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[quote=Anonymous]We did not adopt from foster care but did an older child intl. adoption of siblings and I will tell you that it is a crap shoot.  You can have two kids with the same genetics and early life experiences of neglect/abuse and one can be perfectly fine in terms of behavior and bonding while the other can have pretty severe attachment issues.  The kids with attachment issues are very, very tough to parent.  Their whole sense of safety was severely comprised early on and so they exhibit a lot of controlling/defiant behaviors because they have a fundamental distrust of adults.  That is easy to understand intellectually, but a lot tougher to deal with emotionally---when you have someone standing there screaming "Fuck you Bitch!" and threatening to break the china cabinet because you took away his allowance for defiantly refusing to do his homework/chores/take a shower/turn off the TV, etc.  It is absolutely exhausting.    And no amount of loving reassurance makes a difference---nothing in their experience of life has given them reason to trust---and their self esteem is usually so low that they have no reason to believe that you could ever see good in them.  And in fact, giving loving reassurance makes them think you are either crazy or a fool.

But to be able to see the excitement and joy on the face of a child who wants to show you the good grade they got on a test, or whose face just lit up at the school concert because for the first time ever there was an adult in the audience who had come to see them especially--that is a wonderful experience.

A total crap shoot.  I would listen very, very carefully to the history of the child's prior placements---you should be able to read between the lines of a description and foresee the issues.  Sort of like perusing the real estate estate listings where "cozy and quaint" means "small, dark and unrenovated"---if you see a description of a child as "high energy" or "needs to be controlled" you can bet you are dealing with ADHD or attachment/defiant disorder issues.[/quote]

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