What to give parents to an adopted child. Raising a foster child: the nuances you should know about. Should I be afraid of blood parents

Irina, 42 years old:

My husband and I were raising a seven-year-old daughter, and we wanted a second child. For medical reasons, my husband could no longer have children, and I offered to take a foster child: I volunteered at the shelter for seven years and knew how to communicate with such children. My husband went along with me, but my parents were categorically against it. They said that the family is not very wealthy, they should raise their own child.

I went against the wishes of my parents. In August 2007, we adopted a one-year-old Misha from the house. The first shock for me was the attempt to rock him. Nothing worked, he rocked himself: he crossed his legs, put two fingers in his mouth and rocked from side to side. Later I realized that the first year of Misha's life in the orphanage became lost: the child did not form an attachment. Children in the baby house are constantly changing nannies so that they do not get used to it. Misha knew that he was adopted. I conveyed this to him carefully, like a fairy tale: I said that some children are born in the stomach, and others in the heart, so you were born in my heart.

Problems arose on the rise. Misha is a manipulator, he is very affectionate when he needs something. If the caress does not work, he throws a tantrum. In kindergarten, Misha began to dress in women's clothes and masturbate in public. He told the teachers that we do not feed him. When he was seven, he told my eldest daughter that it would be better if she had not been born. And when we forbade him to watch cartoons as a punishment, he promised to kill us. He was observed by a neurologist and a psychiatrist, but the drugs did not work on him. At school, he disrupted lessons, beat girls, did not listen to anyone, chose bad company for himself. We were warned that for deviant behavior, our son could be taken away from his family and sent to a closed school. I moved from a small town to the regional center in the hope of finding a normal psychologist there to work with a child. Everything was in vain, I did not find specialists who had experience working with foster children. My husband was tired of all this, and he filed for divorce.

I took the children and went to Moscow to work. Misha continued to do nasty things on the sly. My feelings for him were in constant disarray: from hatred to love, from the desire to kill to heartbreaking pity. All my chronic diseases have worsened. The depression set in.

I firmly believed that love is stronger than genetics. It was an illusion

Once Misha stole a wallet from a classmate. The juvenile inspector wanted to register him, but the parents of the injured boy did not insist. The next day, I brought my son to the store and said: take whatever you need. He scored a basket for 2000 rubles. I paid, I say: look, you have everything. And his eyes are so empty, he looks through me, there is no sympathy or regret in them. I thought that I would be easy with such a child. I myself was a tearaway in childhood, I thought that I could understand him and cope.

A week later, I gave Misha money for an after-school program, and he spent it in a candy machine. I got a call from a teacher who thought he stole the money. I had a nervous breakdown. When Misha returned home, in a state of passion, I slapped him a couple of times and pushed him so that he had a subcapsular rupture of the spleen. They called an ambulance. Thank God no surgery was needed. I was scared and realized that I had to abandon the child. Would I break down again? I don’t want to go to jail, I still have to raise my eldest daughter. A few days later I came to visit Misha in the hospital and saw him in a wheelchair (he could not walk for two weeks). She returned home and cut her veins. My roommate saved me. I spent a month in a psychiatric clinic. I have severe clinical depression and take antidepressants. My psychiatrist forbade me to communicate with the child in person, because all treatment after that goes down the drain.

Misha lived with us for nine years, and for the last year and a half in an orphanage, but legally he is still my son. He never understood that this was the end. Calls sometimes, asks to bring sweets. He never said that he was bored and wanted to go home. He has such a consumer attitude towards me, as if he is calling a delivery service. After all, I don’t have a division - mine or adopted. For me, everyone is family. It's like I've cut off a piece of myself.

Recently I made inquiries about Misha's biological parents. It turned out that on the paternal side he had schizophrenics. His father is very talented: a stove-maker and watchmaker, although he did not study anywhere. Misha looks like him. I wonder what he will grow up to be. He is a nice boy, very charming, dances well, and he has a developed sense of color, he chooses clothes well. He dressed my daughter for prom. But this is his behavior, heredity crossed everything out. I firmly believed that love is stronger than genetics. It was an illusion. One child destroyed my entire family.

“A year after the rejection, the boy came back to me and asked for forgiveness”

Svetlana, 53 years old:

I am an experienced foster mother. She raised her own daughter and two adopted children - a girl, who was returned to the orphanage by foster parents, and a boy. I could not cope with the third one, which I took when the children graduated from school and left to study in another city.

Ilya was six when I took him to me. According to the documents, he was absolutely healthy, but soon I began to notice oddities. I'll make a bed for him - in the morning there is no pillowcase. I ask, where are you going? He does not know. For his birthday, I gave him a huge radio-controlled car. The next day, one wheel was left of it, and where everything else is, he does not know. I began to take Ilya to the doctors. A neurologist diagnosed him with absence epilepsy, which is characterized by short-term blackouts of consciousness without the usual epileptic seizures. Ilya's intellect was preserved, but, of course, the disease affected his psyche.

It was possible to cope with all this, but at the age of 14, Ilya began to use something, what exactly - I never found out. He started freaking out more than before. Everything in the house was broken and broken: the sink, sofas, chandeliers. If you ask Ilya who did it, there is only one answer: I don’t know, it’s not me. I asked him not to use drugs. She said: finish the ninth grade, then you will go to study in another city, and we will part on a good note. And he: “No, I won’t leave here at all, I’ll bring you.”

After a year of war with my adopted son, I started having health problems. She spent a month and a half in the hospital. Discharged, realized that I want to live

After a year of this war, I started having health problems. I spent a month and a half in the hospital with nervous exhaustion and jumping pressure. I checked out, realized that I wanted to live, and refused Ilya. He was taken to an orphanage in the regional center.

A year later, Ilya came to me for the New Year holidays. He asked for forgiveness, said that he did not understand what he was doing, and that now he does not use anything. Then he went back. I don’t know how guardianship works there, but he returned to live with his own alcoholic mother.

Now Ilya is 20. In September, he came to me for a month. I helped him rent an apartment, got him a job. He already has his own family, a child. His epilepsy never went away, sometimes he gets weird over little things.

“The adopted son told his relative that we do not love him and will hand him over to an orphanage”

Evgenia, 41 years old:

When my son was ten years old, we took care of an eight-year-old boy. I have always wanted many children. I myself was the only child in the family, and I really missed my brothers and sisters. No one in our family has the habit of dividing children into friends and foes. The decision was made jointly and they perfectly understood that it would be difficult.

The boy we adopted into the family was already abandoned: the previous guardians returned him two years later with the wording "they did not find a common language." We did not believe this verdict at first. The child made the most positive impression on us: charming, modest, smiling shyly, embarrassed, and quietly answering questions. Later, as time passed, we realized that this was just a way to manipulate people. In the eyes of those around him, he always remained a miracle child, no one could believe that there were real problems in communicating with him.

According to the documents, the boy had only one problem - atopic dermatitis. But it was clear that he was lagging behind in physical development. For the first six months, we went to hospitals and learned more and more new diagnoses, and the diseases were chronic. You can live with all this, the child is fully capable, but why was it necessary to hide this from the guardians? We spent six months on diagnosis, not on treatment.

The boy began his life in our family by telling a bunch of scary stories about his previous guardians, which at first seemed to us to be quite true. When he was convinced that we believed him, he somehow forgot what he was talking about (a child, after all), and it soon became clear that he simply made up most of the stories. He constantly dressed up as girls, in all games he took female roles, climbed under the covers to his son and tried to hug him, walked around the house, lowering his pants, responding to comments that he was so comfortable. Psychologists said that this is normal, but I could not agree with this, after all, my boyfriend is also growing.

The adopted boy managed to bring my mother - a person with iron nerves - to a heart attack

The boy had a real problem with his studies: he was in the second grade, but he could not read, rewrite the text, he could not even count to ten. At the same time, there were only fours and fives in the certificate. I am a teacher by profession, I studied with him. Albeit with difficulty, but he learned a lot, although we had to leave him for the second year. He did not complex at all, and the children accepted him well. In studies, we managed to achieve positive results, but in relations with him - no.

To arouse pity and compassion for himself, the boy told his classmates and teachers how we mock him. We got a call from the school to find out what was going on, because we have always been in good standing. And the boy just felt the weak points of those around him well and, when he needed to, hit them. He simply brought my son to hysteria: he said that we did not love him, that he would stay with us, and that his son would be sent to an orphanage. He did it on the sly, and for a long time we could not understand what was happening. As a result, the son, secretly from us, hung out in computer clubs, began to steal money. We spent six months to bring him home and bring him to his senses. Its OK now.

The boy spent almost ten months with us, and on New Year's Eve, together with our guardians, we decided to send him to a rehabilitation center. This was prompted not only by problems with my own son, but also by the fact that the adopted boy managed to bring my mother, a man with iron nerves, to a heart attack. She spent more time with the kids because I was at work all day. She had to endure constant lies, unwillingness to accept the rules that are in the family. Mom is a very patient person, in all my life I have not heard her yell at someone, but the adopted child managed to piss her off. This was the last straw.

With the advent of the adopted son, the family began to fall apart before our eyes. I realized that I was not ready to sacrifice my son, my mother for the sake of a ghostly hope that everything would be fine. The fact that he was sent to a rehabilitation center, and then they wrote a refusal, the boy was absolutely indifferent. Maybe he's just used to it, or maybe some human feelings have atrophied in him. New guardians were found for him, and he left for another region. Who knows, maybe things will work out there. Although I don't really believe in it.

It is depressing that the number of abandoned children is growing year by year. But we should be proud of those families who decided to take a child from an orphanage. For the most part, these are people who do not seek to receive benefits for a foster child, they love children and want to give them a piece of warmth and love.

If people take a baby from an orphanage, they raise it like their own child. There are cases when these children never find out that they are not related by blood. But, how to properly raise a child who is taken from an orphanage at an age when he already understands that he did not have a mom and dad, and now they have? You have discussed possible development options in the family, and are ready to reckon with. You are ready for the fact that a person with his own habits, tastes and interests will come to the house. Now it is worth learning about some of the problems that can arise in the process of raising a foster child.

Adopted children in the family - features of education

Are you sure that you have calculated your strengths, and they will be enough to take an adopted child into the family and raise him as your own? After all, this is not a thing that can be returned to the store if it did not suit you in some way. Children are characterized by disobedience, whims, tantrums and tears. And this applies not only to children from the orphanage, all children are the same. The main thing to remember is that if you fail to fulfill your obligations and return the baby to the shelter, you will sow hostility and hatred towards people in his soul. He will finally be disappointed in himself, life and the people around him. After all, after the betrayal of the relatives of mom and dad, a “blow” from foster parents followed.

There are several rules, following which, you can understand how the right decision you make when accepting an orphan child into your family.

You must know what kind of child you have chosen from all the children in the orphanage. Talk to caregivers, nannies, and teachers. Give your child as much free time as you can. It is impossible to rely on the behavior of the child himself in this matter. After all, each of those kids who live in a shelter passionately dreams of finding a mom and dad. The child will "go out of his way" to show himself only from the best side. Do not allow yourself to make an impulsive decision, spend at least a month communicating with your baby.

After the child has already been at home, a wave of euphoria from the happiness of being in a family overwhelms him with renewed vigor. In a foster family, orphans take a long time to adapt. The same can be said about parents who get used to their "new" adult child. He may call you mom and dad from the moment they met, but that doesn't mean he's used to you. He really wants not to upset adults and please you even more. The child shows maximum activity and goodwill, he expects to be praised and paid attention to.

Adaptation.

The attack of euphoria will gradually pass, and everyday life will remain. It will be necessary to live on, to look for common ground and mutual understanding in the new family. The next stage in the behavior of the adopted child is denial and contradiction. He tries to achieve concessions and in every possible way shows his character. Why? The answer is that it is important for him to know the boundaries of what is permitted in this family. Carlson's phrase is appropriate here: “Calm! Only calm! So you keep in order the nervous system of all family members and the family itself. Purposefully and methodically explain to the child that he is doing wrong. Give examples of how to behave. Don't fight and don't shout! However, do not allow yourself to be manipulated and indulge his whims. Some parents, desperate to cope with such behavior, bring themselves to depression. Never, even in moments of despair, remind your child that he owes you as a foster parent. What, if not for you, he was now in an orphanage. Sooner or later, you will be ashamed of your weakness, and the child will hate you.

How long this period will last, no one knows. It all depends on you and. The next period in raising a foster child is a reward for your nerves and resentment.

The upbringing of a foster child in a family begins with these main periods. They are long and painful. The total time of adaptation and getting used to each other by both parties can last up to 5 years. So, stock up on a lot of patience and love.

Adopted children are problem children

If a child who is born in a family is uncontrollable, then adopted children who are not yet familiar with the rules and laws of your family will cause some problems. Knowing in advance what you will experience, you can prepare for problems in advance.

Even before adopting a child, decide among yourselves whether you will tell him in the future that he is adopted. If you think that the baby should never know that he is not your own, make sure that this information does not come to him from outside. It's one thing if he hears it from you, another thing from strangers. He will decide that you have been lying to him all your life, and now you have betrayed him. This statement defies any logic, but, as a rule, this is exactly what adopted children say.


When you take a child into the family who remembers his biological parents, there are serious difficulties associated with the fact that the baby constantly draws a parallel between you and his mom and dad. In comparison of two families, the first will be the best for him. Even if his parents who beat and offended him, they will be shrouded in the memories of the child with an aura of love and longing. Get ready for this turn of events. "Close your eyes" to these statements and comparisons. Otherwise, by proving the opposite, you will only turn the child against you.
Stereotypes about children from an orphanage are disgusting. But, in most cases, deprived of the most necessary, these guys are seen stealing. Once you know for sure that the child stole from your pocket, in the store, from a classmate or sister, take action! No matter what, and how much he took. The main thing is that he coveted someone else's. Talk to the child, identify the reason for his act. Provide him with everything he needs, just do not overdo it so as not to spoil him.
If there are other children in the house, explain to the foster child that many things are different in the family than in the orphanage. If there it was accepted that all things are common and do not have one owner, then here each family member has his own things, which can be taken only with the permission of the owner. Try not to offend the child with this statement, it will take time, and he will get used to it.

A family grows a native child who knows you from birth, is used to the rules established in the house. For him, your love and care is a common thing, for this you do not need to do anything and prove that he is good. With an adopted baby, things are different. Therefore, you need to know what the child you have taken from the shelter expects from you.

The child must be sure that you love him in any case. Feeling does not depend on any circumstances. It doesn't matter to you that he studies poorly or stepped on the cat's tail. You must love the child not for its merits or demerits, but for the fact that he is in this world and he is next to you.
Let your child know that you respect every decision they make. He deserves respect as a person, as a person. This will allow the child and self-respect.
Don't make your child afraid of you. The feeling of fear is not the feeling that gives rise to love and respect.
Attention in relation to the child should always be close. You must know what is happening to him, what worries and worries him. This will allow you to take action in time and avoid trouble in the future.

Those who want to take a child from an orphanage, but have doubts, need to find foster parents with a lot of experience. Talk to them, tell them about what stops and scares you about the issue of a foster child. The advice of those who bring up foster children boils down to the following positions:

Learn from those who have already gone through the difficult path of raising foster children;
Do not lose even in difficult situations;
Faith in the Almighty and his laws save from despair and help to find a way out;
Love the adopted child more than yourself.

Ways to solve social problems of adopted children

Therefore, you need to know the standard situations and ways to resolve conflicts.

A child who has spent his whole life in the company of the same disadvantaged children has. They are explained by the fact that the baby has always been left to himself. No one explained anything to him, did not talk to him, and did not solve his problems. Therefore, do not "fight" from the first days. First determine the cause of fear, its origins. Take it step by step - first gain the trust of the baby, give him the opportunity to tell about his fear, and then solve this problem together.

Accustomed to living among people who know his abilities and abilities, appearing in a new team, the child becomes an outcast. After all, children are cruel, they do not care about the true motives of why a classmate does not want to communicate with them. They deny his presence, and try to "annoy". Perhaps the reason that the child does not study well is the unwillingness to learn and go to school.

Get your child interested in learning new things. . Twos are corrected by fives, which children receive as soon as they feel the strength and understand that gaining knowledge is interesting.

Foster children need to be taught what money is. It is necessary to give a precise formulation of how to use them, and what benefits can be obtained if the means are used rationally. Give your child some money once a week. Together with him, determine the material benefits that he wants to receive. Depending on what the baby is planning to buy, set a goal. Explain to the child that if he wants to buy a bike, then spending the entire amount that you give him regularly will not achieve his goal. Allocate your child's pocket money as follows:

School breakfasts;
Travel to and from school
Movie and popcorn expenses;
The amount you need to set aside to buy a bike.

If you are thinking about adopting a child from a shelter or orphanage, prepare mentally in advance for the fact that from this moment your life will change. Patience and love will help you in this noble cause.

For 11 months of its existence, it has already prepared 30 graduate families. Ten of them were taken to raise children. In addition to the standard program developed by the city's Department of Family and Youth Policy, future adoptive parents can undergo catechesis at the school, communicate with a priest, and also meet with those families who are already raising foster children. Upon completion of training, a state document is issued - since September, such a certificate of completion of special courses has become mandatory for potential adoptive parents.

Bishop Panteleimon of Smolensk and Vyazemsky Panteleimon tells the portal about what future adoptive parents should learn and how to cope with spiritual difficulties.

What is the main knowledge that potential adoptive parents need to acquire? And does the theoretical preparation for parenthood really help in practice?

Of course, it is necessary to acquaint the adoptive parents with the characteristics of children who, for some reason, find themselves outside the family. These features, as a rule, are common to all such children: a complex psyche, lack of bodily health, and often a developmental delay. The usual criteria of pedagogy do not apply to these children. Since the adults who live and work with the children in the orphanage change all the time, the child does not develop a stable attachment to them, and often he does not know how to love. Injured children easily switch from one to another, they do not have any stability in life ... In general, an adopted child is not a clean slate, different scribbles and even bad words have already been written in his soul.

In addition to psychology, adoptive parents must find out in detail the legal side of the issue in order to know both their rights and the rights of blood parents.

But in addition to special knowledge, the main thing that future parents should learn is the ability to love such children themselves. And for this you need a constant appeal to the Source of love - to God. Through prayer, the sacraments of the Church, reading the Scriptures, and keeping the commandments, the Lord gives us a feeling of true love. A person should have an understanding that raising a child is a feat, for which only the Lord gives strength. “Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me” (Matthew 18:5).

Parents, fulfilling the words of Christ, should ask for help from the One Who commanded them to treat with compassion and sympathy for someone else's grief, especially since here we are dealing with a child's misfortune.

What motives most often make you think about adoption? How to understand whether a person is ready to take on the upbringing of an adopted child?

First of all, we work not with the desire of any person, but with the family. There is no goal to educate as many families as possible. We try to find an individual approach. It is important that the decision to adopt a child is considered.

There should be normal relations within the family - a conscious desire to have children for all its members. The consent of the husband, as well as blood children, if any, is required. We do not consider single women who want a child as candidates for foster parents. But, of course, each case is individual, so only the confessor of a particular family can give such advice: take a child or the family is not yet ready for this.

The courses of foster parents are just what is needed in order not to hide all the difficulties, but to tell them honestly about them - and the decision remains with the family. You need to be aware that if there is misunderstanding, jealousy in the family, then all these problems will increase many times over if a child from the orphanage appears, who, moreover, will immediately draw all attention to himself, because he does not know how to share his love and does not know how to live in family.

Sometimes you have to take off the "rose-colored glasses" from parents who think that the child they adopt will now be grateful to them for the rest of their lives. A deliberate decision to adopt becomes when a person realizes that he is going to a feat for the sake of a child.

Most often, difficulties do not frighten those who have not been able to give birth to their own children for a long time. The desire to be a parent is inherent in everyone's nature. Despite the fact that in our time people often do not even think about family and children until reaching a mature and very mature age, as a result, the majority still comes to such a decision. But there are other cases when people who are already raising several children understand how important it is for a child to live in a family and decide to take in another one - a foster one. It happens that someone else's grief just touches the depths of the soul.

When our natural child is born, we, fortunately, cannot choose what eye color, character, illnesses, etc. he will have - parents have to love him the way he is. But how to choose a child in an orphanage? And is it possible to make a choice?

I think that it is permissible to choose an adopted child: you need to see and understand whether you will love him, whether your heart will be disposed towards him. Of course, this choice of the heart needs to be checked by the mind. Soberly assess whether your family can afford to take a child if he is seriously ill, for example, or is already old enough and has managed to acquire some very bad habits - you won’t be able to change him radically. But the voice of the heart is still worth listening to - after all, the Lord Himself can indicate that this is your very child. Moreover, the child himself will like you.

In practice, it happens that it is not you who choose from a large number of children, but consultants advise you yourself - not children are matched to parents, but parents are matched to children. It is worth listening to these recommendations.

Many parents complain that even at an early age they cannot bring their own children into the Church. And what about the children from the orphanage? Are they capable, in your experience, of living in a churched family?

Knowing the experience of Orthodox orphanages, I can say that a very large percentage of their graduates then do not leave the Church. There are cases that some graduates become the wives of priests.

Without having the fear of God in oneself, one cannot teach it to one's child. Conversely, if the ordinances are of great importance to the parent, this example is passed on to the children. The most important thing is for us to constantly be with Christ, to be in search of the main gift, the main goal - the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

And although we can and should force ourselves to love, fulfill the commandments, and even just get up early in the morning on a day off and go to church, then, of course, you cannot force a child. Here a creative approach is needed, because the family traditions of a pious life have not been preserved. Every family needs to find their own way. Therefore, it is also important to communicate with other families, share experiences.

- Is there a continuation of the school of adoptive parents - a club for those who have already adopted?

In order to provide real assistance, it is necessary to maintain relations with our foster families even after adoption. We already have such a club, and in the future our goal is to create an association of Orthodox parents that would help families raise children, including adopted ones. After all, the Church is a family, and all communities, ideally, should be such close-knit families where they help each other, and in raising children too.

What today is perceived by many as a kind of exotic: adoption, and so on, is actually natural and normal, and you can learn this only by having a living example before your eyes.

Moreover, over time, we must come to the conclusion that such family clubs unite into a parent association and become a real social force - they could express their opinion about various dangerous trends. In the end, due to the fact that the legislation in the field of social protection of children is changing, this association could participate in deciding whether to take a particular child from a particular family or not.

Still, despite all the differences and problems that adoptive parents face, the life of all families develops according to some general rules: there are fasts, holidays, common affairs. Parents should take care of the churching of the child from early childhood, and despite the fact that many of our adults themselves still know little about church life, they have to overcome many difficulties along the way. In this, families should support each other, help.

- Do people with such experience teach in the Orthodox school of adoptive parents?

Yes, the courses are taught by a priest and a novice of the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent - both of them grew up in families with many children. Or, for example, some classes are taught by a woman who worked as a director in an Orthodox orphanage for ten years, raised children deprived of their parents - one might say, she lived with them as one family.

But the main thing that I would like is that those who come to the school of foster parents firmly understand that we cannot do anything without God, and that they turn to Him more often. Raising other people's children, without exaggeration, is a feat, but it is important to remember that in the person of an adopted child you can serve Christ - the Son of God, who gave His life for us and adopted all of us to God. This is the path where it will not be easy at all, but here the Lord Himself will help you. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls,” says Christ, “for My yoke is easy, and My burden is light” (Matthew 11: 29-30).

Reference

The Orthodox school for adoptive parents is one of the areas of work of the Center for Family Placement - a project of the Orthodox help service "Mercy".

There are more and more adoptive parents. Only in Moscow in 2010 the number of foster families increased by 15 times. According to the Department of Family and Youth Policy of the city of Moscow, more than 2,000 children ended up in families - they were adopted, taken under guardianship, in foster care or in a foster family. What motives prompt the decision to take one, and sometimes several children?

“Of course, childless couples thus get the opportunity to become parents, but for many the main motive is to take the child from the orphanage, to become a family for him,” explains psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya. “More and more adults decide to take a foster child because they understand that they have the strength, health and resources in order to change the childhood of this child and be responsible for his fate.”

Adoption is a difficult and long process. It requires such energy that parents often endure only because their heart is warmed by the ideal image of a long-awaited child. But, as with the appearance of their own children, they inevitably face the fact that their ideas about the child to one degree or another do not correspond to reality.

The more future adoptive parents know, the less illusions they have, the less disappointments they will have.

“It is dangerous to load children with your expectations of what they should be,” the psychologist warns. “Too often it ends in parent disappointment and child protest. After all, it is important for him, like any person, to be loved without conditions, simply because he is.

When an adopted child enters a family, then everyone - both he and his new parents - needs time to orient and build a new order. And he won't always act like the one his adoptive parents dreamed of. The more prepared adults are for this meeting, the less illusions they have about the unborn child, the less disappointment they will have.

1. It is better to adopt a baby

A baby is not a blank page at all, it already has its own history. Those who believe that they can completely “rewrite” it and forget that the child is adopted are mistaken. Until he is six months old (and sometimes more), it is difficult to assess the risk that before or after birth he could suffer any diseases or injuries.

“Not all parents can cope with such a level of uncertainty, and not everyone is ready to mess with a baby,” emphasizes Lyudmila Petranovskaya. “But for the baby himself, it is undoubtedly important that he be taken away from the orphanage as early as possible - every day he spends here slows down his development.”

Of course, more can be found out about the physical and mental development of older children. And it is easier for adoptive parents to make an informed decision. In addition, children with the experience of family life with biological parents - even if it was not the best experience, but they were loved and cared for at least occasionally - adapt faster in a foster family, they develop sincere affection earlier.

“Such a child knows what it means to be a child in a family, he is oriented towards adults, ready to listen to them, trust them,” the psychologist continues. - In a sense, he shares the adoption process ... and he also "takes into the family" new parents. And for someone who does not have experience of close relationships with adults, it is more difficult to believe that he is loved, such children simply do not know what it means to love. Therefore, they are easier to handle for adults who are not the first or not the first adopted child.

“I immediately had the feeling that this is my child”

Seven years ago, 45-year-old Inna, an executive in the hotel business, decided to adopt a child. Now, together with a common-law husband, they are already raising three adopted children.

Inna and her adopted children: Maria, Macarius, Irina

“I grew up with siblings and always dreamed of a big family. But for a long time it didn't work. When, after several years of infertility treatment, the doctors suggested that I do IVF, I decided that it was enough to mock my own body. And refused. But the desire to have children remained - I thought about adoption. To better understand what it is and how it all happens, I graduated from the school of foster parents. However, I did not apply for adoption right away: it took me another six months to make a final decision and prepare for the birth of a child.

The common-law husband has a child from his first marriage, so I was the main "ideologist" of adoption. My husband always supports me, he has a wonderful relationship with children. I saw a photograph of a month-old Marusya on one of the forums where adoptive parents communicate. There were three children in the picture, but for some reason it was her face with touching eyebrows that hooked me. I realized that I wanted to meet the girl, and called the guardianship authorities.

When Marusya was brought to the hospital, I immediately had the feeling that this was my child. Such a natural feeling, as if in the morning I took her to the nursery, and now I came to pick it up ... So the first daughter appeared in my family. Similar feelings arose when I met Makarushka and Irisha. Each of these meetings was associated with a chain of accidents and coincidences. And at the same time, I understand: they would hardly have happened if I had not had a sense of purpose, some pressure and a very strong desire to have children.

The similarity of appearance or character does not matter for family relationships. Any child, as soon as he has an attachment to new parents, becomes like them. “He involuntarily begins to copy their facial expressions, gestures,” says Lyudmila Petranovskaya. - I often see such cases. The behavior of children does not depend on their nationality or race. So, in a loving family with two adopted children, after some time they, representatives of completely different nationalities, were taken by others for twins.

And yet, it is more difficult for children with Asian appearance to find a family. This is due to the prejudices of potential parents.

“The inability to accept representatives of a different culture, fear of people of a different nationality, religion means that they are also not ready to tolerate any discrepancy with their own views and family traditions,” the psychologist continues. - And this is a serious contraindication to foster parenthood. Xenophobia is rarely limited to intolerance only towards one or another nationality. And this means that parents will be just as biased towards everything in the child that differs from the stereotype they are used to.

When we say that we love a child, it means that we accept him unconditionally, we love him simply for what he is.

Parents are overweight, and the child is thin, parents are active, and the child is slow and unhurried - one cannot predict in advance where rejection may arise. The more traits and qualities parents reject in a child, the worse the relationship between them. Intolerant parents have less margin of safety against possible difficulties.

3. We must love him like our own.

When we say that we love a child, it means that we accept him unconditionally, we love him simply for the fact that he is and he is our child. Sometimes parents, especially if they have the experience of "blood" parenthood, worry that they "do not manage to love the adopted child as their own." How to be then?

“Emotionally, people are very different from each other,” says Lyudmila Petranovskaya. - Someone manages to fall in love easily and quickly, while for someone the process of attachment is stretched over time. We cannot control feelings. It remains to wait ... and love actively: take care of the child, listen to him, delve into the details of his life outside the home, try to understand and accept, rejoice in his success.

Sometimes rejection arises at the bodily level: in order to take a child in his arms, an adult needs to make an effort. “Usually, such rejection first arises at the moment of acquaintance,” says Lyudmila Petranovskaya. “You shouldn’t fight with yourself: no one is to blame, and it’s better to let the child feel welcome in another family, with other parents.”

4. It is better for a child not to know that he is adopted.

Cheating distorts relationships. “Ask yourself,” suggests Lyudmila Petranovskaya, “would you like your loved ones to hide something very important from you? It is difficult to find a person who would like to remain in the dark ... And information about adoption is an important part of the personal history, and therefore the personality of the child.

Trying to circumvent this fact, foster parents deny what happened to the child, deprive him of the opportunity to organically build this event into knowledge about himself. Sometimes adults explain their behavior by not wanting to hurt their son or daughter.

“This happens only if the parents themselves see adoption as a problem,” Lyudmila Petranovskaya objects. - The child does not know the real picture of the world, he is focused on how adults relate to what is happening. In addition, by hiding the truth from the child, adults make themselves hostages of chance: a “benevolent” remark of a neighbor, found documents, a mismatch in blood type ... Sooner or later, the secret becomes clear. And it is difficult to predict what the reaction of a grown child may be when he finds out that the closest people lied to him.

5. He will have a bad heredity

The biggest fear of parents is that their adopted child will inherit some kind of disease or some kind of "life trouble": he will drink, walk, will not study ... "Indeed, there are diseases that are inherited," says Lyudmila Petranovskaya. “In the case of an adopted child, potential parents are primarily afraid of the unknown.”

The very fact of adoption is an important part of the personal history, and hence the personality of the child. You need to talk to him about this.

In Russia, it is difficult to find a family in which there is not and has not been at least one drinking person. Many people in our country have a predisposition to alcohol addiction. But this does not mean that each of them becomes an alcoholic. “There is a predisposition, and what a person does with it, in what atmosphere he grows up,” continues the psychologist. “It is very important that parents not only support the child, but also be able to limit, warn of danger.”

6. He wants to find his biological parents

“Such a desire often arises in adolescence, at a time when the child is trying to understand, to truly know himself in order to become an adult,” says Lyudmila Petranovskaya. - It can be of a different nature, from passive (“it would be nice to know”) to very active actions. Sometimes it is enough for a child to simply learn something about his parents, sometimes it is important for him to see them, to meet them. In this case, it is worth helping him find relatives. There is nothing dangerous in this desire for foster parents - children value the relationships that they have.

Someone has fantasies that their real parents are famous people, movie stars or show business who dream of reuniting with them... Adult support is needed to survive the disappointment that can occur after meeting biological parents. At the same time, teenagers are usually very grateful to adoptive parents if this topic is discussed in the family, and even more so if adults are ready to help them find their story.

I have often heard from colleagues that adopted child cannot become native. He will be loved, he will be accepted in the family, he will be given affection and warmth, he will be provided for, brought up, etc. But he can't become a family. Because native is from the word “clan”, and a child born from other mothers and fathers does not belong to this particular clan of the adoptive parents.

I honestly never understood this idea. Curiously, it became especially popular after Hellinger's method of constellations penetrated into our psychological community, although whether everything can be "written off" to Hellinger is a difficult question. Nevertheless, I will try to justify why I do not consider it right to mystify the genus. And the fact that it is a hoax that is happening - you will understand a little later, I hope.

I think that there is no real difference between an adopted child and a natural one. Provided, of course, that the decision to adopt a foster child is a conscious and sincere desire of the parents. Then the upbringing of adopted children will be no different from the upbringing of relatives. Let's just say that the blood factor is something that is usually given too much attention.

Most of our families, alas, are too "obsessed" with this factor. If you think about it, the blood factor provides the basis for all sorts of things. “You are our blood, our son / daughter, therefore you are obliged ...” - then there is a list of what the child owes to parents upon the fact that he was given life. However, children are also included in these manipulations, sometimes considering their parents obliged to help them until the end of their days.

Adopted child- the one who can say “you are not my relatives” (the consequence is “I will not listen to you”). This is exactly what mother and father are afraid of, tormented by questions, for example, the adoption of children, if for some reason it is impossible to have their own. But the most interesting thing is that a blood child can also say “you don’t owe me anything, I didn’t ask to give birth to me.” Just blood seems to many to be a sufficient basis for presenting possessive ambitions and serves as something of a guarantor of their fulfillment.

In fact, everything in such cases is built not on blood, but on the systematic intimidation of the child, which often results in a feeling of guilt. In fact, you can effectively intimidate both native and non-native, and the effect, I assure you, will be. The only question is why?

But there is an answer to this too: because the parents themselves have a strong fear of being insufficiently prioritized for the child and not being able to control him. And the essence is not in blood, but in control, fear and guilt. By itself, the blood, its group and composition does not affect the child's perception of the attitude of the parents towards him. Parental upbringing can give rise to the same emotions in adopted children and in native children. Because of the attitude towards children, and not because of the composition of the blood.

Another form of “fixation” on this factor is the desire that the offspring, like 2 drops of water, resemble a husband / wife / relatives. But after all, this is essentially not a desire to raise another person, but a desire to repeat oneself (or one’s feelings for a woman / man), to love oneself and one’s feelings in a child, or symbolically “appropriate” a loved one.

Although, there have been stories more than once when a mother, who was “crazy” about some man, having given birth to a child from him, then was disappointed in him, and even worse - when he left her and / or did what, in her understanding, was called meanness, and it doesn’t matter what it really was.

The important thing is that the child quickly ceased to be so loved. And then he had to carry a fair part of his own life on his shoulders (or rather, in his soul) the unconscious revenge of his mother, who gave birth to him "not from that."

The blood factor is considered by many to be indispensable in order to love a child. The most important is the similarity to the mother and father, and the expectations that are placed on such a child. About his personality, his possible interests, his features and dissimilarity to his parents, which will always be in his personality, even if he is blood - no one, as a rule, wants to think about this.

Our patriarchal society also “helps” this - often they will consider a full-fledged family only if they have their own, that is, the ability to physically give birth to a person becomes the main one for judging the happiness and completeness of the family. But how children are brought up, and what grows out of them - all this is sometimes not taken into account.

The presence of adopted children instead of their own, blood, is sometimes considered something like a disability - “if they could not give birth to their own, well, at least this” ... As a result, an adopted child risks becoming something like an attempt to compensate for “inferiority”, and the children themselves turn into into "bad substitutes" for what should actually be. And as a result, adopted children feel really not loved, but they do not understand well for the time being, because of what.

Meanwhile, the injuries that colleagues write about a lot about children from the orphanage, in 95% of cases occur with their own children in their own families. Because in many ways they are born because it is “necessary”, “accepted”, “supposed”, and in some cases, wanting to somehow appropriate part of the husband / wife, continue again.

And as a result of this, the offspring often suffer no less than those from the orphanage, from a lack of attention from parents, a lack of tactile contact, from a lack of unconditional acceptance of their personality, which is not like their parents, from the fact that it does not live up to the expectations placed on it.

In practice, I have often come across already adult children, whose parents to this day did not get tired of reproaching them that they were born “not beautiful enough” and “did not improve the breed”. This is the reality of our Soviet and post-Soviet reality, alas.

In fact, a lot depends on the attitude towards the child and on education. From the awareness of parents. If parents want to invest in helping another person, in helping to grow, to fulfill themselves (and not the expectations of their parents), they want to help open up, they want to start a new life, the upbringing of adopted children will be the same as it will be or would be for blood.

Yes, orphanage children may be more traumatized initially, but if the parents are conscious individuals, then it will be easier for such a child to cope with their injuries and grow that basic trust that all psychologists talk about.

The reality of our country, in which this whole situation with abandoned children exists, is the fruit of an unconscious, primitive, I would say, attitude towards children. The terms that parents often “crush” their children (“already 25, you need to give birth urgently, otherwise you won’t have time”, “make us happy with your grandchildren”, “continue the race”), a society that promotes childbearing as part of social usefulness, poor enlightenment in the field of contraception gives rise to a huge number of abandoned children.

And there are very few conscious parents. And sometimes adopted children end up in the same families where there is no sufficiently conscious attitude towards them, and where they are again faced with the need to realize not themselves, but expectations, and solve their problems - their self-affirmation at the expense of children, their attempt to find the meaning of life at the expense of children, to receive a portion of approval from society (praise for mercy and dedication in raising foster children, etc.)

There is only one conclusion from this - normal, full-fledged, really psychologically adapted children, developed and healthy, can grow up only in a family where parents are sufficiently conscious. And whether they are adopted or relatives is not so important.

Moreover, you can’t even put the question like that, because adopted children for whom adults have taken responsibility are, by definition, relatives. In fact, responsibility and desire to build relationships for life.

Who else can become your family, if not the one who lives with you for the beginning of 20 years under the same roof, and then one way or another relies on you all his life?

Those who plan to adopt children also face this issue. We are now talking about those who were adopted in infancy and do not remember the very fact of adoption.

That's just how? Especially if this family is in another country, drunk, etc. And does the child need such contacts? Another argument was that the children would allegedly be deceived. I will try to speculate on such arguments.

Blood relationship and mystification of the clan

I believe that the family is a system, and that the clan is a special reality, mental, physiological, cultural. But, as it seems to me, everything can be either together, or not at all. Does the human body exist without the brain? Can the psyche live without the surrounding reality? And is a culture possible that is not expressed by thoughts and actions?

Now think: if a child, apart from blood, has nothing that would make him belong to another genus, and a person lives with a different genus in his mental, cultural, emotional and even territorial life, then according to whose rules his body will “play” in b O more degree?

According to those in which he lives, and there is a lot of evidence for this.

I had an interesting example in practice: a woman became pregnant from one man, but the relationship went very wrong at the very beginning of pregnancy. And that woman met another. And he wanted to take her along with the unborn child. Their relationship turned out to be strong, he adopted the girl, her own father did not seek to communicate with her. The girl always knew that she had a dad. She found out later that he was a stepfather, as an adult. And this did not change her relationship with her dad, whom she still considers dad.

Interesting otherwise. This girl is like 2 drops of water similar .... to my stepfather. At the same time, the stepfather and her own father are not similar to each other, and the mother is generally of a different type, of a different “suit”. And at the same time, the girl looks exactly like her stepfather. Eye color, hair structure, facial features. In this marriage, there was also a common son, the girl's brother. He looks like a dad not as strikingly as a step-daughter looks like.

Can blood by itself exist as a separate reality that affects a person to a greater extent than the environment, the psychological environment where he lives, the cultural reality of the family that adopted him, traditions, customs, the level of development of the family? Blood, of course, carries some special genetic information, but this may turn out to be just a drop in the number of factors that can significantly affect the development of the child and the perception of oneself in the context of the genus. Rod is not only blood and genetics. It is a combination of a huge number of factors.

An abandoned child is abandoned for various reasons. It happens that the mother of the child is a teenage girl who may regret what she did, but believes that it was better for everyone. The news of such parents does not always traumatize the child, and, growing up, he is likely to understand the reasons why his own mother did this.

But it is a completely different matter (and this is more common in the practice of adoption) when parents, for example, alcoholics, are deprived of parental rights, or are unable to exercise parental functions for other reasons related to social and other inadequacy in behavior. And in such cases, the news of such parenthood often causes growing children to feel guilty, feeling that they are “not like normal children.”

I have come across similar cases in practice. Often children, upon learning about adoption, began to be ashamed of their past, which they did not even remember. But, while developing in a normal family and learning about adoption, children often began to worry about whether they could fit in with their new family, which they had previously perceived as their own.

And this generated a lot of unpleasant effects - shame, guilt, which I already mentioned, fear that something from real parents will appear in them and the like (even if the adoptive parents did not speak badly about blood parents). Sometimes children also felt resentment at their adoptive parents for telling them about the adoption. The children often saw this as rejection by their adoptive parents, and no amount of loving words were effective enough.

The feeling of rejection arose because in the story of adoption, the children themselves saw the unwillingness of the adoptive parents to consider them completely theirs. Calls to honor such consanguinity may not help the child, but on the contrary, injure him. After all, if the whole life of a child is connected with one family, and, nevertheless, they point out to him that there is also some other one with which he is connected, he feels torn apart, split.

Could the knowledge that he has a different blood somehow improve his life? None of the psychologists talk about this. And this is not surprising. We don't know much about blood factors. Perhaps - they really mean something, and there are some special energies of the family, but we can interact productively with them when we can touch the history of the family, build relationships with its members, study generic programs and scenarios.

However, this is possible only when a child in this family was born and has access to the "ancestral archive". In the case of adoption, this is unlikely. And an adopted child carries much more programs of the adoptive family than blood programs.

Even if the latter somehow manifest themselves, they will still be corrected and lived within the framework of the new family. What then is the deep meaning of telling the child about what he is unlikely to ever learn, and what he, most likely, will not be able to touch in reality?

The trauma of abandonment will always be with the child in his unconscious. But any psychologist will say that not all traumas and not always should be taken out of the unconscious. It is not in vain that the human psyche has protective mechanisms, sometimes forcing into the subconscious what a person cannot cope with. And some deep experiences of the infancy period may well be leveled over time by a new attitude towards oneself, which a new family can help bring up.

The trauma will go into the deep past and has every chance not to manifest itself in an active format in adulthood. But a story can sometimes activate this trauma, transfer it to the realm of awareness. And a child of any age may not be ready to accept this trauma.

I wrote about the effects of such a story in the previous paragraph. Therefore, parents should think carefully - are they ready to face the consequences of this trauma activated by their own hands?

Child protection

The secret becomes clear - just a beautiful formulation. In fact, it is enough to analyze your own life. Has everything that you don't want to tell others become clear? Hardly. And with a competent approach to the issue, any disclosure can be avoided. To do this, sometimes it is enough to change the place of residence or at least arrange the appearance of the child in such a way, for example, by leaving for a while, so that “well-wishers” simply have no reason to gossip.

Yes, there are certain sacrifices. But parents who care about them adopted child, I think, they will make such sacrifices in order to protect their child from unnecessary conversations of some third-party people. And to base their confessions to the child on the fear of some potential "well-wisher" - it turns out that then the parents of the adopted child solve their problems of fear, rather than think about the feelings of the child himself.

“Foster children feel that something is wrong” is a common belief of many people who talk about adoption. Yes, children feel. If the parents themselves constantly think that he is “not native”, they are tormented by the questions “won’t anyone tell?”, Or by the question “when to tell?”, they are tormented by assumptions “whether something like this will appear in him .... » etc.

Children always feel the anxiety of their parents. But what if the parents don't worry? Then the children will not feel any "trick". This has also been verified in practice.

I happened to know several families with adopted children. And despite the fact that these families had their own children - one or two, the parents decided to raise the adopted one as their own and absolutely on a par with their natural children. The effect is quite adequate - foster children do not feel anything "such". Because their parents do not experience chronic anxiety about this issue. And do not mystify such mechanisms.

About the parents themselves

Of course, I do not mean to say that there are no cases where it makes sense to tell a child the truth about his adoption. But all this is individual. Another thing is important - if the parents decide to take into the family an adopted child of such an age when he can easily not remember the very fact of adoption, then why and why are they so actively worried about their status and the status of the adopted child? What is the fundamental difference here?

When giving birth to their own, parents take 100% responsibility for it. And here they also take 100% responsibility for the adopted child.

And the question arises - is it not in the head of the parents themselves this need to tell? What are they afraid of? That the child wouldn't love them enough if they didn't tell the truth? Or that they themselves will not love him enough, and they need to have an excuse for such a case?

The other extreme....

When parents are afraid of the fire that the child will learn the truth about adoption. Then, it turns out, the parents themselves strongly mystify this blood factor. It is as if a child, having learned that he is not his own, will immediately devalue everything that was done for him, cross out all care, and stop loving his only parents.

What are these parents worried about? Most often, this is an implicitly experienced guilt / shame for not being able to give birth to their own. Probably, the parents in such a family were left with a sense of inferiority. And inside there may be a hidden belief that the child, having learned that he is not his own, will surely, as it were, reveal this inferiority, make it obvious both for others and for him, the child. And he will reject his parents because of their "inferiority."

In fact, this is only the conviction of the parents themselves and that layer of society that “helped” them to assimilate this idea. And in order to stop being afraid of disclosure, it would be good to deal with your “inferiority” from a psychologist. Because otherwise the child will have to be raised in constant tension and fear, and children feel everything perfectly, and, as already noted above, the child is able to feel that “something is wrong”, but this is “not so” - only the state of the parents, and not the very fact of the foster family.

.... I happened to work in a shelter where abandoned children were brought. We already had more or less adult children, from 4-5 years and more. And they knew they were abandoned. Their biggest dream was to have a family, and simply forget about what was somehow wrong, there was abandonment, shelter, and, in fact, other people's educators. They wanted to become family to someone and forget about what happened to them.

It didn’t matter to them whether they would have relatives with their new dad and mom or adoptive ones. They wanted warmth, affection, care and sincere participation, they wanted to have people who would be their support, protection and whom they could trust.

After all, the family is those who raised and loved us, and not those who simply gave the biomaterial for conception. And all our mistakes, injuries, problems, successes and achievements depend on those with whom we grew up. To a greater extent, at least.

So that, with his family behind him, the child needs, first of all, mom and dad, who are not afraid of life, the way it turned out for them, and there is no single unambiguous strategy, when and how to speak / not to speak - it does not exist. There is you, your life and your child. And if there is acceptance, trust and love in a relationship, you and your child will be able to cope with any situation and keep good feelings for each other forever.