced back to the abuse and neglect they experienced in the orphanages.

One famous case involves twin girls who left home to live on the street. Their parents tried to get them to move back in, and they would visit regularly to eat meals, change clothes and so on, but they refused to "live under a roof". One of them got hit by a car and later died in hospital.

The woman was mislead because the orphanage lied to her about the kid. It's speculated they did it just to get rid of him. So wrong. But the mother had him for six months. Why would she wait that long before returning the child?

Having read a few accounts of adopted children with severe conduct disorder, and seen the letter that she sent, I am less inclined to vilify the mother.

I do think she probably should have done her research and not adopted an older, foreign child if she was not prepared to deal with the psychological baggage. That was definitely a mistake on her part. But realistically, if I was afraid for the rest of my family and the option was there to send him back, I would have done the same (though I would have tried to go through the proper channels, if there were any available).

Sorry, Stone. Didn't mean to sound like a badger, and didn't assume you were not. I am just so incensed that this happened that I'm running on at the mouth more than I probably should be.

Adopting a child from an orphanage, there is always a high chance that kid will have problems and you have to be patient and work with them. That's why people always want a baby to adopt. They don't want a child that is already messed up and they have to fix. They want the easy way out and that is a baby. A child they can screw up on their own and deal with it themselves.

It's the same with dogs. Lot of people want a puppy. Even if it means house training but they won't let their pet develop bad habits vs getting a full grown dog and it already has bad habits the owners had let him develop and it's hard to break that cycle. So they want a puppy. But my family adopted a dog ten years ago who was abused and she was lot of work. It took us months for her to get over it and be a normal dog. We just had to earn her trust. Another couple had her before us and they took her back a week later because she was too much work for them. But the problem was, they didn't have any kids and the workers at the humane society said she loves kids and does good with them. So my family was right for her.

The woman has the same last name as her mother, at age 33. So, never married. Her biological clock was going off, and there's no way on God's green earth that a US adoption agency will let an unmarried single woman adopt a child, so she went overseas. There is tons of corruption in foreign adoptions, many of these private agencies bluntly state that the amount of cash you have determines what you'll end up with. She likely didn't have too much money, so she ended up with a 7 year old. She clearly wasn't prepared for the realities of adopting a kid from a horrible third world orphanage. I have family in Tennessee, people there are good people but less sophisticated than in the cities. She got this damaged kid, and took his acting out literally because she didn't know any better, so in abject fear she sent him back. That doesn't excuse what she did, but she should have known better.

This is strange, I saw a similar incident with a russian boy I knew at school. He was sent back to russia by his adopted parents or at least that's the news we received in class. I thought the along the same lines as most of the responses to this article except this kid didn't act out....at least not in class.

I was very mad about it and thought these parents a**holes. Just like buying a shade of lipstick or a new car for these people.

That was true 30-40 years ago, but not today. I've been looking into this since this story came out. Around 5% of all children adopted in the US are to single parents.

And as an aside, I've found that most US states require a detailed health, social, and genetic background be made available to the adopting parent(s). Such information might have prevented this fiasco if it had been available for this child.

Look at this:

http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story.as ... ider=gnews


Maybe we shouldn't judge the mother who sent her kid back to Russia?

The mother probably did try and help him for seven months and then she finally gave up while the family in the link tried for years to help their child but she was unable to love them due to RAD and she could come off as an angel and a good person but to her adoptive parents, she was horrid.

He's a 7 year-old. Even if he has problems that just love and good parenting can't fix, there's a good chance he could have gotten over his troubles with the proper assistance.

Or, you know, if she just *had* to get rid of the child, maybe there are ways besides sending him alone on a plane to the other half of the world with only a note.

On the other hand, the kid said the woman treated him badly. There could be some truth to that.

Kids with RAD are manipulative and chronic liars. The seven year old could have had it too but who knows. Maybe the mother was too afraid to be with him so she sent him alone on the plane?

Perhaps she couldn't afford it?

So did she just expect him to find his way back to his home town alone after she abandoned him in Moscow? Has she ever looked at Russia on a map? It's the biggest country in the world, for Pete's sake.