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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 18:33:29 GMT -5
It's possible that the adopted children had severe behavioural issues due to reactive attachment disorder or other problems, and the adoptions "disrupted" (that's the technical term for when they are undone because they're not working). That explanation would fit with Nancy Campbell saying they were "dangerous". However, I have little doubt that if this was the case, the Campbells' Quiverfull and patriarchal ideas nonetheless made the situation much worse than necessary.
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Post by freefromtyranny on Aug 6, 2010 18:47:42 GMT -5
That's not even the issue. Disruptions do happen. The problem is that the Campbells are still strongly promoting Liberian adoptions without telling the truth about their own experiences. People should be aware that adopted children sometimes have severe issues like RAD.
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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 18:51:30 GMT -5
That's not even the issue. Disruptions do happen. The problem is that the Campbells are still strongly promoting Liberian adoptions without telling the truth about their own experiences. People should be aware that adopted children sometimes have severe issues like RAD. I agree.
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Post by arietty on Aug 6, 2010 21:57:57 GMT -5
I have SO much to say about this.. I began my walk into QF with Above Rubies 20 years ago so this topic is always of interest. Firstly I completely relate to Serene's brainwashing herself into being positive. I did that for many many years, lived with almost no hot water in a shack (nothing as bad as Serene's situation though.. that is very painful to read). Positive, positive, positive, count your blessings.. and I still have some residuals of this today (not facing realities because it is still too easy to slip into some spin about it). I know how compelling it is to be in survivalist mode.. it gives meaning to everything. It's never dull because you are fighting for your mood and sanity 24/7. When I read Vyckie's stories of horrendous pregnancies I see the same thing, survivalist mode. Living in very difficult circumstances is kind of addictive, your identity is more and more wrapped up in being strong and overcoming and all that stuff that people leading much more comfortable (lukewarm) lives don't have. You constantly feel you are experiencing GROWTH and learning hard lessons. Yes it is certainly asceticism. KM made a good point about money, sometimes people really do not have the money to fix things.. what money they do have may be allocated to other stuff, like a business they need to run to make any kind of money. However it is really sad to come from a big close family and be living like this. Half my kids are adults now, though not at the grandchild stage yet. I can say though with absolute assurance that if in the future one of them ended up in such severe dire straits (house destroyed by flood!!) they would NOT be left to live in it with little children. We are a BIG family and we would band together and offer practical and real help including housing. So even if this is the case for Serene (no money) what is the point of having a huge close family if you aren't there to help? I am sure many people read this story in AR and wonder the same thing, no matter how devoted to the magazine they are. It seems to fly in the face of decades of family, family, family teachings from this publication. Now it's quite likely that Serene and her husband have refused offers of help, homes to move into. It's an easy thing to judge, that the family isn't helping, but it may be they just refuse to accept stuff and stubbornly do not wish to admit this homesteading project is a failure and move on. I have known so many families like this However given the ages and quantity of the children I do believe it's time for the family to step in and be pushy on this manner, this is not safe or healthy AND it does not seem temporary. Here's some info about the adopted children and the water problem (the land has no water, it's not pipes): www.oldpathsfamilyfarm.net/blog/2008/02/22/sam-serene/It's very hard for a man who has slaved away at homesteading building a house from scratch to admit that this has actually failed. It means that all that work you did was for nothing if you just give up and move into a rental home in the suburbs. But what do you put first, your children or your pride? This is all complicated by believing you were called by GOD to build on this land.. very hard to admit it isn't working out. I know my QF friend has persevered into absolute financial disaster because they have not been able to admit mistakes having decided that every whim and choice they ever make is a Called By God decision. I think the positive spin has meant that they have talked about them as their children and adopted even when it was all up in the air. I don't understand how adoption agencies allow adoptions when a person has no running water. I'm copying the info that is there in case that page disappears. I think it's a real disservice that the Campbells don't discuss the difficulties of adopting older children. I do not get this AT ALL. You will find plenty out there about RAD and the huge challenges of adopting older children from war torn countries but not from the Campbells who just drop any mention of the ones that didn't work out and focus only on the positives. Don't they want to equip people looking into adoption, to help people be prepared? It's creepy AND deceptive. They have obviously walked through some tough times with adoption, don't they have anything to share about it? btw someone is sure to object to all this gossiping about the Campbells. I think that because they have been holding their lives up as examples of godliness for over 30 years, detailing the bits they want people to emulate that filling in these blanks is not malicious or intrusive. It's just the rest of the picture that they have been mailing into peoples homes for decades.
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Post by arietty on Aug 6, 2010 22:08:25 GMT -5
If I had read that article by Serene in the latest AR when in my QF days I would have been SO convicted that whatever I was currently stressed or unhappy about was really.. NOTHING. That article would have absolutely inspired me to put up with no hot water, 6 kids in one tiny room, everything falling apart, husband enraged all the time.. I probably would have read it 20 times to encourage me to persevere.
Funny how "persevere" ends up meaning "don't deal with" in this lifestyle.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 22:57:05 GMT -5
Does anyone want to volunteer to make the call? It would need to be someone who has access to the copy of Above Rubies in which this was published, and preferably someone who has had some contact with the Campbells. I'm outside the U.S. and have no way to get hold of a copy of Above Rubies, so I'm not in a great position to do it. I don't have access to the magazine, and I've never met the Campbells, but I do think it should be done.
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Post by zoeygirl on Aug 6, 2010 22:58:22 GMT -5
This is a sad story to read. I come from a fundamentalist family, though not QF, and my family doesn't help each other. That part resonated with me.
If I was the one with the flooded basement, my parent's attitude would be, "Well, you're an adult now and married, so you will have to figure this out on your own. We're not responsible for you anymore. We'll help a little bit if it's really bad, but don't inconvenience us too much. The bible says you are to leave your family and cleave to your spouse. You got yourself into this mess, so you will have to find a way out of it--with the help of God, of course; and remember, in everything give thanks!! God is trying to teach you something with this trial! He will provide! Joy joy joy!"
When I had trials in my abusive marriage (in which I spent 5 years in a remodel--that thread was an eye-opener!), this is the attitude I would get, so I just stopped asking. Serene may be in this situation as well--asking mom and dad for help is an exercise in futility, AND a sign that you are a weak Christian, AND a sign that you aren't following your husband's leadership. Jesus must be shaking his head that his "followers" think that asking another person for help is a sign of weakness.
It's a sad chapter in my life, and as I look at my family today I am sad. We could have been closer, but we weren't. The whole ascetic thing hits home as well. We weren't allowed to have feelings--most relational problems were met with, "Well, you have to CHOOSE to love! Just pray that when that when your husband abuses you that you don't feel the pain!"
Sick.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 22:57:13 GMT -5
Of course, the problem may not be that they don't want to repair the lower floor. After the post-Katrina flooding in New Orleans, it was hard for people to find contractors to repair flood damage even when they had the money. This was not an isolated flood - a large swath of Tennessee was affected. And if you try ripping out the damaged stuff yourself, you risk sending mold spores swirling throughout the whole house. So I don't know if we can assume that they have chosen not to make necessary repairs or can't afford to. Yeah, these are fair points.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:03:49 GMT -5
Years ago I was told by this person (http://www.clarkchatter.blogspot.com/) whom I used to be friends with, that she was a part of a Yahoo group for people that have adopted from Liberia and Nancy Campbell was on the list as well. She said that Nancy Campbell sent her kids back to Liberia because they were "dangerous". When I asked if they were going let everyone know she said no, it was supposed to be hush-hush. Wow... This reminds me of that recent story that hit the news about a mother sending her adopted kid alone on a flight back to Russia saying that she "didn't want him anymore." And it's a horrible, horrible thing for adults who make a commitment to a child to do. If this is true, it needs to be made more public.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:07:18 GMT -5
I want to make sure that I say that I don't condemn the family if indeed they could not handle the children. It is hard for me to even imagine a mother who could parent over a dozen children, some of whom had experienced severe trauma in their birth country, educate them all at home, and do it all without running water or central heating. I just think they went overboard on the "can-do" attitude and admitting that would be a great help to their readers. Hmm... I've gotta say that I do. You do not commit to parenting a child from a war-torn country who has presumably had a difficult life thus far--and officially become the child's parent and then get to take the kid back as if it's a difficult dog from the local shelter. This sickens me. And it suggests that they don't see adopted children as their actual children, but as pets to be picked up on a whim and then taken back to the store when they misbehave... Ugh...
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:12:02 GMT -5
It's possible that the adopted children had severe behavioural issues due to reactive attachment disorder or other problems, and the adoptions "disrupted" (that's the technical term for when they are undone because they're not working). That explanation would fit with Nancy Campbell saying they were "dangerous". However, I have little doubt that if this was the case, the Campbells' Quiverfull and patriarchal ideas nonetheless made the situation much worse than necessary. Yeah, pretty much this. And while I usually try to be polite and avoid my usual sailor's mouth 'round here, I just have to say... What the fuck are people who can't handle children with severe emotional trauma doing adopting children from Liberia The QF ideals imposed on children with behavioral/emotional issues... Seems like a recipe for abuse to me. I don't know. I seem to be having the opposite reaction to many here. The poverty/flooding issues seem to me to be issues conceivably outside the parents' control, but... But... You do not voluntarily choose to become the parent of a child and then get to change your mind. An adoptee is not a bloody shelter dog.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:13:11 GMT -5
That's not even the issue. Disruptions do happen. The problem is that the Campbells are still strongly promoting Liberian adoptions without telling the truth about their own experiences. People should be aware that adopted children sometimes have severe issues like RAD. This disgusts me. I think international adoptions are a complicated issue in the first place, but... Ugh... This makes me feel ill. So much for a non-judgmental attitude, I guess.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:16:10 GMT -5
I don't understand how adoption agencies allow adoptions when a person has no running water. This is a damned good point.
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Post by nikita on Aug 6, 2010 23:18:15 GMT -5
Not to get too sidetracked but what really sickens me is the sheer number of African American children languishing in foster care while everyone rushes to Africa to find black children to adopt. Now, if the local social services is of the old opinion that black children can only be adopted by black families then I'll give local folks a pass. But that isn't true of all geographical areas and certainly isn't true of celebrities in the news the last decade or so.
Sorry, it just pisses me off. Yes, orphans from war-torn Liberia are in a terrible straight. But so are orphans in war-torn Los Angeles.
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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 23:20:14 GMT -5
Apparently disrupted adoptions are disturbingly common when the children are older. I'm not sure what to think about those situations. On the one hand, KM, you're absolutely right that children are not shelter dogs, and it's only going to hurt the children even more if their supposed forever-parents don't want to be their parents anymore. On the other hand, I can envision situations where the parents are completely unable to handle the child's issues, and the child might actually be better off elsewhere. My local paper ran an interesting, though somewhat disturbing article about disrupted adoptions here. I'm inclined to think the parents in the article were to blame--they should have realized they were likely to get seriously disturbed kids, and they should have been willing to take the professionals' advice about how to deal with their kids, but if they were going to insist on being punitive about RAD symptoms, they probably weren't the right parents for those kids anyway.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:26:17 GMT -5
Not to get too sidetracked but what really sickens me is the sheer number of African American children languishing in foster care while everyone rushes to Africa to find black children to adopt. Now, if the local social services is of the old opinion that black children can only be adopted by black families then I'll give local folks a pass. But that isn't true of all geographical areas and certainly isn't true of celebrities in the news the last decade or so. Sorry, it just pisses me off. Yes, orphans from war-torn Liberia are in a terrible straight. But so are orphans in war-torn Los Angeles. Hey, Nikita, just be aware that there are international adopting parents on this forum, I think. It bothers me as well. I get what you're saying, but in addition... The colonial attitudes surrounding the celebrity Adopt from Africa project are awful. There's the Jessica Simpson story about her family's one-week mission trip to Tanzania when she was a teenager. They volunteered at an orphanage, and she picked up one super cute kid and said, "Can we keep it?" And there's Madonna stealing a kid out of Tanzania without the father's consent... And Brangelina and... I do not like the trend. I especially do not like the trend when practiced by culturally ignorant white people in Western countries who have no idea what they're doing. I say this because I have lived in a country in Africa, and I'm a Southern American, and you know, we have this long history of treating Black Africans as pets... and this new trend is horrifying and offensive at worst, and it is simply not true that just any US upbringing is de facto superior to any African upbringing... We're bringing kids out of dysfunction and into new kinds of dysfunction, and the ability to do that is certainly a function of all kinds of privilege. But it does no service to these children when it happens this way, since they're people who have individual selves in their own right... And who are not house decorations or family pets.
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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 23:27:19 GMT -5
I don't understand how adoption agencies allow adoptions when a person has no running water. That's probably why the Campbells were adopting from Liberia specifically. Liberia has had all sorts of corruption issues with U.S. adoptions, and became closed to foreign adoptions as of January 2009. This site suggests that there weren't a lot of constraints on who could adopt from Liberia before 2009. Liberia was probably allowing QF families to adopt who would have been turned down in other countries.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:27:19 GMT -5
Apparently disrupted adoptions are disturbingly common when the children are older. I'm not sure what to think about those situations. On the one hand, KM, you're absolutely right that children are not shelter dogs, and it's only going to hurt the children even more if their supposed forever-parents don't want to be their parents anymore. On the other hand, I can envision situations where the parents are completely unable to handle the child's issues, and the child might actually be better off elsewhere. My local paper ran an interesting, though somewhat disturbing article about disrupted adoptions here. I'm inclined to think the parents in the article were to blame--they should have realized they were likely to get seriously disturbed kids, and they should have been willing to take the professionals' advice about how to deal with their kids, but if they were going to insist on being punitive about RAD symptoms, they probably weren't the right parents for those kids anyway. I... I just don't understand agencies adopting to parents like this in the first place.
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Post by nikita on Aug 6, 2010 23:28:22 GMT -5
I agree that adopted kids shouldn't be treated like shelter dogs, but if their level of mental disturbance (and RAD is very disturbing and pretty much not curable) then that becomes a family by family issue to resolve. Especially if there are other siblings at risk in the home whose lives are going to be endangered or forever traumatized by living with the RAD child. Not everyone can handle such a drastic situation and there are cases of child abuse and murder by parents who adopted RAD children and simply could no longer cope in that extreme situation. So I won't pass judgment too quickly there. The Russian boy sent back alone with a note was ridiculous though - no excuse for that particular action on the mother's part.
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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 23:31:25 GMT -5
I... I just don't understand agencies adopting to parents like this in the first place. There aren't that many adoptive parents who are willing to take older, special needs children at all. Some of these kids are never going to have parents unless they're placed with people who may not be quite as committed as they should be. Social services should screen carefully, but I can see why they'd accept parents who claimed to be willing to take older, special needs kids with certain limits (e.g. the "no brain damage" specified by the parents in the article).
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:31:32 GMT -5
I agree that adopted kids shouldn't be treated like shelter dogs, but if their level of mental disturbance (and RAD is very disturbing and pretty much not curable) then that becomes a family by family issue to resolve. Especially if there are other siblings at risk in the home whose lives are going to be endangered or forever traumatized by living with the RAD child. Not everyone can handle such a drastic situation and there are cases of child abuse and murder by parents who adopted RAD children and simply could no longer cope in that extreme situation. So I won't pass judgment too quickly there. The Russian boy sent back alone with a note was ridiculous though - no excuse for that particular action on the mother's part. But why are these children just handed off to parents who clearly lack the patience and resources to deal with issues like this? It's lovely to think that God will just transcend everything, I guess, but we do all have histories that shape us, and... Argh... Yeah, the Campbells need to be honest about this.
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Post by kisekileia on Aug 6, 2010 23:36:17 GMT -5
Especially if there are other siblings at risk in the home whose lives are going to be endangered or forever traumatized by living with the RAD child. This. I know someone online who has an RAD adopted child, and the child's younger sister (this woman adopted a sibling trio) has been significantly emotionally harmed by the RAD child, and the situation was severe enough that people were advising her to put the RAD child into foster care. The mother is truly committed to all three of the children, but was near breaking point--it really looked like the RAD child needed to be institutionalized on a long-term basis, but social services weren't willing to provide that. Fortunately a better med regimen has brought some of the girl's symptoms under control (she has a TON going on besides RAD--bipolar disorder with schizophrenic features, among other things), but for awhile it was looking like the mom was going to have to choose between giving up the RAD kid and sacrificing everyone else. The mom's public blog is here, if anyone's interested--please be nice, this woman is truly committed to doing the best for her children.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:39:24 GMT -5
In any case, I didn't realize this disrupted adoption thing was such a big problem... The case with the Russian child was the first I'd heard of it as well.
But again, I'm left thinking... What on earth did the Campbells expect to happen on adopting several children from Liberia??? I mean, not just one, but several. Blech... I just... Don't go into a situation that you don't understand--like, say, the one in Liberia--and then make it worse.
But this gets at the heart of their anti-intellectualism and support for poor education standards and just general ignorance about the world... And their cultural illiteracy, as well as a sense of entitlement when it comes to plucking kids up out of their homes without very much information or self-awareness about what they could handle... And the faith that God will transcend everything no matter what.
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Post by nikita on Aug 6, 2010 23:43:22 GMT -5
Adoption agencies are notorious for failing to disclose RAD problems in children both in international adoptions and American adoptions as well. Plus, RAD children can be very charming on the surface and not give the adoptive parents any reason to think things aren't going swimmingly until they are actually in the home full time. So it's not always easy on the parents end to discern this thing going in.
As for people who seek international adoptions, I don't think it's a bad thing for anyone to do it, and I understand that some people don't qualify for American adoptions due to age or illness or what have you but can get a foreign adoption approved so I sympathize. I really do. It's a win-win for parent and child in those situations.
But I just hate the whole faddishness of it in celebrity circles and also the 'pet' like attitude that seems to be apparent in some of them. It's really creepy. Are we to understand that there are absolutely no children of color in the US that would be desirable for adoption, that one must go to Africa or Guatemala to find a child when all other factors are good to go otherwise? And when I hear on the news about some of these foreign adoptions, the children aren't even orphans. They have parents and families. If one feels led somehow to go to Africa or Haiti to adopt surely there are actual orphans to choose from in those places? You don't need to raid families to find a child.
It's all wrong to me. Something is very skewed here. That's all I'm saying.
So the Campbells adopted from a corrupt state that had an easy adoption policy. Due to their extreme beliefs and their lifestyle I can fully believe that no American agency would approve them, so that makes sense.
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Post by km on Aug 6, 2010 23:46:23 GMT -5
But I just hate the whole faddishness of it in celebrity circles and also the 'pet' like attitude that seems to be apparent in some of them. It's really creepy. Are we to understand that there are absolutely no children of color in the US that would be desirable for adoption, that one must go to Africa or Guatemala to find a child when all other factors are good to go otherwise? And when I hear on the news about some of these foreign adoptions, the children aren't even orphans. They have parents and families. If one feels led somehow to go to Africa or Haiti to adopt surely there are actual orphans to choose from in those places? You don't need to raid families to find a child. Yeah, these are more or less the problems that I have with it. And I know that this isn't what happens with every family, but yeah... These things happen far too often.
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