Mrs.Lucysnow
Valued Senior Member
Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.
"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...
"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."
The boy was adopted in September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_adopted_boy
Now this is not the first time such an incident has occurred and frankly I find this one much worse:
A Dutch couple has sparked outrage by giving up a seven-year-old South Korean girl they adopted as a baby after claiming she didn't "fit in" with their life-style.
The diplomat and his wife, who had taken in the child after failing to conceive, handed her to social workers in Hong Kong after having two biological children.
They claimed the girl, who was adopted when four months old and has lived in the territory since she was three, was struggling to adapt to their culture, including food.
The girl, who speaks English and Cantonese but not Korean, is neither a Dutch citizen nor a Hong Kong resident, so her future in the territory is uncertain.
"It's bizarre. I don't think it has anything to do with cultural shock," said Law Chi-kwong, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's Social Work department.
"The child grew up with them. They adopted her when she was a baby; they are responsible for shaping the child's mind and culture.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...dopted-baby-failure-fit-in.html#ixzz0kdN3XWJ0
I find the two incidents very different. The american family that returned the seven year old had only kept him for six months and indeed they may have been misinformed about the state of the child's mental health. In the case of the Dutch family they simply discarded a child they had since birth with some lame excuse about the child not 'fitting in' and to make matters worse they didn't even leave the child in its nation of birth or their home country but in a third nation being the territory of Hong Kong.
Now should a child that has been adopted by a family be abandoned if it is deemed to be 'not what they hoped for'? If the child were born into their family and 'didn't fit in' or had 'emotional and psychological' issues they would have to deal with it with a more difficult option of giving it up to social services but that is not so easily done and would need a court order as its illegal to abandon a child.
Now I do think that adoptions shouldn't be made too easy, I also think for the protection of the child that there should be an intermediate period of time where the family can get to spend a long period of time with the child while being monitored in some neutral setting before they are allowed to adopt a child and take it out of its home country, if this had happened then the American family would have noticed that the child had problems they were not able to cope with and opt out of adoption.
In the case of the Dutch family I think they should not have been allowed to simply abandon the child in a third country, but then there is the question of how well cared for the child would be if they were forced to keep it.
This brings up the question of whether people should be allowed to leave their own country and adopt a child from outside.
So what solutions do you think there are for circumstances like this?
Is it that the American family didn't try and fight for the child long enough? Meaning that perhaps they had not done everything they could to help address the child's issues?
What protocols could be implemented so that children who had already been abandoned are not again rejected?
What legal responsibilities should there be for adopted parents?
Should there be a law demanding that parents adopt children within their own country where it can be more closely monitored?
"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...
"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."
The boy was adopted in September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_adopted_boy
Now this is not the first time such an incident has occurred and frankly I find this one much worse:
A Dutch couple has sparked outrage by giving up a seven-year-old South Korean girl they adopted as a baby after claiming she didn't "fit in" with their life-style.
The diplomat and his wife, who had taken in the child after failing to conceive, handed her to social workers in Hong Kong after having two biological children.
They claimed the girl, who was adopted when four months old and has lived in the territory since she was three, was struggling to adapt to their culture, including food.
The girl, who speaks English and Cantonese but not Korean, is neither a Dutch citizen nor a Hong Kong resident, so her future in the territory is uncertain.
"It's bizarre. I don't think it has anything to do with cultural shock," said Law Chi-kwong, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong's Social Work department.
"The child grew up with them. They adopted her when she was a baby; they are responsible for shaping the child's mind and culture.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...dopted-baby-failure-fit-in.html#ixzz0kdN3XWJ0
I find the two incidents very different. The american family that returned the seven year old had only kept him for six months and indeed they may have been misinformed about the state of the child's mental health. In the case of the Dutch family they simply discarded a child they had since birth with some lame excuse about the child not 'fitting in' and to make matters worse they didn't even leave the child in its nation of birth or their home country but in a third nation being the territory of Hong Kong.
Now should a child that has been adopted by a family be abandoned if it is deemed to be 'not what they hoped for'? If the child were born into their family and 'didn't fit in' or had 'emotional and psychological' issues they would have to deal with it with a more difficult option of giving it up to social services but that is not so easily done and would need a court order as its illegal to abandon a child.
Now I do think that adoptions shouldn't be made too easy, I also think for the protection of the child that there should be an intermediate period of time where the family can get to spend a long period of time with the child while being monitored in some neutral setting before they are allowed to adopt a child and take it out of its home country, if this had happened then the American family would have noticed that the child had problems they were not able to cope with and opt out of adoption.
In the case of the Dutch family I think they should not have been allowed to simply abandon the child in a third country, but then there is the question of how well cared for the child would be if they were forced to keep it.
This brings up the question of whether people should be allowed to leave their own country and adopt a child from outside.
So what solutions do you think there are for circumstances like this?
Is it that the American family didn't try and fight for the child long enough? Meaning that perhaps they had not done everything they could to help address the child's issues?
What protocols could be implemented so that children who had already been abandoned are not again rejected?
What legal responsibilities should there be for adopted parents?
Should there be a law demanding that parents adopt children within their own country where it can be more closely monitored?
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