CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In her final days as Kathryn’s mother, Pat Amon gathered belongings she wanted her daughter to have.
There was Mickey Mouse, Kathryn’s favorite stuffed animal. Her little blue tunic, worn to Daisy Scout meetings. And the ballet recital photo with a smiling Kathryn posing in a tutu.
Pat worked slowly, filling two shopping bags. Every item, loaded with memories, felt as if it weighed 100 pounds.
Nearly six years ago, Pat Amon traveled to Russia to adopt. She returned with a boy and a girl, and dreams of giving them a happy American childhood: a house with a pool, their own rooms, college savings accounts set up by doting godparents.
She knew the years ahead wouldn’t be easy. Children from orphanages can have developmental delays, physical shortcomings, mental difficulties. Still, she believed that problems could be remedied _ with the help of doctors and therapists. With a mother’s love.
Pat underestimated the challenges. International adoptions in the United States have tripled since 1990, to more than 20,000 a year, and the majority have happy endings. But Pat’s ordeal, far from unique, offers a caution to anyone considering the process. She’s telling her story to help others avoid her mistakes.
SEEMED SUREST ADOPTION ROUTE
For years, Pat worked as an infertility nurse, regularly witnessing the joy of women learning they were to be mothers. In 1999, after long consideration, she decided she wanted motherhood, too. She was 47 and unmarried. International adoption seemed the surest route. She made her first trip to Russia in 2000 and fell in love with Kathryn. Then named Elena, the 2-year-old was toddling around an orphanage in Astrakhan, in southern Russia. “She was just adorable,” Pat recalls, “just so happy and full of life.”
She would name the little girl after a beloved great-aunt. And when adoption officials pointed out a rosy-cheeked 3-year-old named Mikhail, she agreed to take him, too.
In May 2001, she brought the children to the south Charlotte, N.C., home she shared with her partner. Kathryn was 3; Mikhail, 4. (Pat changed Mikhail’s name, but requested it be withheld to protect his privacy.)
PROBLEMS START QUICKLY
From the start, Kathryn was difficult. While Mikhail hovered near Pat and chattered in Russian, Kathryn spent hours running through the house and balked when Pat tried to cuddle. “I would hug her. She would butt me. I would tell her, `You’re safe.’ We worked and worked on it.”
At 3, Kathryn hadn’t begun talking. Experts diagnosed motor and language delays. They noted that she avoided eye contact, hit her face when frustrated and rocked or butted her head against Pat when upset.
Over the next several years, Pat read books and saw psychologists to learn parenting techniques. She got Kathryn therapies _ speech, occupational and sensory integration. She took her to ballet to improve her coordination.
She even swaddled Kathryn in a blanket, holding and rocking her. Some experts say the technique helps children who never bonded to adults as infants.
Kathryn did progress. She learned to talk and willingly climbed into Pat’s lap. When Kathryn was baptized at age 5, the curly-headed girl in a yellow tulle dress charmed parishioners by following each “amen” with her own “A-men!”
But problems persisted. She remained defiant and aggressive, ignoring her mother, hitting her brother and the family’s dogs, head-butting a friend during a play date. She exhibited repetitive behaviors, asking the same question over and over or scratching her skin until it bled.
And Kathryn continued to pull away when Pat offered affection or attention. When Pat ignored Kathryn, however, the child sought her out. Such behavior suggested reactive attachment disorder, found in children who’ve spent early years in institutional or foster care. It’s characterized by hostility, lying and an inability to trust adults.
By the time Kathryn entered kindergarten, she was taking an anti-psychotic to control aggression and an attention deficit disorder drug. In 2005, after an epilepsy diagnosis, she began taking an anti-seizure drug, too.
RED FLAGS IGNORED
Why was Kathryn so troubled? Pat could only guess. Kathryn had been happy and affectionate in her orphanage. The one warning sign in her records _ a cerebral palsy diagnosis _ was deleted after a U.S. doctor reviewed a video of Kathryn and ruled it out.
Still, Pat knows she ignored red flags. One adoption official had told Pat not to adopt the girl.
“I just had this gut feeling there was something they weren’t telling me,” Pat says. “But did I ask? Of course not. I was thinking with my heart, not my brain.”
DIAGNOSES, STRAIN INCREASE
In 2006, Kathryn turned 8, still small for her age, but with a growing list of diagnoses that included attachment disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, epilepsy, mild mental retardation, attention deficit disorder.
She was getting worse. Calls from school became so frequent that Pat quit her nursing job.
In May, Pat found Thompson Child & Family Focus, a nonprofit that offers the county’s only residential treatment for attachment disorders. But Kathryn didn’t meet admission criteria because of her autistic tendencies and mental retardation. Thompson administrators were kind to let Kathryn stay in a weekday program, she says.
One June evening, Kathryn spit at her mother, attacked her brother and repeatedly threw herself onto the concrete patio. The next day, Pat drove her daughter to the emergency room at Behavioral Health Center CMC-Randolph. The psychiatric hospital admitted Kathryn. She stayed nearly a month.
Pat lives with a partner who didn’t want to be identified for this story. Legally, Pat was sole parent. She says she practically functioned as a single parent _ getting the kids ready for school, fixing meals, taking them to appointments, dealing with behavioral problems. Her partner was often away, traveling for work.
The strain was wearing her down. “I literally felt like I was losing it, mentally. My life was obsessed with Kathryn and Kathryn’s needs.”
NEARING END OF ROPE
Over the next three months, Pat requested therapeutic foster care for Kathryn so she and her son could have a break. Therapeutic foster parents are trained to care for mentally ill children. Pat also lobbied to send Kathryn to a program in New Mexico that treats attachment disorder. But a psychologist concluded she would be best treated at home.
In October, a foster mother was finally lined up, then fell through. With Pat threatening to give up parental rights, her case manager found a family through Lutheran Family Services. Days later, Pat learned someone had erred: Lutheran Family Services didn’t have a contract with the county for therapeutic foster care. Kathryn needed to return home.
No, Pat said. I won’t take her back.
In January, she e-mailed the N.C. chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness: “I have hit the wall and am so completely burned out. I don’t feel that I can continue to parent this child and this breaks my heart.”
Pat believes the state’s mental health system failed her. The system seemed bent on keeping Kathryn in her home, she says, even as Pat told professionals she couldn’t take it anymore. If Kathryn had been placed in residential treatment, she thinks they could still be a family.
Michelle Humphrey, who worked until recently for Charlotte’s Council for Children’s Rights, served as an advocate for Kathryn. She agrees mental health system delays made matters worse. So did Pat’s unwillingness to keep Kathryn at home, she says.
No one keeps statistics on failed international adoptions. Experts say they’ve grown increasingly common as the adoptions have boomed.
Some adoption experts criticize parents who give up their children, saying they treat the adopted child as a commodity that can be returned.
Others are reluctant to judge. “Walk a mile in a parent’s shoes before you say something like that,” says Dr. Dana Johnson of the University of Minnesota’s International Adoption Clinic.
NO LONGER KATHRYN’S MOTHER
The day Pat relinquished her parental rights, she brought to the courthouse two shopping bags she’d packed with the last of Kathryn’s toys and photos. “I wanted her to know about her life with us.”
After more than five years as Kathryn’s mother, Pat signed papers giving up custody and handed over Kathryn’s Russian birth certificate. She asked to see Kathryn once more. But it hasn’t come to pass.
Today, Kathryn Amon, now 9, is in DSS custody. Pat is no longer her mother.
Kathryn lives in a therapeutic foster home, Pat says, and could be adopted. Because of confidentiality rules, county officials won’t discuss her case.
Pat’s home has been peaceful these past few months. On weekday mornings, she fixes breakfast for Mikhail, 9, and packs his lunch. After school, she helps with homework and drives him to chess club.
Pat continues to second-guess her decisions.
She misses the little girl who loved stuffed animals and Barbies and anything pink.
She feels guilt and grief. And relief.
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BEFORE YOU ADOPT A CHILD FROM OVERSEAS
_Choose a reputable adoption agency. Ask parents who’ve used the agency about their experience.
_Find parents who’ve adopted to act as mentors.
_Educate yourself about potential problems. Research therapists and mental health services that specialize in working with adoptive children. Take the same training as a foster care parent.
_Get written evaluations of the child’s medical records from at least two doctors. Ask for original records and have them translated into English yourself.
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RESOURCES
Books
“Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow,” Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky, ($22, Pinon Press); “Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft,” Mary Hopkins-Best, ($15, Perspectives Press); “When Love Is Not Enough: A Guide to Parenting Children With RAD,” Nancy Thomas, ($15, Families By Design.)
Web Site
www.adoptivefamilies.com, Web site for Adoptive Families magazine, includes an adoption guide, directories of resources and links to other adoption sites; www.radkid.org, a Web site about reactive attachment disorder.
_To learn about becoming a foster parent or adopting in Mecklenburg County: 704-336-5437.
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OVERSEAS ADOPTIONS NO SAFE HAVEN FROM PROBLEMS
Prospective parents go abroad to adopt for many reasons _ to find younger children, to steer clear of birth parents who could disrupt the adoption, to avoid children damaged by abuse and neglect.
But international adoptions, which can cost $20,000 or $30,000, carry many of the same risks as domestic ones.
“This is a high-risk group no different than (children in) foster care in the United States,” says Thais Tepper of the Parents Network for the Post-Institutionalized Child.
Some adoption agencies and orphanages don’t reveal enough about potential problems, experts say. Parents can face issues that include mental retardation, sensory processing problems and attention deficit disorder. There’s also reactive attachment disorder _ characterized by hostility, lying and an inability to bond with adults.
The chances of problems rise the longer children stay in institutionalized care, experts say. In Russia, fetal alcohol exposure may compound difficulties.
As international adoptions have become more common, so have stories of parents who return children before the adoption is finalized, or of families who give up parental rights.
Dr. Ronald Federici, a Virginia-based neuropsychologist, says he’s dealt with hundreds of parents who’ve relinquished parental rights. About 80 percent of those had adopted from Eastern Europe and Russia.
“It’s become an epidemic,” he says. “Adoption agencies do not prepare the parents whatsoever. Parents panic. Parents get overwhelmed.”
FINDING HELP
Dr. David Douglass, a pediatrician with Cabarrus Pediatric Clinic, runs For the Children International Adoption Medical Services. The program helps prospective parents understand medical issues facing children they’re considering. Finding help for the children is often difficult, he says. “It’s really expensive. And most people don’t have a ton of experience (with) the behavioral health community.”
Some children’s advocates blame parents for going into adoptions blindly and giving up too easily. Others sympathize, citing the stress a troubled child places on a family.
NEW REGULATIONS
The United States is supposed to implement a treaty soon to regulate intercountry adoptions. It requires parents to get training and adoption agencies to give parents more information about children they’re adopting.
Tepper, with the Parents Network for the Post-Institutionalized Child, favors regulation, but she’s unsure how much the treaty will do: “If we were looking at anything else that came from any other country other than human beings” it would have been regulated years ago.
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