Steve, Cathy, and Nicholas -- Nicholas and the recent adoption ruckus (created 2010-04-25)

Someone asked me about the recent controversy about the Tennessee woman who had adopted a child from Russia. The child had some serious behavioral issues, and the woman placed the child alone on a flight to Russia with a note saying that she no longer wanted this child. Noting the many webpages I've written about Nicholas, she said "In your posts about Nicholas, he seems to be such a happy, active, normal boy. I was wondering if you and Cathy have ever had any of those problems some other adoptive parents have had."

Well, I normally don't write about the times he gets busted for throwing food around the cafeteria. He has his issues and sometimes it gets a bit frustrating. My joke, though, is that the only time I lose patience with him is when he acts like a seven year old. He is a pretty normal kid, all in all.

Adoption is a tricky process and there are different issues that you need to be aware of for domestic versus foreign adoptions. We were very fortunate to get Nicholas, but I would advise anyone thinking about a Russian adoption to do a lot of homework.

The woman in Tennessee was clearly not living up to her obligations as a parent, but I do wonder if there should have been more support from friends and members of the family. Certainly assistance from a psychologist and/or a social worker would be very important also. It's dangerous, however, to speculate too much about this controversy from the outside looking in.

The New York Times has an interesting commentary about the Tennessee mother that made a lot of good points:

What now?

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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License. This page was written by Steve Simon and was last modified on 2017-06-15.