Adoption & Foster Care

Adoption & Foster Care – Adolescents and children in adoptive or foster homes experience extreme early life trauma and stress. Most of these children go through severe abuse and neglect from primary caregivers, and as a result can suffer from: depression, anxiety, social problems, attachment issues, and developmental delays.

Attachment issues are common among children in adoptive or foster care because of the unusually high number of placements and transitions that they have to go through before they find long-term homes. Some of the psychological disorders that can develop from adoptive and foster homes are: Reactive Attachment Disorder, PTSD, Conduct Disorder, and Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Also, behavior problems tend to arise as another result of the missing structure, consistency and early trauma that these children and adolescents face. Such problems can affect a whole family system can also be a cause of the high number of transitions and placement disruptions in these foster and adoptive homes.

International adoptions can create different issues and challenges that children have to overcome. Foreign orphanages usually can not give the care, individual attention or supervision that is a necessity to create healthy attachments while the child is going through critical early developmental stages. Early attachment issues that develop during this time can have devastating effects on the child’s ability to create and sustain positive relationships with their primary caregivers and family.

These problems can be resolved with time and intensive attachment therapy, as well as childhood and family trauma therapy. It is often critical that children and adolescents find loving and skilled caregivers that are able to provide the kids with what they need emotionally and developmentally. There are success stories everywhere of kids and families that were able to overcome severe childhood challenges and become healthy, happy, thriving families.

Foster care and adoptions can cause many issues but if you are looking for a therapist in San Jose to work through them with, please contact Chris Jones, MFT at 408.608.7230.