"Attachment disorders," which prevent some adopted children from bonding with their parents, may be at least partially reversible. That's the suggestion from some early research at Texas Christian University.
That's promising news to parents who adopted children from Russia and Eastern Europe. Up to one third of those children may have trouble cementing ties with their adoptive families and others because of inadequate stimulation and neglect in infancy.
In June and July 1999, two groups of internationally adopted children attended three-week sessions at "Camp Celebration" in Fort Worth, TX. The goal was to use intensive sensory stimulation and a concentrated focus on attachment behaviors to see if the children's behaviors changed. This was the first effort of its kind anywhere. Ten children, aged four through eight, attended one session. Another ten kids, aged 10 through 16, were at a second session.
"We didn't really know what to expect," says David Cross, professor of psychology at TCU, who helped to administer "Camp Celebration," which was a joint project with the TCU Psychology Department, the Parent's Network for Post-Institutionalized Children and the Child Study Center in Fort Worth. He says they hoped for some small changes but accepted that there might be none.
What they found was promising.
Cross and fellow researchers logged an average 31 percent decrease in attachment deficit behaviors--such as lying, stealing, cruelty and food hoarding-- among all campers at the end of their three-week stay. The young children showed more than a 41 percent decrease in such behaviors. The older children showed a 21 percent decrease.
Overall the children also showed a 19 percent increase in attachment behaviors such as willingness to communicate verbally, increase in eye contact, cooperation with the family and genuine expressions of physical affection.
The numbers, however, don't tell the whole story. Cross interviewed six families from the young children's camp at the end of their stay "and it was really dramatic."
"In two of the cases, the parents completely broke down in tears of joy -- the impact on their family was monumental. And they had already started the paperwork to let those kids go."
"One mother told me in amazement about her six-year-old son asking her to rock him to sleep," says TCU doctoral student Karyn Purvis, "something he had never done in the three years since she brought him home. These children have such trust issues that something so basic as falling asleep in their adoptive parent's arms is a major challenge."
"Camp Celebration" was the idea of Purvis and Kathie Seidel, chapter president of the Texas Parent's Network for Post-Institutionalized Children. Purvis was amazed at what she saw at the Camp.
"We had three children who went into spontaneous regression," she says. "That is, they went back to infantile behaviors that they missed or were denied in the orphanages. It appears that what they got at camp allowed them to organize their thinking enough to regress to a time when they needed to bond to someone but couldn't. But this time there was a loving parent at home and they connected."
Children develop attachment disorders if they don't get enough human contact, care and stimulation at an early age. A significant number of children adopted from orphanages in Russia, Romania and China during the 1990s have displayed attachment disorders to varying degrees. Many American couples, desperate to adopt children and frustrated by restrictive U.S. adoption laws, have turned to Eastern Europe and China. At the start of the decade, virtually no children were being adopted from Russia or China. By 1998 those two nations led the list with almost 9,000 children coming to American homes. Many of the parents thought that all problems could be overcome by giving their children lots of love. They found that love was essential, but not always sufficient.
Children with attachment disorders display traits such as stealing, lying about the obvious, cruelty and food hoarding. These become necessary survival skills in places where no one seems to care about them such as an orphanage where basic physical needs may be met but not emotional needs. The result is a change in the brain--an actual physical disfunction.
"A child who has never been connected to anyone lacks moral development because moral development hinges on `I care about you and don't want to hurt you,'" points out Purvis. "Social development follows on `You are responsive to me therefore I want to be responsive to others.'"
"There's a memory in these children who grew up in orphanages that's ingrained deep in their brain stems," says Purvis. "And helping them past that unconscious memory is very, very difficult, sometimes impossible."
At "Camp Celebration," the children engaged in typical activities such as arts, crafts, games, play, and drama. All children made "social contracts" in which they decided on camp goals and behaviors they wanted to work on. Examples: "I will show respect," and "I will practice accepting 'no.'"
Some activities involved "behavioral scripts." The children first would model a wrong attitude or behavior and then the correct one. A camp counselor, for example, would pretend to be the mother and would ask the campers to make their beds. "We videotaped the scenarios and the kids loved watching themselves on instant replay," says Purvis. They also got a chance to see how out-of-control they looked when they were modeling the incorrect responses.
Mixed in were special attachment activities such as "stranger practice" to help them discriminate in asking strangers for affection. "Indiscriminate friendliness is a major problem among post-institutional children," Purvis says.
Sensory activities--thought to help organize brain functions and thinking processes--were woven into every activity. Snacks, crafts, and games were chosen on sensory value. For snacks, sweet tastes are calming and sour tastes are alerting. Making play dough and silly putty provides important tactile sensory input to children. Bubble gum was available at all times. Chewing a wad of the pink stuff gives deep muscle pressure, a sensory activity.
Camp Celebration is scheduled to be held again this summer. Lessons learned will be incorporated into new curriculum and training.
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EDITOR: If you would like to contact David Cross or Karyn Purvis for more information, please feel free to call them at 817-257-7410, the number for the TCU psychology department. E-mail is also a good way to reach Karyn Purvis. bpurvis @aol.com is her address. You can also contact Dick Jones of Dick Jones Communications at 814-867-1963 or [email protected].
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