Childhood Foster Care Or Adopted?

[shimmerz]

I am wondering how many of you had a childhood that involved foster care, an interrupted bonding experience with your parents (hospitalization?) or adoption.

I would also like to know if you feel that this experience plays a part in your trauma?

I probably should be posting this as a poll, but am not certain how to do so.

 

[illusionist]

Hiya Shimmerz X I have questioned myself on this...if I took away my abuse would I be left with an empty space.....yes I believe I would.....but if I didn't know? I'm not so sure...as I've known folks who were perfectly happy until they had known about their adoption in adulthood.....they automatically felt ' not Belonging' whereas before, it had never entered their mind.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

I think I was so confused about what rules counted and not that I just did whatever I wanted and made sure no one knew what I was doing... I notice today that I'm afraid of doing anything because I fear I might not be allowed, so I tend to just to stuff when no one's looking and try to be nice. Rules are very confusing and I just can't seem to be able to trust that a rule that applies today will also apply tomorrow.

My father is not an adulting adult, very irresponsible and unable to take proper care of himself and a house. He's got a massive debt that he can't pay down and anger issues. I'd personally classify him as emotionally abusive, but I've not really discussed that with anyone else who knows him. He does fit the description like a hand in a glove, though. He's got PTSD as well, not that it makes him understanding at all. My mother is severely bipolar and has a strong tendency to abuse drugs and self-medicate. She does not consistently take her prescribed lithium at all. When she breaks into a depressive state she turns homicidal and suicidal because the world is hopeless and everyone, including herself, should die. She's tried to stab and kill my father during states like that. And when she flips the other way around, into a manic episode, she usually breaks into psychosis.

Needless to say, they were a pretty bad combination and how they even managed to figure out that they should be together makes no sense to me whatsoever because all they ever do is complain about how much shit the other caused onto them. They actually broke up. Then they got together again and my mother got pregnant with me. Then when they were breaking up again my mother got pregnant once more and they decided to stay together for me and my little sister's sake. I kind of think that it would've been best if they had never gotten together again after that first breakup.

Anyway, I was born in 2000. My parents stayed together up until 2004, and during that time my mother was (as far as I've been told) hospitalized 2-3 times because going off her meds during pregnancies just messed her up. We moved around a bit too, and during those 4 years we lived in 5 different places. My dad also studied some during this time, so we'd be home alone with our mother during the day and then he'd get home but our mother wasn't always there cause she got hospitalized and that stuff.
Then they divorced (finally), my sister and I moved with out mother pretty far away. In 2006, my mother got manic again and me and my sister lived with a relative for about two months. Then we moved with out mother to a different place shortly after that. In 2008 she got sick again, and me and my sister first lived with one relative for a few weeks then with the same relative as the one we lived with in 2006 (could be the other way around and more back and forth, not entirely sure. I remember little from this time period), then a completely different family for about 4-5 months. I think that on the paper was foster care, not sure. After that we were moved back to our mother yet again, and kept staying with the foster family every third weekend for a couple years. Later on it turns out that during the hospitalization and chaos back in 2008 they found lots of drugs in my mother's body, and it took a while before she got us back because of that (we lived away from her for half a year, she was only inpatient half of that time I think) and they kept testing her weekly until 2010.
In 2011 my sister, me and our mother moved to another place and in 2012 she was hospitalized again. This time she was inpatient for a couple months as well and me and my sister lived with someone else for the same amount of time.

In 2013 we ran away. We packed our stuff and called our dad and left to go live with him. Our mother was pissed, when we were packing I took my sister into my room when she had finished packing (she was only 10 years old) and locked the door while I packed the last bits of my stuff. She sat on my bed crying all the time, and then our mother started knocking on the door and I had to run out of my room to get some other stuff and she followed me and yelled so much and was just pissed on a whole different level. Then I got back to my room and we left through the back door I had in my room and lots of trials and chaos later our dad had custody full time.

Earlier this year I moved to a foster family. Then after two months there I moved to the one I'm in now. My sister is still with my dad and the CPS won't listen to me when I say I'm worried about her. I don't really trust parental figures or the CPS. The CPS was always there from 2004 and up (when my mother moved away with me and my sister our dad called them on her, and my mother called them on my dad when me and my sister ran away to him and also sued him for kidnapping) but so much bad things happened anyway and they didn't stop any of it. And parental figures are chaotic. I've had my mother and my father, and also the adults of five other families with two adults as parental figures. If an adult pulls anything parental like "I'm here to take care of you", "I want what's best for you", "I just love you" etc along with that fake caring behaviour I instantly want to run the opposite direction and lose all trust for them.

I don't even have the most severe case, I could've bounced around a lot more than this but I still feel like it messed up my connection to the adults around me. I didn't have one stable adult present all the time, and the one that was supposed to be my primary caregiver most of the time (my mother.. ugh) wasn't stable at all. I always just assumed that me and my sister would move again soon, I just assumed it because I was so used to it. Like I said I didn't have any clue what rules applied when and just did whatever. I think it confused me a lot and then made me more vulnerable and poorly equipped for coping with other bad stuff.

Not sure if this is the kinda childhood you're thinking about, but it definitely caused interrupted bonding and distrust. It made me feel, and makes me feel, like I had and have no foundation. There's no rock under me. I'm just floating around and if I fall I never stop, because I've got nothing to land on.

 

[scout86]

but I still feel like it messed up my connection to the adults around me.

It did. There's no way it could do anything else.

If an adult pulls anything parental like "I'm here to take care of you", "I want what's best for you", "I just love you" etc along with that fake caring behaviour I instantly want to run the opposite direction and lose all trust for them.

Based on your experience, that's a totally reasonable reaction. Remember, "adults" are just people (only old). There are good ones and bad ones. There will be some who lie, but there will also be some who really and truly do care about you. Hard to sort them out, sometimes, but be open to ALL the possibilities.

I'm just floating around and if I fall I never stop, because I've got nothing to land on.

You might want to give yourself more credit than that. You're a very smart, resourceful young lady. You can land on your own two feet, if there's no place else to land.

In the immortal words of my T, "You got robbed." I'm sorry you did! I'm sorry you didn't get the rational, helpful family you deserve. And, I wish I could fix it. :(:mad:

 

[notsurewheretoturn]

I'm not sure if this is the same thing of not. When I was born I was very ill (cancer). This meant surgery and a prolonged stay in hospital. Apparently I was 3 months old when I went home for the first time. Following this there were frequent visits to hospital until I was 2 although I don't think I was hospitalised again.

I do think that this stopped any bond I should have had with my mother from the very start. In those days you didn't stay with kids when they were in hospital, you just visited twice a day. Not a great start to a parent child relationship for either party.

In hindsight, I think I was robbed from day one.

 

[sun seeker]

So, I can't answer the original question because I have been in neither of these situations. But I am watching this thread with interest, especially after reading @TyraaryT's post, because it appears that there may be more than one or two things that cause similar outcomes, and I am wondering if it would be helpful to define the common factors. For instance, it has recently been discovered that the same part of the brain is affected by both physical and emotional pain - to the brain the result is the same.

My therapist has asked me, based on some of my responses, whether I was in an incubator as a baby. Nope. But for some other, as yet unknown reason, the same responses are recorded in my brain.

I wonder, if it were possible to distill the experience of the effects of adoption or foster care into a few categories, what would those be? Some that come to mind are trust issues, attachment disorders, feeling a lack of foundation, and being robbed of a childhood. I'm sure there are lots more. But what is happening in the brain, and what happens physiologically as a result? How do people adapt physically, emotionally, cognitively, etc.? Are those experiences the same in, say, prolonged early hospitalization, as in @notsurewheretoturn's post?

There were a few things @TyraaryT mentions that I strongly relate to, despite having had a very different childhood. Namely, these:

I notice today that I'm afraid of doing anything because I fear I might not be allowed

Rules are very confusing and I just can't seem to be able to trust that a rule that applies today will also apply tomorrow.

parental figures are chaotic

I didn't have one stable adult present all the time, and the one that was supposed to be my primary caregiver most of the time (my mother.. ugh) wasn't stable at all.

I think it confused me a lot and then made me more vulnerable and poorly equipped for coping with other bad stuff.

I had and have no foundation. There's no rock under me. I'm just floating around and if I fall I never stop, because I've got nothing to land on

So much am I not sure what rules apply where, that I'm not sure whether I am intruding on this thread by branching off from the original topic.

Anyway, I'm just wondering to what degree certain kinds of developmental trauma cause predictable outcomes that are distinguishable from other kinds, vs. to what degree similar outcomes can be traced back to the experience of early rejection, interrupted bonding, inconsistency of care, etc., without regard to the particulars of how those things happened.

 

[Kintsugi]

I was adopted "at birth." In reality, my biological mother cared for me for a week or two or something along those lines before I went home with my adoptive parents. I didn't think much of it until ItsKismet posted something on one of my attachment issue threads about (I'm paraphrasing) how of course I have attachment issues; I'm adopted.

After looking into the issue and following up with my T, it seems I followed a very predictable path of behavior following the "trauma" of my separation from my biological mother. I was extremely eager to please--abnormally so. My parents' subsequent behavior toward me simply worsened things. I think my eagerness to prove my worth was my downfall when it came to being victimized very very early by my older brother, who was also adopted but had the opposite reaction of perpetually acting out and testing the limits of unconditional love, rather than fearfully cultivating a reason to be loved, as I did.

ETA: This can be a poll if you want to poll the forum, @shimmerz. Just ask in the help desk and Russ should be able to add one, I believe.

 

[scout86]

I wonder if one of both of your parents having issues that prevented them from actually BEING parents counts as "interrupted bonding"? When you consider all the possible ways things can be less than optimal.......

@notsurewheretoturn beyond the fact that you were sick and physically separated from your parents, what kind of parents were they?

My parents' subsequent behavior toward me simply worsened things.

I wonder if there was a way that things could have gone that would have allowed you to overcome the earlier separation?

I guess I'm wondering if that can be "good" adoptions/foster care. Our little group here isn't exactly a fair sample, but I wonder.

I would think anything that prevents a "normal" child/caregiver bond would lead to similar problems. But then the nature and degree of the problems probably depend on the individual and their personality, and what else goes on in their life. I wonder how much of a presence it takes to give a child some concept of "safe attachment"?

 

[notsurewheretoturn]

@scout86 probably the sort of parents who should never have stayed together. My whole childhood was one of being caught in the middle of a warring couple. Arguments heard through walls and floor, parents in separate bedrooms, tit for tat mind games, the whole works.

 

[illusionist]

Boarding school is another scenario where kids go through the same emotional problems.

 

[scout86]

My whole childhood was one of being caught in the middle of a warring couple.

That would HAVE to have a negative impact too, I would think.

 

[Kintsugi]

@scout86 I know A LOT of adoptees, and I can say I think I've met well-attached ones. My cousin is the first to come to mind; her parents are very calm, compassionate, attentive individuals who both work with children for a living. I think it can work well. I just think this is an unlikely crowd to find healthy attachment.