She was barely crawling when we met her. Very solemn. Only a very few sounds.

We had one couple in our travel group who adopted a child who was 2.5 years old, who had been with a foster family. This child was angry, grieving, didn’t want anything to do with the new parents. Our facilitator did the best he could to jolly her along, get her used to them…but even though they had known intellectually what it might be like, the reality hit them hard.

It’s a hard thing–you can push information about institutionalization, about attachment, about bonding, about racial issues, about transracial and conspicuous families at potential adoptive parents all you want, but how do you get them to really internalize it? How do you get past the red-threads-and-ladybugs images that predominate? On APC, so often when there was a thread about these issues, the newbies would all start complaining about how “gloomy” and “down” the list was getting, and how “PC” it was.

I was of the “research it to hell and gone and be prepared” mindset. But there are lots of folks out there who sail through the wait thinking “love will conquer all”, and are shocked at what the reality can be. Amy’s idea of pushing the agencies to do more training, more exposure of this stuff is all well and good, but, as Lorrie said in the comments, it won’t work unless it’s mandatory. Why? Because if it’s not mandatory, there will always be agencies that go light on that stuff, because it sells their services to go light. And even if it were mandatory, I don’t think it would work, because you’ll get the PAPs who show up and check out, just so they get past the required training.

Amy Eldridge’s letter is so hard to read. It just makes me so sad. It also makes me think of our first year with E, and how we would always comment when we could see her lower lip– because she sucked it when she was stressed out. We really felt that she was just starting to show herself at her first birthday, when she had been with us for 4 months, and by the time she had been with us a year was really truly settled. And she was one of the easier ones in China: smiled at us the second morning, ate like a champ from the first breakfast, pooped easily…. still, she was very shut down and we knew it. Part of that was her personality– she still observes for a long time before joining groups, for example.

Ultimately, though, I think grrl travels and Amy Eldridge are so right: people need so much mroe education. Adoptive families are no different from others, but shit, adopting a post-institutionalized child *is* different from giving birth. It just is, and people have to really believe that and understand how to overcome it. It can be overcome with most children, but the parents have to be patient and do the work– they can’t expect the baby to do the work, dammit.

It’s just very hard. And very sad.