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By Lynette Nyman
October, 2000
Part of the MPR project One Family, Two Countries
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RealAudio 3.0 |
When families adopt a child from overseas, they often know little about the child. Some have a few lines from an orphanage doctor, or maybe a postage stamp-size photograph. Over the past decade, videos have become increasingly popular as a way to introduce a child to prospective parents. The videos are sometimes useful in determining a child's health, but some conditions are not visible on tape leaving many parents unprepared for their child.
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IN 1996, WENDY AND GREG FIELDS saw their son Nikolas for the first time when they watched a video of an 18-month-old boy in an orphanage in Bulgaria.
"Here was this little boy with this huge head of hair, just practically crying the whole time, and people talking in Bulgarian in the background," remembers Wendy Fields. "But you do fall in love and you think, 'Wow, I just need to bring this child home.'"
All has gone reasonably well for the Fields, but Nikolas' medical records and adoption video left out some important details. For example, Nikolas had not learned how to talk and had received little stimulation in the orphanage. They suspect he'd never been outdoors. Later, Nikolas became too attached to his parents. They were forced to take him out of day-care after two months because he was too disruptive and demanded too much attention. Wendy quit her job.
Greg says becoming a one-income family was a huge adjustment.
"Nowhere in our wildest dreams did we think we'd have to do that, because we spoke to so many adoptive parents who said, 'Oh my kid did great.' And he came from an orphanage center and he knew what it was like to be around kids, and poor Nikolas just didn't do well," says Fields.
Dr. Dana Johnson has seen more and more children like Nikolas since 1985 when he founded the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Johnson is one of a handful of doctors who interprets medical information for prospective adoptive parents. He spends most of his time watching orphanage-made videos.
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"Terrible thoughts went
through my head. Is there something deeply wrong with this child? Have we
made a serious mistake with our lives?"
- Greg Fields Diary Read more | |
"She will take toys, she will hold them, she will put them in her mouth, she looks weak to me," notes Johnson. "She's doing things I expect her to be doing at least by six months of age. So she's behind. There's no doubt about it. Now the problem is translating she's behind into what does that mean for her future."
Johnson is particularly worried about this child. Unlike children in institutions in Eastern Europe, orphans in India receive a lot of stimulation, which means conditions associated with "orphanage delay" should not exist unless there's something else wrong. It could be poor nutrition or cerebral palsy; he can't be sure, but he says at least the prospective parents will know problems probably exist.
"What we have to emphasize to adoptive parents, particularly those who are adopting from countries where institutionalization, is the way of child care, that the likelihood or the possibility will be even greater that problems may occur. And we want to make sure that they feel capable of meeting those parenting challenges," says Johnson.
Wendy Fields flips through a photo album recounting their adoption story. She points to a boy with big, curly hair. The photo is labeled Gotcha Day, May 5th 1997.
Dr. Dana Johnson was the physician who reviewed Wendy and Greg Fields' video of their son Nikolas. What stands out from their meeting is Johnson telling them that they, alone, had to decide whether to adopt Nikolas. They're happy they did, but still Wendy wishes she could recover Nikolas' first few years in the orphanage.
"It's hard to bridge that gap sometimes. So he'll always have a part of him we can love, but there's part of him that's kind of gone. We can't make up for it."
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