What an adopted child. Adopted children: controversial points. We must love him as our own

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 of 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 hysterics: 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.

Recently, more and more Russians are accepting orphans into their families. But when raising adopted children, they usually face great difficulties, especially during the adaptation period. The author, based on personal experience in raising a foster child, as well as on the basis of systematic observations of the life of foster families, considers not only the main problems of adaptation, but also offers specific recommendations for raising foster children in this difficult life period. The book is addressed primarily to foster parents, as well as to all professionals providing comprehensive assistance to foster families.

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The following excerpt from the book Foster children: how to cope with the problems of adaptation and upbringing in a foster family (G. N. Solomatina, 2013) provided by our book partner - the company LitRes.

What should foster parents know about orphans?

Most foster parents and people around them think that orphans are the same children as children who are brought up in their own families. Unfortunately, this is not entirely true. After all, foster children very often have unusual, and sometimes shocking, behavior that baffles foster parents, teachers working with these children, and people around them. And then the foster parents begin to accuse the administration of orphanages of hiding from them information about the diseases of the adopted child, about his developmental disabilities. The administration of orphanages and the entire public, on the contrary, accuse foster parents of their inability to properly raise a child or of selfish motives for accepting a child into their family. This can be seen in various television programs. Mutual accusations do not lead to anything good. This is not a solution to the problem. The child is still returned to the orphanage.

Most often, the reason for the unusual, defiant, behavior of a foster child is considered to be poor heredity. The easiest way to blame heredity for your own mistakes is: “The child has bad genes, what could I do?” Probably, everyone will remember quite a lot of examples when people, despite the “bad” heredity, became full-fledged, respected people.

However, most often, parents, teachers, and even psychologists simply do not know about the characteristics of an adopted child, whose development proceeded in non-standard conditions, in conditions that are not typical for most people, about which many of us have no idea.

maternal rejection

Non-standard conditions of a child's life are life situations that have an adverse effect on his development, hinder the satisfaction of the child's needs. These include maternal rejection of their own child, abuse of him; the lack of a system for raising a child, the lack of affection, love for the child, a warm emotional attitude towards him, the absence of positive patterns of behavior. Let me dwell on some unfavorable conditions that have a negative impact on the development of the child.

has a huge impact on the development of the child maternal rejection own child, as a result of which the child at an early age constantly experiences a serious lack or complete deprivation of maternal love, maternal care, and attention. After all, it is the mother who provides the child with a sense of security, which allows him to continue to trust the world around him. Only trust in the world determines in the future life the child's relationship with the people he meets on his life path, as well as his emotional and social development.

An orphan child cannot have confidence in the world, since he was abandoned by the most dear people - his parents. The fact of betrayal will haunt him for many, many years, and sometimes all his life. All this cannot but have sad consequences and cause various deviations. First of all, the child's emotional development is disturbed. He experiences negative emotional states, such as emotional stress, fears, aggressiveness, etc. A child deprived of maternal care and love, who often experienced both physical and psychological violence, sees a potential enemy in every person with whom he encounters life. Such a child is always ready to aggressively defend his world, even in cases where there is no threat. For example, an adopted child of primary school age tripped over the leg of a classmate standing with his back to him, after which he hit him hard. When the foster mother asked why he did this, the child exclaimed with resentment:

“He tripped me up on purpose!”

But he had his back to you. He did not see that you were running, - the surprised mother objected.

- No, he put his foot aside on purpose!

In a full-fledged family, there is always a sense of the family “we”. This feeling reflects the child's involvement in his family. Every child wants to be like their parents, grandparents and other relatives.

This is a very important emotional and moral feeling. It creates a condition for the protection of the child. Often a child asks his parents with interest about grandparents and other distant and close relatives. He looks at family photos for a long time, absorbing information about history. his families. First, the child develops a sense of belonging to his own family, then to the team in which he studies, and only then to all people in general.

In the life of an orphan child who lives in an orphanage, regardless of his will, there is such a thing as an orphanage “we”. This is a very special psychological formation. Orphans are accustomed to dividing the world into “us” and “them”. “Own” or “we” are orphans, “strangers” or “they” are all the rest. They develop special rules for relationships with others - with "strangers" and "their own". "Aliens" by definition are their potential enemies, they always expect some kind of trouble, attack, ridicule from them. They are all together ready to defend themselves from "strangers" even in cases where there is no danger. In the environment of "their own" they have a rigid hierarchy of relations: the elder, the strong - on the one hand, the younger, the weak - on the other. The younger, weak, must obey the older, strong, fulfill his whims, share food with him, etc. At the same time, they can abuse their peers or younger children within their group. Such relationships are primarily formed due to the unfulfilled need for maternal love and recognition in the family, due to the lack of an emotionally positive attitude towards the child, due to the lack of a positive example that has a strong educational impact on any child.

Lack of emotional connection with the child

Lack of emotional connection with the child causes him a lack of emotionally positive communication or a break in the emotional connection with loved ones. As a result, he cannot establish personal emotional relationships with others.

The emotional connection of the child with the mother appears from the moment when he begins to recognize the mother's face, focus his gaze on it and distinguish it among the faces around him. From this time on, in prosperous families, emotionally positive communication begins to develop, especially between the child and the mother. Of great importance in the formation of an emotional connection is the father and the next of kin of the child, as well as close friends of the family. A positive emotional connection determines all the further development of the child. It has an impact on cognitive, social and speech development. Emotionally positive communication in the family opens the door to the child in a huge world of communication with other people, arouses interest in the world in which he will live.

Relationships in the family affect the emotional world of the child, it is they who later determine the emotional attitude of the child to the people and things around him. Emotions paint a person's life in a wide variety of colors, shades, halftones. His inner life, thanks to emotions, acquires a bright richness, originality, but most importantly, emotions teach the child to communicate and interact with other people. After all, we often understand each other without words, subtly capturing the emotional state of the interlocutor. However, unfortunately, it is emotions that can prevent establishing contact with a partner or several communication partners. From the emotional state of the child will depend on his success in kindergarten and school, where there are games, and educational, and practical activities. It is because of their emotions that the child will choose different lines of behavior - either positive or negative. If the child is dominated by negative emotions, he will experience a state of emotional stress, such as fear, and then he may behave aggressively or hysterically. And vice versa, if he experiences a state of emotional comfort, his behavior will be calm, friendly towards the surrounding adults and children.

Under unfavorable conditions of development, a negative emotional connection is often formed in a child, since from childhood he has been deprived of loving parents, their attention and affection. Such a child gets used only to negative emotions. Positive emotions cause bewilderment and protest in him, he simply does not know how to react correctly in such cases. It is difficult for a child to get along with people around him, especially with foster parents who are trying their best to “warm” him, surround him with care, affection, attention, make his life interesting, fill it with various vivid impressions that the child was deprived of in early childhood. Adoptive parents buy him beautiful things, take him to visit, on holidays, to the park, to cafes, to the circus, to the theater, but he reacts to such trips with tantrums and protests. He reacts inadequately to praise, affection, sometimes avoiding it, and sometimes “exploding” with aggressive outbursts.

So, in one substitute family, a walk in the park caused a state of passion. After the walk, the adopted child went home, waving his arms, loudly shouting incomprehensible, meaningless phrases. In response to the request of the foster mother to behave more calmly, the child made a scene on the street: falling to the ground, he began to ride on it. At home, this affect ended in tears and violent hysteria. At this point, it was very difficult for the foster mother to control her emotions. She could not understand what caused this storm, what she did wrong.

I will give more examples of inadequate reactions of children to positive emotions. The adopted boy, in response to the praise, began to shout out with an intonation of anger: “No, shame on me and disgrace!” Another child after class began to run away from the teacher, because after the lesson she handed out stars to all the children - encouragement for good work in the lesson. The teacher could not understand such a child's reaction to praise and was simply confused.

These examples show once again that an orphan child does not understand at all what to do with positive emotions, and does not know how to respond to a positive situation.

It often happens that an adopted child experiences a psychological condition called emotional stress. It arises from the fact that the child has great difficulties in communicating with the outside world. Foster parents will have to show incredible patience in order to teach the child to respond correctly to the positive events of his life, to teach him to emotionally respond to all life situations that occur in his life.

Non-acceptance by the child of certain social roles

The most important condition for life among people is the assimilation and acceptance by the child of a variety of social roles. And these roles, as you know, a lot. From an early age, a child observes various roles, first in the family: the role of mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, brother, sister, the role of the head of the family, the mistress of the house, etc. Gradually, the number of social roles expands: he sees how parents play the role of a buyer, a patient , observes the role-playing behavior of the seller, doctor, etc. Growing up, the child, as it were, "trying on" various social roles in the story game. Traditional children's games ("Shop", "Hospital", "Barbershop", "On the bus", etc.) have a pronounced social orientation. The child "works out" various models of behavior, learns to obey the rules, learns social norms. The game becomes a connecting moment between the child and the outside world. Through the game, the child consolidates and assimilates social experience. He learns independence, active participation in the life of adults, learns the world around him. Children play without being forced by adults, they like to play. However, in the game, they not only copy adults and imitate them, but also show personal creativity. Thanks to the game, the child learns to fantasize. He has his own ideas and impressions about the world in which he lives. For example, children in games widely use substitute objects: a stick becomes a saber, chairs placed in a row become a bus, etc. When playing, children change situations very quickly. After an action with an object, the same rapid adaptation of this object (chair, stick) to a new situation and to a new game takes place. This is a condition for the further adaptation of the child in kindergarten, at school, in sections, in circles.

The game develops the skills of collective life, the ability to do everything together, negotiate with other children and, of course, if necessary, kindly resolve disputes, regulate relationships, and make contact with children and adults. A new quality of collectivism is born and develops for a preschooler. I repeat: the most important thing during this period is the communication of children with peers, with older children and, of course, with adults.

Watching the relationships of adults, playing, gradually getting involved in adulthood, the child absorbs everything related to their behavior in society, among other people.

In a dysfunctional family, a child does not have the opportunity to observe all the variety of social roles. He does not learn the positive rules of behavior and everything that is very important and significant for a child from a prosperous family. For a child from a problem family, all this does not have the slightest meaning and value.

In the orphanage, educators try to instill in children an understanding of social norms and values, but this happens in artificial conditions. It is this circumstance that deprives the child of the opportunity for full socialization. Children still remain in a situation of social isolation, no matter how hard you try.

The few books on the psychology of orphanhood provide a large number of observations and experiments to study the effect of social isolation on the mental state of adults and children. Even adults, who for some reason are isolated from society, experience anxiety, emotional stress, and irritability. This leads to complaints, to the fixation of various life trifles, to which this person would not have paid attention before. Children have a distortion of the perception of the surrounding reality, a negative assessment of reality prevails, a pessimistic mood. Children who have not accepted basic social roles are often envious. At the same time, envy manifests itself in small things. For example, a seven-year-old girl told her foster mother:

- I don't have a doll like Sveta's.

“But you have other dolls. They are beautiful too. Sveta doesn't have them.

“I want one just like hers.”

Unfortunately, in a foster family, an even greater confusion of social roles occurs in the child's mind. He lacks awareness of the social roles distributed among people, especially in a family setting. For example, having become accustomed to the fact that there is a nanny in the orphanage, a child in a foster family may ask: “Who will be our nanny today?” This is also manifested in the consumer attitude towards others. When meeting guests, the child may ask: “Why did you come without a gift?” If the child accidentally or deliberately broke something, then he calmly informs the adoptive parents: “It's okay. The worker's uncle will come and fix it."

An orphan child for a long time does not realize his own place in the new family, cannot determine how to behave with the “new” mother, with the “new” father, with the “new” relatives. Wanting to understand the role relationships in the mother-child system, the adopted child closely observes the relationship between children and their parents in different conditions: on the street, when communicating with family of friends. For example, on a walk with a four-year-old child, a seven-year-old girl even copied his gestures and actions (jumping into her mother’s arms, taking her by the arm, hugging her, etc.).

The examples given show a misunderstanding of the essence of social roles, their confusion in the mind of the child.

Features of the mental development of an orphan child

The mental processes inherent in a person allow him to perceive the world around him and process the incoming information with consciousness, while helping to develop comprehensively.

A child from the first months of life is in great need of new experiences. He actively explores the world around him. It's great! The child enjoys new bright toys, actively, with interest examines and studies the objects around him. At 2–3 months, he examines the rattle with interest and waves it. At 5–6 months, the baby needs already sounding and moving toys, rings, etc. By the age of 1, the baby is interested in simple multi-colored pyramids, liners of geometric figures. He is already interested in everything that surrounds him, reaches out to all the objects that he sees around him. Gradually, the surrounding world becomes more understandable and meaningful for the child, and a certain routine gives him confidence in the present and the expected. It is at an early age that a child develops the desire to learn new things. Gradually, he develops independent thinking, a creative attitude to the implementation of tasks of varying complexity, which require certain mental actions.

If a child does not receive a wide variety of impressions due to the absence or lack of educational toys, the attentive attitude of adults to the development of his cognitive abilities, then conditions are not created for the full-fledged mental development of an orphan child. Most often, a child growing up in a dysfunctional family does not have toys at all or there are very few of them. Neither parents nor relatives pay attention to this child, no one teaches him to play, no one buys him new toys. A child from a dysfunctional family has a weakly expanding horizons, the basic prerequisites for the development of cognitive abilities (thinking, speech, attention, memory, etc.) are not formed. As people say, a child grows like a weed in a field, that is, by itself. The longer the child has lived in adverse conditions, the less opportunities he has for full development. Then it will be very difficult for him to understand the patterns of the surrounding objective and social world.

Once in the orphanage, the child begins to actively explore the world around him. But this world turns out to be quite limited due to the closeness of the orphanage. Teachers begin to work actively with the child in order to eliminate problems in his development. They do a lot with him, teach him to be diligent, stimulate the manifestations of his abilities, try to interest him in various activities. However, all these activities do not allow the child to understand and comprehend the diversity of the world around him, primarily because of the lack of communication with different people. Therefore, the conditions of the orphanage cannot ensure the full mental development of the child. He still gives the impression of a child with special needs in development and behavior, and often with mental disability.

Foster parents need to know the features of the mental development of the adopted child. Therefore, I want to consider in detail the features of the formation of each mental function. At the same time, I will focus only on those features that distinguish children from an orphanage from children brought up in a prosperous family. I will not consider deviations in mental development, but will focus on describing children with potentially normal intelligence only.

Features of the perception of adopted children

Perception provides a reflection of the characteristics of surrounding objects necessary for a person. Such characteristics include shape, color, distance, speed of movement and the distance between them. A person with the help of perception gets an idea about the properties of the world around him.

Children from the orphanage distinguish well only single features of objects, such as shape or color. However, it is difficult for them to describe the object in several ways at once. The greatest difficulties are caused by tasks for the selection of objects on several grounds at once: by color and shape; in color, shape and size. For example, the child must determine which ball: it is round in shape, blue in color, large or small in size.

Orphans also have difficulty perceiving objects depicted in perspective, they cannot determine which object in the picture is closer and which is farther. For quite a long time, up to adolescence, they draw flat objects, without conveying their volume.

Orphans experience great difficulties in understanding temporal relationships. Much later than their peers, brought up in families, they begin to understand what time is.

When perceiving the phenomena of the surrounding social life, foster children with negative social experience very often pay attention to disgusting pictures of the surrounding life, for example, they can watch the behavior of homeless people for a long time, which shocks their adoptive parents. In these cases, adoptive parents should not show irritation. You just need to talk about the hard life of this category of people, about how you need to be attentive in life, accept all the norms of behavior in society, study well in order to avoid such a fate yourself. After that, it is desirable to switch the child's attention to some object that is pleasant for perception, for example, to playing kids, to birds on a tree.

Features of the attention of foster children

Every day we get a lot of new experiences. There are a lot of objects of the world around us (cars, houses, flowers). Attention focuses a person on a small number of objects of the surrounding world. For example, out of many trees and bushes, he turns his attention only to a flowering acacia; out of a large number of people passing by, he fixes his gaze only on individual faces.

The concentration of attention in children who grew up in an orphanage is manifested in its violation. They are not able to focus their attention for a long time on any activity, when performing tasks or during games. This leads to the fact that the child often looks unassembled. He cannot independently bring the work he has begun to the end, he is often distracted, switching from one activity to another. Even in a game with other children, such a child cannot focus his attention on the rules of the game, on its plot, which irritates his peers.

Most of all, attention deficit manifests itself in a new situation for the child, when he needs to act without outside help. When an adult addresses such a child, it often seems that he does not hear his words. For example, an adopted child was taken to the local history museum. He ran across the hall from one exhibit to another, not listening to the explanations of his foster mother about the items in the museum. The same thing happened at the zoo. It seemed that not a single animal of the child was so interested that he began to examine it, would want to listen to a story about his life.

Schooling causes particular difficulties for a foster child. He can sit for hours on homework without doing it. At the same time, his attention switches to different objects in the room. At school, teachers complain that the child is constantly unassembled, drops something all the time, hurts classmates. It seems that he does not hear the teacher's explanations.

But there are also happy moments. If a child is interested in some activity, he can do it for quite a long time.

Features of the memory of adopted children

Memory is a mental process that ensures the preservation of information from past experience in the cerebral cortex. It is memory that helps us to reuse previously perceived objects and processes of the life around us in any business. Memory connects a person's past with his present and future. It is the most important cognitive function. memory allows a person to develop and learn.

From the first day of life in a foster family, orphans often recall not too pleasant situations from life in their birth family or in an orphanage. These memories make a very heavy impression on the adoptive parents. And my advice: at such moments, you just need to carefully listen to the adopted child, express your sympathy for his difficult life. In no case should you negatively evaluate the blood parents of the child! On the contrary, you need to try to justify them in the eyes of the child, for example: “Yes, your mom and dad drink. But alcoholism is a disease that is very difficult to treat. Your mom was sick, she didn't know what she was doing. You forgive her."

The memory of adopted children is also characterized by selectivity. What the child liked or aroused his interest, he remembers without difficulty. However, arbitrary memorization, for example, homework causes great difficulties.

An adopted child remembers well the events of his life that caused him negative emotions. The child will remember for a long time all the times when he was scolded or punished. Therefore, adoptive parents need to show titanic patience, as often as possible remembering with the child the events that caused positive emotions.

Features of the imagination of foster children

Various images constantly appear in the mind of a person, reflecting the world around them. By using imagination he can transform these images into new representations, sometimes unreal ones. Thanks to the imagination, a person can be creative in any activity, plan it and manage it. He can draw for himself any picture of his own life in the present or the future, he can change the sequence of events of the past, etc. A person with a rich imagination can live at different times, go beyond a specific life moment.

On the basis of previous life experience, a child up to the age of 7 forms a connection between the past and the present. Young children imagine the world very realistically, it is difficult for them to think about the future, that the world around them can be somehow different, because their imagination is only developing. It is very difficult for them to understand that "tomorrow is tomorrow." They often ask: “And tomorrow is that later?”, “Will we go to visit yesterday?” Small children look at family photos with pleasure and enthusiasm for a long time, are keenly interested in their pedigree, integrating themselves into the system of family relationships. Only at school age, from about 9 years old, does a connection between the present and the future begin to be established. Children can already imagine pictures of the future, change them in accordance with their desires, they already have life plans for the future life, for example, a teenager dreams for a long time about his future specialty or imagines pictures of holidays next summer.

In children with negative life experience, the past is most often associated with difficult memories that cause discomfort, a feeling of resentment for life, shame for their dysfunctional parents, shame for their past. Therefore, they begin to fill their past with fictitious images and fictional events, trying to reconstruct the negative events of their lives and justify them. Because of this, their real memories of a past life begin to mix with fictional pictures. For example, a child recalled his life with his dad (while in real life his dad was absent): “When we lived with dad in America, we had a big house. Then dad blew on the gas, and the house exploded. A big fire started. And so we began to live here. Another child, knowing full well that he was a foundling, told how his sick mother had lost him at the station when they were on their way to treat their mother.

Gradually, the adopted child tries to involve his new parents in these fantasies: “Let's say that you gave birth to me. Then I lost the little one. I ended up in an orphanage. And then you found me." So the girl asked her foster mother to explain to others her sudden appearance in the family.

In these cases, I advise you to calmly listen to the child, and then gently bring him back to reality, for example: “I understand you well, I understand that you are now fantasizing. But other people may think that you are deceiving them. Let's better remember how we rested together at the sea, look at photos or dream about where we will rest next summer. Gradually, the child will have new pleasant memories of life in a foster family, which will crowd out negative memories. The child will begin to forget his past fantasies. And adoptive parents should try to evoke positive impressions and positive fantasies more often on the basis of joint planning of upcoming activities.

Features of thinking of adopted children

In the course of life, a person not only perceives the world around him, remembers any events. He constantly analyzes what is happening, compares objects, actions, deeds, generalizes the information received. All these processes (comparison, generalization, analysis, etc.) are components of the concept of "thinking". A person is constantly thinking about something or someone, thinking, reasoning. Thinking is closely related to speech: a person thinks with the help of words and expresses his thoughts in words.

Thinking is formed only when the child communicates with other people for a long time. At an early age, the child begins to think with the help of his mother and other relatives, acting with objects. He collects a pyramid, a simple constructor, selects pictures according to some sign. Gradually, he begins to acquire independence of thought, tries to reason without the help of an adult. For example: "I won't go for a walk because it's raining outside and I don't have rubber boots." The child begins to think with the help of images. He can already imagine certain objects and decide what to do with them. Only towards the end of primary school age does the child begin to think without visual support. He can already solve some problems, examples, draw conclusions and generalizations himself.

In orphans, the entire course of the development of thinking is disrupted. When solving mental problems, even at school age, they are guided by visual images, situations. Orphans are not able to cope with tasks that require separation from the visual situation, which leads to the inability to form generalizations and abstract concepts. For example, when teaching an adopted child to count, the transition from counting specific objects (toys, sticks, pencils, steps) to mental counting caused great difficulties.

Orphans in any mental operations are guided only by the actions of an adult. They need constant help and support from an adult when performing even simple tasks for them. An adult must constantly explain to the foster child the way to complete the task, each stage of it. At the same time, specific instructions from adults are better perceived by orphans. Multi-step instructions, devoid of clarity, are not very clear to children. It is better to give them instructions in simple sentences, to consistently name the order in which the task is to be completed. This indicates a lack of independence of thinking, lack of self-confidence in solving individual problems. It is interesting to note that these features are also manifested in life situations (not only when solving mathematical problems). For example, a foster mother says to a child: “Help me clean the apartment.” This instruction is not entirely clear to him. It is necessary to clearly define what the child will do, and each subsequent instruction must be given after the previous one has been completed: “Collect toys” or “Clean up your desk”. After the child has completed this task, you can give the following: "Field the flowers (wipe the dust, etc.)."

I would also like to draw the attention of adoptive parents to one feature of the thinking of orphans. Worked out tasks by orphans are performed better, more successfully compared to tasks that require analogy and creative solutions. This is due to the work carried out by the employees of the orphanage in the field of mental education of orphans.

Orphaned children are not able to focus on a system of rules when performing mental tasks. Often they adhere to only one requirement for completing the task. An attempt to combine several stages of solving a problem or a mathematical action leads to the abandonment of the activity.

For example, a foster child easily solved examples in two or three steps. But solving problems even in one action caused great difficulties, because in solving the problem it was necessary to transfer the already existing counting skills to new conditions. The need to solve problems caused a sharp change in mood, refusal to complete the task, and even hysterical reactions.

Features of the speech of foster children

Speech- this is the most important mental function of a person, providing him with the ability to cognize, self-organize, self-development, to build his personality, his inner world through communication with other personalities. With the help of speech, a person learns the surrounding reality, interacts with people around him.

In orphans, if they do not have concomitant disorders, speech development proceeds without gross deviations. The specificity of the formation of speech in such children will be to a greater extent a peculiar development of lexical stock. Children are better at naming words with a subject-specific meaning (“mom”, “dad”, “tree”, etc.). However, compared with children brought up in favorable conditions, even their subject vocabulary is significantly limited. This is due to the fact that no one worked with children in blood families, did not explain to them the meanings of incomprehensible words. In an orphanage, a lot of work is done with children by both a speech therapist and educators, but due to the closed nature of the institution and the limited life activity of children, the vocabulary of orphans is still much poorer compared to home children. Orphans do not know the names of household appliances, many types of transport, food, clothing and other groups of words. It is difficult to understand and use independently in speech generalizing words and abstract concepts (“transport”, “food”, etc.), since the assimilation of this group of words directly depends on the degree of development of thinking. Words denoting states, signs and properties of objects ("happiness", "joy", "lightness", etc.) are most difficult to assimilate. In general, orphans prefer to use simpler sentences in speech, avoid building complex syntactic constructions.

To a greater extent, orphans have impaired communicative function of speech, which is caused by limited interaction with other people. They do not know how to listen to the interlocutor, do not listen to him, while they themselves can talk a lot, not taking into account what the interlocutor says. They do not know how to ask and ask questions, preferring to remain silent when directly addressed to them. Poor understanding of the hidden meaning of the statement. In general, it should be noted that they lack the flexibility of communication, that is, under changing circumstances of the communication process, they do not change their speech behavior.

Features of the relationship of orphans with peers

In many ways, the future of the child is determined by his relationship with peers, his ability to make contact, establish friendly relations, spend free time together with other children, resolve controversial issues and resolve conflicts. When interacting with peers, the child emotionally expresses his feelings towards a partner in a game or some other activity. He learns to control his emotions, evaluate the actions of other children and his own. Adults help children in relationships with other children with advice, teach them to analyze the actions of others, etiquette speech means of communication (greet, say goodbye, thank, address by name, etc.), be attentive and friendly to people around them. Recall how a mother brings her baby to a group of children playing in the playground. She addresses her child:

- Come and say hello. Ask the children's names, what they play. Ask permission to play with them.

If the child is experiencing difficulties, she herself introduces her child, asks to take him into the game. Thus, she shows a model of communication with other people.

Already at preschool age, children themselves know how to unite for joint activities - play or work. In joint activities, the child learns to observe certain rules of behavior, which are later transferred to everyday life. Children develop and differentiate role interaction and role behavior. For example, in a game, children can play different roles: the role of dad, mom, doctor, etc. They change roles, while actively practicing the behavior inherent in their gender. We can hear this phrase in a conversation between two children: “What are you, girls don’t do that.”

Of course, the interaction of children is not without conflict. More often, adults are involved in resolving conflict situations, gradually allowing children to resolve conflicts themselves. Children learn to put up after a quarrel, to admit their mistakes, to make assumptions about further communication, to draw the simplest conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships between people. Parents teach children to defend their point of view in a peaceful way, to change their position, opinion.

Foster children also actively strive to communicate with other children, but they do not succeed in this communication, primarily because of the lack of desire to obey the rules, non-compliance with the rules of the game. When orphans communicate with their peers, aggressive forms of interaction prevail (chaotic running around, kicks, cuffs), increased conflict, which leads to the gradual rejection of the child in the children's team.

In addition, the play of adopted children often does not correspond to the age interests of their communication partners: the plot of their play is extremely poor, the plot play is often replaced by stereotypical manipulative actions (rocking a doll, driving cars, etc.). All this causes the unwillingness of peers to interact with orphans.

Here is an example of a dialogue between a foster mother and a child:

Why don't the kids want to play with me?

- Tell me, how do you play?

- We play catch-up. I catch up with the child, wrap my arms around him and knock him to the ground.

- When I was little, we played differently: the child who caught up with the other child had to just touch him. This meant that he had caught the child.

- Well, it's not interesting.

This example indicates the presence of aggressiveness in the game and the unwillingness of the adopted child to comply with the rules of the game adopted in children's groups.

Another example reflects the stereotype of the game and the inconsistency of the game activity with the age norm. Two 8-year-old girls quarreled - an adopted child and her friend, who came to visit.

“Mom, she doesn’t want to play with me,” the adopted child addresses his mother with resentment.

A friend joins in the dialogue:

“Why does she only want to rock the doll?” I do not want it! I'm not small!

At school age, the nature of interpersonal interaction of children is determined by the teacher. Since adopted children cause a lot of trouble for teachers, a negative opinion of classmates about this child is often created. Many actions of foster children are considered by teachers "under the microscope". The same acts of a negative nature, committed by an adopted child and a child brought up in a family, are evaluated differently. An adopted child, as a rule, is severely punished, a stern remark is made in the presence of peers, and a similar act of a family child may not even be noticed. I will give an example of such a situation. In the 2nd grade, parents bought cell phones for many children. All children go through the stage of playing with phones. They enjoy taking pictures of each other. When an adopted child began taking pictures of children, the teacher forced him to publicly, in front of the whole class, delete the photos from the phone.

Children very quickly catch the temper of adopted children, provoking them to various negative actions.

Thus, a second-grader, in response to a whispered negative assessment of her classmate, angrily tossed his things. Talking about this incident at home, the girl said with resentment: “He often tells me that he likes it when they scold me.”

All adults involved in the upbringing of a foster child, especially foster parents, should carefully monitor the relationship of children, intervene in problem situations in time, and acquaint children with the rules of interaction between people. In the following, I will talk about these and other communication difficulties adopted by adopted children, as well as give some advice on how to overcome them.

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.

Adopted children, as a rule, from an early age saw the adult terrible wrong side of life. They have suffered so much that they cannot yet be your support. Therefore, you need to seek support from other people. Do not hesitate to seek help from specialists (teachers and psychologists) and other adoptive parents who have had a successful experience in accepting a child into a family. Visit psychological centers, websites and forums. You will feel that you are not alone and receive valuable recommendations.

It is very important to understand that adoptive parents will never become blood parents, although they can be very close people. And if you manage to resist the temptation to compete with his biological father and mother, if you can be patient with what the child brought with him from a past life, then he will answer you, at least, with indifference.

Secondly, the invaluable opportunity to become a parent. Hang a portrait of a family drawn by inept children's hands on the wall. Hear every evening: "Good night, mom!". And most importantly - to see how a lonely ball of life turns into a strong person who knows how to love. And by helping him, you yourself become spiritually purer and more mature.

Here life examples.

1. Young parents took a girl from an orphanage. The baby was only a week old. The foster mother dreamed of breastfeeding her child. With the help of a certain technique and a strong desire, she had milk!

2. The family took two brothers: the youngest was five years old, and the oldest was already sixteen. Great difficulties immediately arose with the teenager: he was rude, came home late, drank. When he was eighteen, he went to college and moved to a hostel. However, those two years that he spent in the family were not in vain. In his own way, he became attached to his adoptive parents and constantly calls them, is interested in their well-being. And from time to time he comes and communicates with his younger brother with pleasure.

3. The woman was very worried about problems with her adopted son: he had outbreaks of uncontrollable aggression. In the kindergarten, the teachers could not find justice for him. She turned to a psychologist. Qualified help and maternal patience did their job. The boy falls into a state of rage less and less and learns to control his anger. And now he takes care of his younger sister, who was also taken from the orphanage. The tone conveys to her the warmth that he receives.