CHILDREN ADOPTED FROM CHILDREN HOMES

Children adopted from Children Homes

Children adopted from Children Homes

Introduction

In the current study we examined attachment, and cognitive and motor development in internationally adopted infants shortly after their placement in adoptive families. Each year more than 40,000 children are adopted worldwide. In 2005, most international adoptions in the USA were from China, Russia, and Guatemala, whereas in Europe (15,847 in 2003) children came from China, Russia, and Colombia. Often these children come from depriving backgrounds, including neglect, lack of medical care, and malnutrition in orphanages. International adoption studies in infancy mainly concentrated on Romanian children adopted at the time of the fall of the Ceausescu regime. (Bartholet 2003:89)We do not know, however, whether the extreme deprivation in Romanian orphanages leading to developmental delays and attachment disturbances, is also typical for infants adopted from other countries.

Discussion

In infancy, formation of a secure attachment relationship is a major developmental milestone. From an organizational perspective on human development describe attachment as a salient issue given its clear centrality to infant functioning and subsequent development. Secure infants derive comfort from their parent(s) and feel free to explore the environment. In normative situations about one-third of the infants develop an insecure organized attachment relationship: in stressful situations they avoid to seek comfort from the parent (insecure-avoidant) or they stay extremely focused on their parent (insecure-ambivalent), in either way resulting in a less competent exploration of the environment(Goldberg 2000:79). Insecure attachment also predicts children's less optimal social development in childhood and adolescence. According to meta-analytic evidence, parental sensitivity—the ability to attune and react to children's signals adequately—stimulates the development of an organized secure attachment relationship.

Disorganized attachment is characterized as the absence or breakdown of an attachment strategy. Faced with stress, disorganized infants may react with undirected or misdirected movements, freezing or stilling behaviors, and expressions of fear. Disorganized attachment in early childhood predicts emotional dysregulation, externalizing problems, lower cognitive functioning in middle childhood, and dissociative behavior in adolescence. Disorganized attachment is presumed to be the result of frightening parental behavior. The frightening nature of severe insensitivity and enduring unresponsiveness in orphananges may trigger children's attachment disorganization. Vorria et al. indeed found that 66% of institutionalized Greek infants at the age of 13 months were disorganized attached, an extreme overrepresentation compared with the 15% disorganized attachment found in normative groups. (Gunnar 2005:677)These findings were replicated in a study examining institutionalized Romanian children's attachment at the age of 24 months, showing a remarkably similar rate of disorganized attachment (65%).

Mental and Psychomotor Development in Adopted Children

Except for one study, most studies on adoptees' mental and motor development relied on parental reports shortly after adoption. For example, Morison et al. examined children adopted from Romanian orphanages to Canada. Retrospectively, parents described their adopted children as seriously delayed when they first met them: 84-91% children were behind in psychomotor development and all children were delayed in language development. (Hollingsworth 2006:81)After almost a year in the adoptive family, the delay reported by the parents was reduced to 59% ...