A third of adoptions don't work out. A parent reveals the trauma of attempting to raise a disturbed child and failing
Modern parenting lore has it that if you are kind and loving to children, if you listen and explain and give them time, all will be well. We are all psychologically attuned these days and communication is the key.
But what if you pour all this love into a child and meet only resistance? This is the experience of a significant number of parents who adopt traumatised children, though only recently have they begun to publicly express their hurt, bewilderment and sense of failure. It is estimated that a third of adoptions don't succeed, and as a parent who has experienced this crippling sense of loss, Melanie Allen hopes that by telling her story in a book, The Trouble with Alex, she can alert professional carers to the need to give more support to damaged children who are adopted. Their needs are not always understood, she believes, and if you have adopted such a child and then realise that no amount of care and love can heal them, you need expert support too.
Melanie and her husband Rob are professional people who live in a quiet English suburban street. They decided to adopt when they were unable to conceive a second baby and, when asked if they would consider a special-needs child, they happily ticked all the boxes. Their first meeting with Alex, then 5, was a delight. She was adorable, angelic and affectionate, and immediately called them Mummy and Daddy.
“She was perfect,” Melanie recalls. “Though on the second day we told her that she couldn't do something and I remember the unsettling look she gave us. She didn't shout and scream. She took hold of my hand and wouldn't let it go and I thought, ‘God, that's strong'. It didn't quite feel normal.”
To protect Alex's identity, Melanie is using pseudonyms and it is for this reason that she speaks slowly and with care. As they soon discovered, Alex had phenomenal charm. With their friends and family she was utterly engaging, yet at home she was remote, mechanical and disruptive without ever displaying anger. No matter how loving Melanie and Rob were towards her, slowly they recognised that they were getting nothing back. Day after day she stared, tapped, shuffled, and she shadowed Melanie from the moment she woke to the moment she went to sleep. She couldn't dress herself or distinguish colours. Initially, on professional advice, the family put her problems down to learning difficulties and it took Melanie about a year to rumble that Alex was much brighter than she admitted. Watching her set the table one day she realised that she was deliberately misplacing cutlery. Something was wrong, but because Alex never spoke of what she was thinking, it was impossible to know what it was.
“If she had wiped poo over the walls, we'd know what we were dealing with,” she told a friend. “With Alex we haven't a clue.”
It was some years before Melanie found a reference to attachment disorder, and realised that this explained Alex's behaviour. If a child's early life is dominated by fear, she becomes unable to trust another person, and if she can't attach she can't love, or be loved. Instead her behaviour revolves around a regime of control: by controlling her environment and the people around her she feels safe; by seeking attention in social situations she is controlling them too. It is a survival mechanism and the more Melanie learnt about Alex's early life, the more this made sense.
Alex's mother, who had grown up in care, was an alcoholic and drug addict. When Alex was 18 months old her mother was found unconscious in a flat that stank of decaying food, soiled nappies, damp and rot-infested towels. Alex was underweight, malnourished and lying in her own faeces. Yet after some time in hospital and with a foster carer, she was returned to her mother, who then had a new boyfriend. Unknown to social services he was schizophrenic and regularly responded to the voices that he heard by beating Alex. In her first three years she knew only neglect and abuse.
“This is why she sought negative attention,” says Melanie. “Because she was angry she wanted to make us angry. She was on her guard all the time. The staring was making sure she was in control all the time, safe. And the child who can bounce from one adult to another, flinging herself into a new set of arms, displays a classic sign of a child who can't attach. Yet the more time we spent with her the more she was worth fighting for.”
The Allens fought, seeking help from social services and psychologists. They believe Alex saw the country's leading child experts yet invariably their daughter was calm and composed when she met professionals, and invariably the Allens were told either that there was no problem, or that the difficulties lay with them. Even when Alex admitted to Melanie that her behaviour was controlled by a voice inside her head, professionals refused to accept that Alex was capable of being manipulative.
“She couldn't shout and scream like other children, she couldn't get her anger out because she had a voice in her head that said everything was secret, no one was allowed to know,” says Melanie. “I'm sure she'd learnt at a young age that shouting was futile and the punishment meted out was horrendous. Her secrecy was very powerful and when the professionals she met at 3 decided that her inability to communicate was down to learning difficulties she had found a way of getting attention without having to communicate. It was a way of manipulating that was much more powerful than screaming and shouting. It's not a malicious way, she's not evil and when she has behaved badly, I don't think she has any control. She knows what is right and what is wrong but she doesn't feel it, she has no sense of conscience, and I think that's because the first thing she learnt in her life was anger.”
It was five years before the Allens told social services that they could no longer cope. By this time their marriage had fallen apart and Melanie, exhausted, desperate with guilt that she had let Alex down, had been prescribed antidepressants.
Alex was placed with a foster carer who found herself as frustrated as the Allens had been by the child's disturbing behaviour. Yet only when she caused emergencies did social services intervene. She now lives in a unit for disturbed children where, at 15, her charisma is intact, but she remains remote. Melanie continues to believe that Alex has a serious mental health disorder, but she has yet to be treated for it.
“The system can't cope, there's not enough money to help children unless they're playing up and she always presents beautifully to professionals. This unit isn't going to press her buttons because it doesn't expect her to fit into a family. So she's left alone and she feels safe. She's a loner there, the only child who doesn't want a mobile phone. If she was ever to admit to anyone that she was bright her story would fall apart.”
Alex will stay in the unit until she is 18; after that Melanie has no expectations. “I see her going from relationship to relationship, never happy. She's very adept at being what people want her to be but I don't think she will ever want to rely on people. My best wish for her is that she can charm her way through life detached and in control. The reality is that that won't happen.
“Until you've lived with a child who is terrified of attaching you can't grasp that sometimes you can't mend them. The medical profession needs more awareness of the complexity of attachment disorder.”
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