What problems do parents most often encounter when adopting? Elena Fortuna, the creator of the charity project “Family People,” told Marina Glazkova, correspondent of the “Change One Life” foundation, about this. Elena was already our heroine, because she not only professionally deals with the topic of orphanhood, but is also a successful adoptive parent herself.

Elena Fortuna Family

— What problems do adoptive parents face when they take a child from an orphanage? What should the state, psychologists and other specialists help them with first of all?

— From my own experience and the experience of many families in which adopted children appeared, I can say: the main problems during this period are psychological. No matter how you prepare, adaptation in one form or another will be the same, no matter how ready each of the future parents is to give all the love and tenderness to the new child. And finding a psychologist who would understand such a specific topic is not very easy in the capital - there are a lot of specialists, and they are all overloaded.

In adaptation, there are very acute moments that cannot be tolerated even after a week of waiting for an appointment with a psychologist, not to mention a longer period. Ideally, it would be nice for every family to have a specialist (or even more than one) assigned to them at least during the first year after the child’s adoption, who would “guide” it and would know the child’s history and current situation well.

As for state assistance, it would be good to give new parents more opportunities to conduct a high-quality medical examination, as well as to enroll their child in a kindergarten or school.

On the last point, there are benefits, placement in institutions is out of turn, but in practice, children often do not need a mass kindergarten or the nearest school in their place of residence, but a special approach - say, a speech therapy kindergarten, or a class with a small number of students. However, no one ever takes these features into account, and often the situation turns out in such a way that the mother has to leave work in order to stay at home with the child - either he does not adapt in kindergarten, or the school demands that he take the child for home schooling because he has problems with behavior.

— How do you evaluate the behavior of adoptive parents who do not adopt a child for financial reasons, but register him with a foster family (to receive benefits, to preserve his housing, and so on)?

I don't think any of us have the right to judge other people. If our family chose adoption, it is our choice. If another family has chosen guardianship, regular or paid, that is its choice. We are all guided by the interests of our children.

Let's say we don't believe that having your own home at 18 is a necessary condition for a happy life. We try to cultivate independence in children and give them everything so that they can build their lives the way they want in the future. Our eldest son was under guardianship for a year (we brought him from another city, and a year later we were going to adopt him again - and we explained to him that we would formalize his adoption in a year), and all this time he signed only our last name, and was very afraid, that we will change our minds. This was important for him, although our attitude, of course, did not change due to the change in the shape of the device. And the benefit has not changed - in Moscow, the monthly payment to adoptive parents is equal to the amount of child support allocated for guardianship.

It seems to me that we need to think about such a form of arrangement as paid guardianship (foster family) in the case when we are talking about accepting several children into a family at once, or a child with complex health problems - in this case, one of the parents can leave with work and devote yourself to the child.

Well, we must not forget that any form of guardianship involves deeper intervention in family affairs on the part of the guardianship and trusteeship authorities than adoption, and also that according to the law, if this does not contradict the interests of the child, it is necessary to maintain relations with his biological relatives . So the form of placement as such is not a reason for assessing the behavior of parents, but it bothers me when a child is placed in a foster family, and at the same time they try to get the benefits of adoption - the right to privacy, for example.

— How important is the School of Adoptive Parents for adoptive parents? Is it really worth visiting? Or can everything be learned in the process of communicating with a child, having already adopted him?

— The school for foster parents is important and necessary. Provided that it is conducted by experienced, knowledgeable specialists. When I adopted my first child, it happened so quickly that I didn’t have time to go through the SPD. And then I really regretted it.

Of course, it will not help protect you from all future problems, but in many situations it will help you find an explanation for both your own reactions to what is happening and the child’s unusual behavior.

In addition, if the legal part of the process is well disclosed at the school, this makes it easier for many future parents to carry out all the procedures associated with collecting documents, searching for a child and his “legalization” after adoption or establishment of guardianship. But you still have to learn a lot in the process of communicating with your child. This will be a completely new, unfamiliar universe that will bring many discoveries to parents.

— In what situations do foster parents most often return children to orphanages? What kind of people are these? Do they have anything in common or can the stories be completely different?

— I think that at the root of most early returns (when the child manages to live in a family for no more than a year and a half) lies a “discord between dreams and reality.” Adopting a child is a very emotional event, these are dreams and expectations, these are fears and doubts... And when a real child appears at home, it turns out that he is completely different. The one, the dreamed one, has already become one’s own and dear - but this one, the real one, is still a stranger. No better, no worse - just alien. Is a person ready to accept someone else as one of his own? Not always. This foreignness is annoying even if there is no talk of any return. But if a person initially has such an option in his head - “if anything happens, you can return it back” - if he admits such a possibility at all, then in especially difficult moments of adaptation such thoughts often look like salvation. I don’t blame anyone - often people fail to fulfill their obligations, do not calculate their resources, or the burden turns out to be heavier than expected.

But I always feel incredibly sorry for children. Because if the child’s personal file indicates that he has already been returned by one (or more than one) family, then many subsequent candidates will not even go to meet him.

There are also cases of returns when it turns out that the child was under-examined in the institution and has an obvious psychiatric illness that makes the family’s life unsafe - but they are still not as common as the banal “I can’t do it anymore.” Very often teenagers are returned - even after 10-12 years of living in a family. For some reason, their parents think that it is precisely because they are adopted that they are so unbearable, that it is “genes” and so on. I honestly don't understand. For me, such a return is tantamount to sending my own child, born and raised to adolescence, to an orphanage.

— There is a point of view that adoptive parents feel deep loneliness in their problems and often return their children only because at a critical moment there was no one to discuss these problems with. Are their problems so unique that their peers cannot understand them? Is there little room for dialogue between adoptive parents? There are no professional psychologists to go to with this?

— If there is space for dialogue, then the adoptive parents discuss problems with each other openly and willingly. Without being afraid that something wrong will be thought about them or their children - as they are often afraid in everyday life, especially when the child is very different from his peers in terms of development, behavior, and habits. But this space, perhaps, is not enough. When you live in a big city and with good Internet, this problem does not exist; you can easily find both virtual and real “colleagues”.

But if you are the only adoptive parent for the entire village, and the nearest psychologist is in the regional center, and the parents’ club is there, and there is no good Internet closer to the regional center, then there are not so many opportunities for communication, as well as access to specialists. When we created the magazine, we conceived it as a kind of platform for parents to communicate with each other and specialists.

They may be a thousand kilometers apart, but here we are writing, say, about adaptation - and those who have already passed this stage share their experience. Then the reader, who has just embarked on this path, gets the feeling that he not only visited a consultation with a good psychologist who sorted everything out (we have his article in the role of a psychologist), but also talked, reassured him, and he finished reading the article with the thought that “everyone managed it and I can handle it.” At the same time, each reader can send his questions to our specialists - it doesn’t matter whether he is a subscriber or accidentally picked up the magazine. And we are advised by the best experts in our field. Simply the best.

— While releasing the magazine, you faced enormous difficulties: lack of sponsors, lack of payback for the magazine, the need to work a lot, a car accident... Why didn’t you give it all up at a certain point?

— Because the difficulties were predictable and we were to some extent prepared for them. Plus there was great inspiration and a desire to do something that no one else had done. There were and are magazines about adoption, of course - but this is a family-friendly, warm and high-quality magazine that would be interesting to read not only for adoptive parents and guardians, but also for other parents, as well as new grandparents, teachers and educators, as well as psychologists - did not have. And from the very beginning we really liked how it turned out, how readers received it, how they waited for it, how its files from the very first issues were kept on book shelves, what kind of letters they wrote to us. How can you quit?

The difficulties have not gone away, the magazine is not even close to paying off - although now paid subscriptions are slowly increasing, and small donations occur, the moment when you can calm down on the topic of survival is still far away. But there is an inner feeling that this is the work of life, and that everything is going right, because if it were wrong, we would not have lasted even a year, but now three have already passed.

Fatigue has accumulated, of course. But there were no thoughts of quitting. It’s like returning a child to an orphanage...

Kolukhova Ya. Psychology of raising adopted children

ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCE

The development and formation of the personality of each child depends on the influence of his environment. Very often this influence in childhood plays a decisive role in the entire future fate of a person. Children, along with physical needs, have mental needs, the satisfaction of which is very important for overall development. Observations of infants, that is, in the first months of their life, indicate that a child who is only swaddled and fed, but no one talks to him, no one caresses him or gives him individual attention, is significantly delayed in development. He is apathetic and does not develop normally physically. An opinion may be created about him as a sick child. The same picture is most often presented by infants taken from extremely disadvantaged families. Of course, genetic, that is, hereditary, characteristics borrowed from blood parents also make themselves felt in the development of a child. However, the habits and skills of an adult, his ability to work, love, and treat people kindly, largely depend on the upbringing of a child, especially at a very early age.

Every child first of all needs a mother or a person who completely replaces her. The child's need to constantly experience a positive feeling for the same person, as a rule, is satisfied by the mother. The child also needs an environment that he gradually gets to know, begins to understand and navigate in it. At a very early age, this environment for a child is the family. Over time, his environment grows, but the sense of belonging with loved ones that the family forms is very important for a person.

In some families, children have various toys beyond measure, parents take them on expensive trips, they get everything they want. However, in these same families, children can suffer greatly due to superficial, cold relationships, due to the lack of the necessary cordial and warm atmosphere. For normal personality formation, a child needs to be surrounded by people who would accept him as an individual, with whom he would share the same interests.

A child's mental needs are best met by a good family environment. The family not only provides the child with optimal opportunities for the formation of his personality, but it also naturally introduces him into ever-expanding social relationships and creates the preconditions for his socialization. The child learns to respond to constantly changing social situations. With the help of the mother and other family members in whom the child finds support, he establishes new relationships and takes on certain roles and positions. His confidence, as well as healthy self-confidence, resulting from a strong unity of feelings in the family, facilitates social adaptation in childhood and contributes to subsequent growth and maturity. The various difficulties that an adult has in the social sphere are largely due to the fact that during their childhood these people lived in a conflicting, cold atmosphere or were exposed to different, sometimes contradictory, methods of education in the family. Therefore, a child from a disadvantaged family will develop much better in a child care institution. The methods of raising each child in children's institutions, especially in recent years, are approaching the methods of raising in the family.

Despite the fact that psychological and pedagogical research speaks in favor of the family of origin and adoption, we have to reckon with the fact that orphanages and boarding schools will exist in the future, because there is a need for them. It is necessary to select qualified people who love children and are able to at least partially compensate their parents for the staff of children's institutions. In our country there are such children's institutions that confirm the possibility of creating the most favorable environment for raising children, providing

Living outside the family. The enthusiasm of the employees, their love for children, and the warmth of relationships help children develop successfully, live happily and prepare for the normal life of an adult.

ADOPTED CHILDREN

In our country, adoption is a well-known form of new family care. Relatively many works have been written about the psychological and educational problems of the process of adopting children. However, for public opinion, the adoption of a child most often seems to be an area that has a connotation of something special, even mysterious. Adoption is a problem that is sometimes fraught with wrong views and attitudes, sometimes negatively affecting the relationship between parents and adopted children. Some curious social activists are most interested in the question of how “successful” the adoption was (and the criterion of success is assessed mainly from the point of view of the parents). Is the adopted child grateful enough to his new parents for taking him into their family? It is clear that these are completely inappropriate and incorrect assessments of adoption.

Within the framework of this work, it is not possible to analyze all the criteria for assessing adoption. The main condition: the results of adoption cannot be assessed only from the point of view of the child or only from the point of view of the parents. A family consists of parents and children, they mutually influence each other, and complex relationships are created between them. Even at a very early age, the child is not a passive recipient of stimuli. From an early age, he is a personality, an active member of the family, who exerts his influence on his parents, contributes to the formation of relationships and the general climate in the family. Therefore, an assessment of an adoptive union can only be made taking into account its benefits for both parties.

Adoptive parents benefit from their parenting responsibilities in the same way as natural parents. Raising an adopted child is accompanied by the same difficulties and worries that

They arise when raising your own children. Of course, in a family with an adopted child, special, specific difficulties may arise.

The main problem that arises for many parents who have adopted children is the question: or not to tell the child the truth about his origin? Should a child know that he is not their own? During the period of registration of the adoption of a child, during a psychological examination of the future parents, these issues are discussed in detail. Some spouses decide not to hide anything from the child, others, on the contrary, are going to hide the truth from him and, if possible, keep the secret. Some parents believe that a child should not be kept in the dark, but to tell him the truth, one must find a suitable form and appropriate time. However, later it becomes known that they gradually changed their intentions and moved the time for a frank conversation to a more distant date, when the child grows up. In the end, it is this problem that becomes the source of unnecessary complications in life, often even the cause of serious moral trauma for the child and disruption of his relationship with his parents.

Most adoptive parents are inclined to believe that everything should be hidden from the child, because it is better for the children and parents. Such a problem should be judged very carefully, taking into account only the specific characteristics of the family, the motives for the decision to conceal the truth, the possibility of revealing the secret, etc.

When a child has been in a family since infancy, the family has left the area where he was adopted, somewhere far away, the adoptive parents are indicated as relatives in the child’s birth certificate, then in this case the parents have a feeling of confidence in keeping the secret. In this regard, they consider it unnecessary to inform the child about his origin. However, in reality, they can never be completely sure that the adoption of a child will forever remain a secret.

Of course, there are examples when a person throughout his entire life never learned the details of his birth. However, the question arises: does such a secret make sense, is it equivalent to the lifelong fear of parents who have adopted a child before the possibility of its disclosure, does this secret justify

Moving, changing jobs, parting with relatives, friends, constant desire to avoid meeting people you know? After all, some of these “secrets” of adoption exist only because the adopted child is tactfully silent: he pretends that he knows nothing.

In many families who have adopted a child, the fear of revealing the secret grows over the years. An atmosphere of tension is created every time a child accidentally brings up a topic that is considered “forbidden” for him. From time to time, parents realize that they should have told their child everything, but years have passed, and they never dared or did not find the right moment for such a conversation. Finally, they decide to tell the truth during some special event, for example, when celebrating a coming of age, a wedding, etc. A confused, tearful explanation at the very beginning can be interrupted by a calm remark from an adopted son or daughter: “I’ve known everything for a long time, but I haven’t “He even showed it because he was sparing you, dear mom and dad.”

Unfortunately, news of the truth does not always pass so quietly. Very often, adoptive parents are literally so tormented by fear that their secret may be revealed, that the atmosphere in the family changes, tension and nervousness increases. Moreover, the child may have already been introduced by some “well-wishers” to the history of his origin, and in an extremely inappropriate interpretation. Sometimes this disclosure was facilitated by the ridicule of friends and comrades who heard details at home and learned them from tactless conversations and remarks of adults.

If we take into account that a fairly wide circle of people is usually informed about the adoption of a child, then it is extremely unlikely that the child will never find out about it during his life. It is the knowledge of a tactlessly revealed secret that can cause such trauma, especially in adolescence, that as a result the child may become alienated, relationships with adoptive parents may become complicated, and the entire educational process may be disrupted.

Parents should pay attention to another negative reason for strictly maintaining secrecy about

The origin of the child. When parents prove to everyone at any cost their blood ties with the child, and hide the truth even from the doctor and teacher, then sometimes they harm their child. In the event of possible difficulties in the development and upbringing of a child, a doctor and teacher could perhaps help parents if they knew the situation and circumstances surrounding the birth and early childhood of the child.

The question of whether or not to tell an adopted child the truth is always a dilemma for adoption applicants. In the future, everything depends on the decision of the parents. They have the opportunity to consult with specialists after adoption. However, in such cases it is never possible to give an exact prescription. Experts consider the most appropriate time for a frank conversation to be preschool age, when a child can simply and without embarrassment be explained that he was taken when he was still little, because he did not have his own mother, but they really liked him. Mom and Dad wanted to take care of him, and now he is with them forever.

Sometimes adoptive parents invite the help of a doctor who helped them formalize the adoption of a child. Children of this age react very sensitively, for example, to the fact that the doctor will show the crib on which he was lying, and his mother first saw him here. In most cases, the mention of the birth mother does not affect a preschool child. Perhaps later, years later, he may return to these issues. If parents and child really love each other, then clarifying these issues usually does not disrupt the relationship between them. When a child is warmly and tactfully informed, he will not be thrown off balance by any comments or tactless interventions from strangers. They are overcome by the consciousness of his belonging to his family.

Happy families who adopted one or more children who knew about their origins best prove the point: our own child is the one we care about and love. In the same way, for a child, his own parents are those with whom he finds a sense of love and security, with whom he has a common home and common prospects.

From observations of the lives of adopted children,

The conclusion is absolutely convincing: most of them develop and are brought up very well, although it goes without saying that various kinds of difficulties arise in these families.

However, there are still unsuccessful and unhappy adoptions. They become known in different ways. Sometimes adoptive parents themselves come for examination, and just by the tone in which they speak about the child, their divided and sometimes hostile attitude towards the child is clearly visible. They intensely comment on their adoption, concluding that they can’t do anything, since they got a bad child, he exhibits the characteristics of his parents, etc.

Some adoptive parents become unbalanced due to the fact that the child does not meet their previously created ideas. They demand more from him than he can give, according to his prerequisites. At the same time, his parents do not support him emotionally at all. These parents are usually very strict towards him, especially during puberty, since they do not even try to understand the complexity of the processes occurring in the child’s body during this period of his development. Conflicts begin in the family, which can develop into constant tension and contribute to the collapse of the adoptive union.

When the reasons for less successful and completely unsuccessful adoptions are assessed and examined in detail, one common circumstance is observed: the wrong parents or the wrong child were chosen. Another possible reason: the parents and the child, according to all data, were suitable for adoption, but they were not mutually suitable for each other. Thus, the principle must be observed: a suitable child in a suitable family.

Various errors in the adoption process usually arise, on the one hand, due to an inaccurate and incomplete assessment of the applicants or the child, on the other hand, due to an underestimation of the fact that requires taking into account the family as a whole. It is impossible, for example, to sacrifice adoptive parents and offer them for adoption a child suffering from serious mental disabilities. It is also prohibited to sacrifice children by handing them over for adoption to people who

Those who want to have a child for some reason, although it is quite obvious that they will not be able to give him a happy childhood. Sometimes you have to find out that the decision to adopt was initially made, for example, only by the mother in order to cement a broken marital relationship. The couple began to blame each other, because with the birth of the child they had to some extent lost peace and comfort. They transfer all their dissatisfaction in life and family discord onto their adopted child.

A child cannot be happy in a difficult family environment. He will very quickly begin to develop various difficulties and behavioral disturbances. In such cases, it is necessary to educate and treat the whole family, and not refer to negative qualities in the child’s character.

Let us give two examples from adoption practice, understanding that a brief description of a complex case simplifies the situation to a certain extent. However, perhaps they will provoke a desire for reflection among all those people who communicate with adopted children.

An unmarried woman of about thirty-five years old took in an infant girl. She didn't want to get married. Her decision to adopt a child was the result of careful consideration. The woman's relatives did not object and very favorably accepted the child into their family. The woman was an intelligent, educated person who dreamed of a child. She had all the basic prerequisites for adopting a child. Later she showed herself to be a very good mother.

Despite the fact that the girl was born from a morally neglected mother who had several children and the court deprived her of motherhood, the girl developed very well in her new family, filling the life of not only her mother, but also all her relatives with happiness. However, there was one “but” in this situation: the girl’s adoptive mother decided to hide the truth about her origin, being sure that this would only lead to good. She hadn't completely thought through the whole situation. In preschool age, a girl with natural childish curiosity asked: “Why do other children have dads, but I don’t?” Her mother assured her that it was better for them to live this way, since

She has a very good mother, grandmother, grandfather, uncle (the whole family lived together). Then, for the first time, the woman was overcome by a feeling of great anxiety; she realized that keeping the secret of the real origin of the child would be very difficult and their relationship was in danger.

The family came to the decision to change the area and move to another place of residence, and explain to new acquaintances that the child’s father died when the girl was still very young. Despite the measures taken, tension in the family increased, although everyone tried to pretend that everything was absolutely fine. The family avoided old acquaintances and was afraid of them meeting the child. The nervousness increased when the girl had to go to school. The mother had a hard time deciding to tell the class teacher about her situation and ask her for help. The intelligent and attentive child soon felt that questions about her father were undesirable, so the girl no longer touched on this topic.

However, during adolescence, changes occurred. Questions from classmates about her father and random tactless remarks from some uninformed teachers traumatized the girl, and she suddenly became withdrawn, moved away from her mother, and became irritable. Once, while filling out some form, entering information about her father, she cried and accused her mother of not telling her the whole truth. The family was experiencing great misfortune. Added to this misfortune was the tense relationship between the mother and the rest of the family, who for the first time expressed their doubts to her that she had made a mistake when she took in the girl. They attributed the child's hot-tempered reaction to the negative qualities of his parents. They did not understand that this was a completely natural reaction of a teenager, from whom the identity of his father had been hidden in mysterious silence since early childhood.

Due to lack of sleep and loss of interest in studying, the girl was sent for psychiatric and psychological examinations. After a long and serious conversation with the mother, we managed to find out the true roots of the tension in the family and convince the mother of the need to tell her daughter the whole truth. Experts believed that family relationships and the further formation of the daughter’s personality after graduation

A blood conversation with her will be good. The mother agreed, but asked for help from a psychologist.

Psychotherapeutic observations of the mother and daughter were conducted for six months. As a result, family relations were resolved. After the secret was revealed, the girl’s reaction was quite sharp. However, she showed no interest in her blood parents, she was tormented only by the fact that she had been told lies for so long. Gradually she came to terms with reality, her original deep respect for her mother returned, who also gained confidence, freedom and peace. The whole family felt a beneficial relief.

Thus, after many years of tension, the described incident ended happily just from the mere thought of the possibility of revealing the secret.

The following example shows the need to carefully select people who wish to adopt a child. The main attention should be paid to the need to assess their psychological prerequisites.

Childless spouses aged thirty or forty wanted to adopt a child. This proposal was first made by his wife, a ballet soloist, who, as a result of an injury, could no longer work in her profession. She didn’t get another job, so she felt empty, she missed the noisy, lively life. Her husband worked a lot and was rarely at home. The relationship between the spouses was quite free. He passively agreed with his wife’s proposal to adopt a child. This happened at a time when psychological examinations had not yet been carried out, so psychological criteria were not always taken into account when adopting a child. The couple asked to offer them an older child so that they could “agree” with him. They did not hide their dislike for changing clothes and washing clothes. According to their wishes, they were given a four-year-old boy, very well physically and mentally developed, healthy and handsome, to raise. His mother did not care at all about her four children. She drank alcohol and, while intoxicated, brutally beat children, who were therefore placed in children's institutions, depriving the mother of parental rights.

So, one of the children was adopted by a new family. The woman was delighted with the boy, bought him an excessive amount of toys and clothes, took him for walks, and showed him to everyone she knew. In the first days, the boy seemed fascinated by hitherto unknown things, so everyone admired him as a very sweet and funny child. But very soon there was a chill on both sides. The boy was very sensitive and understood the insincerity in the affection and attention with which the adoptive mother tried to surround the child. Very soon moments began to come when she simply could not bear the child, he was a burden to her. She complained to her husband about the boy's bad manners. The husband did not have any serious feelings towards the boy, but he still tried to explain to his wife that the child was showing the initial influence of a dysfunctional family.

The boy became a “lightning rod” for all the woman’s whims and bad mood. She complained that she got a very bad child, that she was deceived. The housemates paid attention to the strong cry of the child and his words about his desire to leave such a mother.

Fortunately, the adoption had not yet been formalized and the child was returned to the orphanage. He returned with great joy, bitterly telling the children about their bad mother. About a year later, a couple living in the village showed interest in him. Their family already had a daughter, a little older than the boy. He came into contact with this family very slowly, as he was distrustful of the new environment. However, within six months the child adapted well, and strong relationships were created with the adoptive parents and their daughter.

The success of adoption depends primarily on the adoptive parents and the entire atmosphere in the life of the new family. Adoptive parents must love the child, show these feelings from the first days of life together, deepening and expanding emotional relationships. They help solve minor and major educational problems. The cold, too restrained attitude of the parents towards the adopted child, the constant study of the child, the attempt to explain all family troubles to his poor hereditary

This news will inevitably lead to major conflicts. The main thing is that such a family attitude cannot create the basis for raising an independent and happy person. People who want to adopt a child, for example, only for prestigious reasons (almost everyone has children, but we don’t...), that is, for fun, should be decisively excluded from the number of applicants for adoption. Some people want to adopt a child so that in their old age they will have someone to look after them. They should also be excluded from the list of applicants for adoption.

Examples from life confirm that the vast majority of successful adoptions are based on the passionate desire of spouses or a single person to take a child into their family in order to raise him as his own and beloved child. Very often, children are adopted by families that already have children. However, observations show that a large group of adoptive parents are single or divorced women, often unmarried mothers who have other children under their care. Despite the fact that a complete family for raising children undoubtedly has its advantages, since the father plays a large role in the family, single women in the role of educators generally show themselves heroically, completely replacing both the father and the mother for the adopted child. Another important circumstance speaks in favor of such single women who want to raise a child: in recent years, there has been a shortage of suitable applicants for adoption from the male environment. There are significantly more of them among single women. However, women who want to adopt a child must also be subject to appropriate requirements. A woman should be kind, not embittered, independent, with a joyful and courageous outlook on life.

In all cases of adoption, it is necessary to very carefully, sensitively, tactfully and strictly approach the possibilities of a family or single person to take in an orphaned child.

A middle-aged woman, the mother of three sons, dreamed of taking a girl from an orphanage. When she got there, there was no suitable girl, but there was a boy in whom no one showed interest

When choosing a child for adoption. The woman took him into her family, and he became her fourth, and most beloved, son.

In an orphanage for preschool children, there lived a girl who was tortured and isolated from everyone by her own mother until she was four years old. The girl’s development was severely impaired, and teachers and doctors did not expect her to recover. Despite this, one family, warned about everything, decided to adopt the girl. The couple were very kind people; they wanted to help the child forget what he had experienced in his short Life. As a result of very difficult educational work, the child changed so much that he began to attend a normal school, where everyone loved him very much.

However, we also have to face a sad reality. Sometimes educators try to return the child with various excuses or an open statement that they cannot get used to him, that they do not have the strength to raise him, and therefore serious complications are possible with him in the future. This situation greatly traumatizes the child, especially in early and preschool age. Therefore, explanatory work with parents who wish to raise an adopted child is so important before registration for adoption. Sometimes the care authorities, for fear of scaring away such people and contributing to a change in their desires, do not explain to them the full responsibility and seriousness of their decision. However, it is much better for adults, and even more so for a child, not to end up in such a family at all.

The young woman, with the help of her adopted child, wanted to strengthen her life together with her husband. However, the husband did not tolerate all the difficulties associated with caring for the child, so the woman decided for the sake of her husband to return the child back. Fortunately, the baby was taken in by a relative of this family, an elderly kind woman. The transition of a child from one family to another was not difficult for the child, since he had previously met with this woman. The child found himself in a good environment, which provided him with conditions for normal development. However, there are other cases.

The girl was returned to the orphanage before she entered school. She lived with the family for four years. At first, the attitude towards the child was quite normal. When it became clear that the girl would still need special treatment, and therefore in a special school (the couple knew about this when they took the girl), they raised the question of returning the now eight-year-old child to the orphanage.

Such mistakes by adults have a particularly difficult impact on a child during puberty.

The reaction of a child to the family that has adopted him for upbringing is very different, depending on the age, previous experience and characteristics of the child. Observations show that young children learn relatively quickly. Sometimes they have temporary reactions in the form of sleep disturbances, inhibition of behavior, etc. However, with the affectionate and understanding attitude of the people around them, all these phenomena quickly disappear. One of the human needs triumphs: to love and be loved. Educators, especially mothers, truly gain enormous human happiness: the affection of a child.

It is very instructive to observe how some preschool children, who still remembered their original family, show anxiety when moving to a new family environment, even want to run back to the orphanage, because something reminded them of the environment where they were hungry, left alone, where they were punished and beaten. This condition in children quickly passes with a warm and affectionate attitude towards them.

Children who do not remember their original family or who have lived in an orphanage since birth are usually surprised by the peculiarities of their family environment and show curiosity about everything. They may even appropriate toys and other things for themselves without any purpose, without thinking, simply because in a child care institution the child usually does not have his own toys, they are in public use, so there is often “danger” from other children, who can take away his favorite toy.

Many adopted children initially need the constant presence of their mother, holding her hand, not

They even want her to go to another room. Most children who already know how to speak are usually frightened by one careless word, which may suggest a change in their current conditions (when the child is happy in the new family).

Sometimes you can see such a scene near the orphanage. The mother brought the child some time after his adoption to the orphanage at the request of its leaders. The child holds tightly to his mother’s hand, cries and asks to leave quickly. Apparently, these children did not have a very good time in the orphanage. And the new environment replaced their family.

Usually, in the first months of their stay in a new family, children develop surprisingly quickly. At the same time, with the formation of a sense of confidence, with the development of interpersonal relationships, their speech significantly improves and their horizons expand. Some children experience such a rapid leap in development that doctors and teachers could no longer imagine.

One small and constantly sick girl in a children's institution completely stopped in her development. She ate poorly, slept little, did not gain weight, and at two and a half years old she could sit only with the help of support. Mostly she lay down, was completely apathetic to everything, and did not make contact. The girl was taken in by selfless spouses who already had big children. In this family, the girl progressed so much in her development that such a phenomenon has never been observed in practice and has never been found anywhere in the scientific literature. Within a few days the child began to smile and react animatedly to all the people around him. His passivity ended. The girl began to eat and speak well and gained weight. After two months of staying in the family, the child began to walk and developed the ability to play. By the age of four, the girl calmly went to kindergarten.

Parents who have adopted a child must constantly monitor his general development, which greatly depends on the attitude towards him, on the manifestation of emotional feelings, and, first of all, feelings of love. However, following

It is also important to pay attention to the danger of spoiling a child, since he may find himself in the position of the first child or the youngest in the family, surrounded by excessive tenderness.

Gradually, the child becomes a member of the family and the entire family environment. He has his own aunts, grandmothers, grandfathers, cousins, brothers, who, however, cannot always accept him kindly. Sometimes grandparents express their protest to a “strange” child, but the baby usually “bribes” them with his spontaneity and affection.

In some families, it happens that after the initial delight from the accelerated development of the child, a certain cooling begins to be observed, uncertainty about the correctness of upbringing, and sometimes fatigue from the very exhausting work associated with caring for the child. At this time, parents most need the help of social care authorities. They need support and advice, an explanation of those characteristics of the child that cause the greatest concern.

The next stage of difficulties in the life of a family usually occurs when the child enters school. In some children, this only manifests itself in slightly weakened attention or poor adaptation to school conditions. However, such phenomena occur in many first-graders, regardless of their origin. Such shortcomings are overcome relatively easily, especially in cases where the teacher takes into account the fate of the child, who, compared to other children, had worse conditions for his development in early childhood.

The life of those educators whose children cannot study in a regular school because of their reduced mental abilities is more difficult. They are transferred to a special school. Most often, they study better at this school and after graduating they have the opportunity to learn some kind of craft in order to benefit society.

When assessing the general development of adopted children, one should not forget about the formation and dynamics of development of relationships in the family: the attitude of parents to children and, conversely, children to parents. It is also very important to

Matching adopted children to their caregivers' natural children (and vice versa). Good, normal family relationships allow for effective educational guidance of children during the most critical periods of their development.

In those families where relationships are broken, conflict situations usually arise with the upbringing of the child when he enters adolescence and adolescence. Prerequisites arise that after the child comes of age, his relationship with his family will cease and the young man will be left alone (and perhaps with unwanted company with which he has been spending his time for a long time).

Observations show that the development of adopted children in the overwhelming majority of cases is very successful; they are no different from children who grow up in their families of origin.

The newborn girl was taken from her very primitive parents, who had been convicted several times, and placed in an institution for infants. She was seriously developmentally delayed. In the orphanage for young children, this lag deepened even more. Her speech did not develop at all. Due to a delay in general development, it was not possible to give the girl up for adoption. There was no exact information about her parents, so it was impossible to establish the reasons for the child’s sad state. Perhaps it depended on unfavorable genetic preconditions, perhaps on environmental influences in the first months of the baby’s life, or perhaps due to poor general physical condition. Despite the efforts of all the staff at the orphanage, the girl’s health deteriorated.

However, there were people who agreed to take the girl into their family. The child quickly adapted to the new environment, began to smile and transformed into a sweet, affectionate baby, as he found himself in a calm family atmosphere. The girl’s successful general physical and mental development stimulated the whole family to take even greater care of her. When a few months later the parents came with the girl to the orphanage, everyone there was surprised by her excellent condition and strong attachment to her new parents.

By the age of three, the child had regained his normal development. The whole family and those closest to them

The relatives loved the girl very much. However, some residents of the village where this family had settled long ago accepted the girl somewhat uncertainly, even negatively. Some people did not understand why the couple took an underdeveloped child into the family. However, the parents and the girl herself managed to overcome all difficulties. They did not pay attention to the conversations of uncultured people. The girl grew up in an atmosphere of respect for her personality, complete understanding and sympathy. She attended a regular school, studied well, was happy in her family, so her condition was not affected by the initial attitude of neighbors and acquaintances in the village.

Some childless spouses sometimes deliberately take into their family a child with a serious developmental disability in the hope that they will help the sick child recover and become a full-fledged person. Observations indicate that in children who live in a good and calm environment, even the illness of their parents, such as schizophrenia, does not manifest itself at all. At the same time, in children brought up in an environment of conflict and anxiety, these diseases can occur regardless of the health status of their blood parents.

An infant girl was taken in by young childless spouses who dreamed of having a child. They knew that the child was born to a mother with schizophrenia. The father was unknown. From the first days of his life, the child was in an orphanage for infants. The girl was significantly behind in her development. The couple were informed that the child's mother had a serious mental illness, which could also affect the child. This information did not influence their decision. They were of the opinion that the girl would be their daughter and if she got sick, she would need them more than a healthy child. However, these good people also believed that a calm, good environment in their family would prevent the onset of the disease.

The parents' assumptions were justified. The child developed normally. This example suggests that a properly and benevolently organized educator

Process m

can drown out very many possible

Hereditary diseases.

Let us give another example that convincingly proves the beneficial influence of maternal love and the importance of a good family environment on the mental development of a child.

Two twin boys' mothers died of heart disease shortly after their birth. Until the age of eleven months, the boys were in an institution for infants, where they developed physically and mentally in accordance with their age. Then the children’s father gave them away from the children’s institution to be raised by his relatives, who were unable (most likely, did not want) to take care of the children, so the kids again ended up in an orphanage for small children. When the boys were eighteen months old, their father took them in because he had married again. His new wife also had two children. The resulting family consisted of four children.

A very difficult life began for the boys. For some time, the twins were socially isolated, they were constantly alone in an unheated and unequipped room. They were often locked in a dark basement and beaten. Neighbors began to suspect the treatment of their father and stepmother's children. Neighbors reported the situation of the twin boys to the relevant organizations.

During the judicial investigation, it turned out that the boys' father was completely passive in their upbringing. He worked on the railroad and was often away from home. He showed no interest in the children, but punished them only to please his cold, selfish and cruel wife, who hated the twins, abused them, and brought their health to a terrible state.

The public was shocked and outraged by the results of the investigation. The trial attracted enormous attention. He again confirmed that there are still such natural fathers as in the example given. Their children should be officially taken away from such parents so that they can be raised in children's institutions in peace.

The twin boys were treated for a long time, although traces of rickets disappeared slowly. The level of their development at eight years is

His age corresponded approximately to the developmental level of a four-year-old child. Until the age of nine they were in an orphanage for preschool children. The question arose about their future fate. Psychological examinations of children noted the possibility of improving their health, but it was obvious that a prerequisite for this was individual and constant care in a family setting. It was very difficult to find such a family. As a result of shared difficult experiences, the twins were very strongly attached to each other, so they could not be given to different families. After a photo of the children was published in one of the magazines, several families expressed a desire to take them in. However, truly human interest, courage and the necessary tolerance were demonstrated by one woman who took in the boys when they were less than nine years old. What this brave woman was able to do in raising twin boys is true heroism, proof of folk wisdom: it is not the mother who gave birth, the real mother is the one who raised.

Life confirms: many adoptive mothers can perform maternal responsibilities better than some natural mothers.

The twins went to school for the first time only at the age of nine, that is, after joining a new family. They began to attend a special school because they were significantly behind in their development. Speech development was especially low. The teacher at the special school managed to improve them enough that after the holidays the boys were able to move on to the second grade of a regular school. They made great progress in the family. Their intellectual development was on the path of a sharp rise, which was facilitated not only by speech therapy treatment. Speech development was stimulated primarily by a joyful family environment. The boys formed strong emotional relationships with their adoptive mother. However, they suffered for quite a long time from the thought that they might be given to that “evil woman,” as they called their stepmother. Only after a long time were the children able to tell something from their past, which was quite consistent with the data of the trial. However, they did not like to remember the past, did not want to name fa-

Milia was their natural father and were happy when they were allowed to bear the surname of their new parents.

The twin boys graduated well from school thanks to the courage and kindness of people who took a heartfelt part in the fate of the two children.

MAIN PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS IN THE EDUCATION OF ADOPT CHILDREN

The problems of raising and developing adopted children are quite complex, so we recommend that adoptive parents follow literature, radio and television programs that are devoted to raising children in the family. The problems and difficulties that arise in raising adopted children are, in the main social directions, the same as those that arise when raising natural children. You should consult with specialists more often about raising a child.

Suppose a couple or a single woman, having thoroughly thought through everything, decided to take a child into their family. They dream about their future baby. All the documents have already been collected, all that remains is to choose a child. Each case of adoption or guardianship is responsibly and carefully examined by the relevant organizations that study the child, his family situation, physical and mental condition. Then the documentation of future educators is examined in detail, mainly the results of their psychological examination, as well as the wishes that they express in relation to the child.

Applicants can see the child recommended to them in advance; this usually happens in the Orphanage. Getting to know a child comes with many difficulties. Adoptive mothers most often claim that they fell in love with the child at first sight, that he instantly “sank into their soul.” However, in reality, feelings develop and deepen as a result of living together, they do not arise immediately and suddenly at the first meeting. Of course, instant sympathy for a child is a good prerequisite for

Further development of relations, but it cannot be guided alone. Parents need to listen to the advice of specialists who know the child. If there is a choice between two or more children recommended by experts, then in this case you can be guided by your first impression and first feeling of delight with the child.

Some people who want to foster a child judge him by his external appearance, without taking into account his previous experiences. Children taken into orphanages from disadvantaged families are usually weak, suffering from malnutrition, uncleanliness of their parents, chronic runny nose, etc. They do not have the serious eyes of a child, they are scared and withdrawn. Among them there are apathetic, dull children, some of them, on the contrary, are very restless, annoyingly imposing contact with adults. However, in a family, sooner or later these characteristics of neglected children disappear; children change so much that it is difficult to recognize them. It is clear that we are not talking about beautiful new clothes, which are usually prepared in sufficient quantity for welcoming a child. We are talking about its general appearance, its relationship to the environment. After just a few months of living in a good new family, the child looks like a confident, healthy, cheerful and joyful person.

Some doctors and psychologists are of the opinion that it is better not to tell new parents much about the fate and blood parents of the child, so as not to harass them and force them to live in anxiety, in anticipation of some undesirable manifestations in the child. Some adoptive parents themselves refuse to receive information about the child, assuming that without it they will become more attached to him. However, based on practical experience, we advise you to find out all the basic information about the child. First of all, we advise you to find out about the child’s capabilities and prospects, about his skills, needs and difficulties in raising him. This information should not disturb new parents or cause them anxiety. On the contrary, this data should give them confidence that nothing will surprise them and they will not learn something that parents usually know about their own child. The awareness of educators should facilitate the rapid selection of their correct position in relation to

Thinking about the child, choosing the right method of education, which will help them form a realistic, optimistic view of the child and the process of his upbringing.

So, the adopted child came to a new family. This significant and joyful event is at the same time a serious test. If there are other children in the family, then the parents usually do not expect complications; they are calm, as they rely on their existing experience of upbringing. Nevertheless, they too may be unpleasantly surprised and disoriented by, for example, the fact that the child does not have hygiene skills or does not fall asleep well, wakes up the whole family at night, that is, it requires a lot of patience, attention and care from parents. Some parents, unfortunately, react to this first critical moment with phrases with a sigh: “Can our Yurka be compared to him at this age, what did he not know how to do!” or “Oh, no, she won’t be like Evochka. You can’t even compare them.” Such sighs are probably justified. In this case, children really cannot be compared with each other and wish that they have the same level of development. However, sighing and saying such things in front of children is very dangerous for the entire future life together.

If parents do not have children, then the situation arises somewhat different. Usually, educators who have never had children of their own study many articles and brochures before adopting, but they look at everything only “theoretically,” with a certain concern for practice.

The first adopted child poses many more tasks for parents than the first natural child, since the adopted child surprises with his habits and requirements, because he has not lived in this family since the day of his birth. Educators of an adopted child face a difficult task: to understand the child’s individuality. You cannot shower him with tenderness beyond all measure, especially since until now he has not seen them at all. It is also impossible to introduce the child to all relatives at once. First, he should be given time to become as familiar as possible with his home environment. The smaller the child, the sooner he gets used to the life of a new family. However, the attitude towards the family of an adopted child is initially wary, primarily due to

His worries about losing his family. This feeling occurs even in children of that age at which they cannot yet fully understand this feeling and speak about it in words.

The process of an adopted child’s integration into a family depends on the personality of the parents, on the general family atmosphere, as well as on the child himself, primarily on his age, character and previous experience. Young children, up to about two years old, quickly forget about their previous surroundings. Adults quickly develop a warm attitude towards a small child.

Children from two to five years old remember more; some things remain in their memory for the rest of their lives. The child relatively quickly forgets the environment of the orphanage. If he became attached to some teacher there, then he can remember her for quite a long time. Gradually, the new teacher, that is, his mother, becomes the closest person to him in her daily contact with the child. A child's memories of his family of origin depend on the age at which he was taken from that family.

In most cases, children retain bad memories of the parents who left them, so at first they are distrustful of all adults in the family that adopted them. Some children take a defensive position, some show a tendency to deception, to rude behavior, that is, to what they saw around them in their own family. However, there are children who remember with sadness and tears their parents, even those who abandoned them, most often their mother. For educators, this child’s condition causes anxiety: will this child get used to them?

Such fears are unfounded. If a child in his memories shows a positive attitude towards his birth mother, then it would be absolutely wrong to correct his views or express displeasure in this regard. On the contrary, we should be glad that the child’s feelings were not dull, because his mother at least partially satisfied his basic physical and mental needs. For example, a three-year-old child reacts positively to the closeness of his mother, who feeds him and occasionally kisses and caresses him. He naturally

He cannot judge her character, lifestyle, and especially her illegal actions.

In cases where the mother satisfies the child’s needs only partially, the intensity of these needs increases, and therefore the child strives in various ways to attract the mother’s attention and earn her favor. Therefore, in an orphanage you may encounter a child who is really looking forward to his mother and is sad about her, although due to his mother’s poor care he was taken from the family. It’s good when children find themselves in a new family after a short stay in an orphanage.

You can ignore the child’s memories of his family. In response to his possible questions, it is better, without remembering his own mother, to say that he now has a new mother who will always take care of him. This explanation, and most importantly a friendly, affectionate approach, can calm the child. After some time, his memories will fade and he will become deeply attached to his new family.

Children over five years old remember a lot from their past. Schoolchildren have especially rich social experience, since they had their own teachers and classmates. If from the day of his birth the child was under the care of certain child care institutions, then adoption is at least the fifth life situation for him. This certainly disrupted the formation of his personality. If a child lived in his own family until he was five years old, then the situations he experienced left a certain mark that must be taken into account when eliminating various undesirable habits and skills. From the very beginning, the upbringing of such children must be approached with greater tolerance, consistency, consistency in relationships, and understanding. Under no circumstances should you resort to cruelty. You cannot squeeze such a child into the framework of your ideas, insist on demands that exceed his capabilities.

School performance usually improves after moving into a family, as children want to please their parents. You can observe in adopted children who enjoy living in a new family the ability to suppress their memories of their family of origin and the orphanage. They don't like to talk about the past. If this is discussed, they pretend or specially emphasize

They claim that they don’t remember anything at all. However, adults should not forget that a child remembers much more than it seems. Sometimes, after a long time, he can surprise them with the memory of a fact that he seemed to have long forgotten.

Educators usually face the question: to tell or not to tell a child about his origin. This does not apply to children who came to the family at an age when they remember all the people who surrounded them in early childhood. With a very young child, adoptive parents are often tempted to keep silent about his past. The views of specialists and the experience of adoptive parents clearly indicate that there is no need to hide anything from the child (this has already been discussed above). When the very fact of adoption is spoken of as something self-evident, calmly, in accordance with the child’s ability to correctly understand this fact, then its content is accepted completely calmly, since for a child’s parents are the people who care about him and love him. Moreover, the awareness and understanding of an informed child can subsequently protect him from any tactless remark or hint from others, and preserve his confidence in his family.

It is also necessary to answer openly and truthfully to children who want to know about their place of birth.

A child may not return to this topic for a long time, and then suddenly he develops a desire to find out details about his past. This is not a symptom of a weakening relationship with parents. Even less such curiosity is a desire to return to the original family. This is a natural desire to connect together all the facts known to him, to realize the continuity of his development as a person.

The manifestation of emerging social consciousness quite naturally appears, as a rule, after eleven years.

When adults talk to a child about his past, under no circumstances should they speak disparagingly about his family. The child may feel insulted. However, he must clearly know why he could not remain among his former environment, that his adoption by another family was his salvation.

A school-age child is able to understand his

Life situation. If the child does not understand it, you can get into a difficult situation. This is especially true for pedagogically ignorant educators. The child may react chaotically, with dissatisfaction to manifestations of pity for him, tenderness, and have difficulty enduring the demands of his parents. It is even possible, due to the demands placed on him, usual for a normal family, that he may yearn for his past, regardless of the suffering he has experienced. In that family, he was free from responsibilities and was not responsible for his actions. When talking with a child about his past, it is necessary to show skill: tell him the whole truth and not offend him, help him understand everything and comprehend it correctly. The child must internally agree with reality, only then will he not return to it.

It is advisable to start creating “traditions” with the child’s arrival in the family, which will help strengthen his attachment to the new family (for example, an album with photographs). The creation of family traditions is facilitated by the celebration of a child’s birthday, since previously he hardly knew about such joyful experiences.

In this regard, we advise you to pay attention to mutual requests. In most cases, children call their teachers the same as their parents: mom, dad, or as is customary in the family. Young children are taught conversion. They repeat it after their older children, feeling an internal need for it. We do not recommend forcing older children who have already approached their natural parents in this way. They will gradually do it themselves over time. In rare cases, the child addresses his adoptive mother and father as “aunt” and “uncle.” This is possible, for example, in children about ten years old who loved and remember their late mother well. It is quite clear that the stepmother, no matter how well she treats the children, will not be able to call them mother for a long time.

If a family that wishes to adopt a child has small children, then they must be prepared before the arrival of the adopted son or daughter. Without preparation, young children can become very jealous of a new family member. Much depends on the mother, on her ability to calm her children. If natural children have already reached adolescence, then they should be informed about the parents’ desire to take in another child.

They usually look forward to the arrival of a new family member in the future. It is completely inappropriate to talk about the shortcomings of an adopted son or daughter in the presence of your children, while appreciating his imperfections with a sigh.

So, we have noted the first critical point, which consists in stating a fact: the child differs from the idea of ​​him that is created in the minds of the parents. Perhaps that is why he will be a lot of trouble. There are also other critical moments, but is it possible to do without them in any family?

Raising children requires parents and teachers to solve many problems, questions, and find new ways. The development of some children proceeds relatively calmly, while others develop so rapidly that difficulties and problems constantly arise. Children taken into foster care, after overcoming the difficulties of mutual adaptation, as a rule, begin a joyful period of rapid development and the formation of emotional connections. It is advisable for a child under the age of three to be raised by his mother, since after all the experiences he needs to calm down and get along with his family. It is possible that his stay in the nursery will complicate or disrupt the important process of forming the relationship between mother and child. When the child fully adapts to the family, he can attend kindergarten. For many educators, this period brings about another critical moment: the child comes into contact with the children's team. For children who did not attend kindergarten, this critical moment occurs at the beginning of school, when the child finds himself in a wider social environment.

It is in the best interests of the children that parents need to work closely with kindergarten teachers and teachers. It is advisable to introduce them to the fate and previous development of the adopted child, ask them to pay a little more attention to him, adhering to an individual approach. If a child is being observed by a psychologist, then teachers, first of all the class teacher, must be informed about this, because the psychologist will also need the teacher’s information. In collaboration with the school doctor, they will take care of the child's further development.

In preschool age, children usually have fewer serious problems. Sometimes due to a time lag

When speaking, children encounter language difficulties in a children's group because they cannot understand each other. We need to pay attention to this and correct it if possible.

Before entering school, children undergo a medical examination. If the doctor and psychologist who are monitoring the child, after an examination, advise sending him to school only after a year, then, of course, you should not resist this advice. It must be borne in mind that enrollment in school is sometimes postponed for various reasons, even for natural children who had incomparably better conditions for development. Such a decision will help level out the lag in the child’s overall development and create conditions for building self-confidence. The child will then be able to master school material better without stress. The possibility of completely correcting a child’s pronunciation and diction before entering school should not be underestimated. We advise you to visit a speech therapist with your child before school.

Some children, before entering school, exhibit very specific signs of health and development that indicate the need for their education in a special school. However, sometimes they try to teach them in a regular school first and only then transfer them to a special school. When a child taken into a family experiences a similar situation, some caregivers, warned about this possibility even before the child was handed over to them, panic from disappointment. It `s naturally. All parents try to ensure that their child achieves as much as possible. However, what is more and what is better?

When a child is overloaded in a regular school without taking into account his physical and mental capabilities, then, despite all efforts, he will have low academic performance, he will be forced to repeat the second year, and therefore he will not experience the joy of learning, since he developed a negative attitude towards school and education in general. In a special school, the same child may become a good student without much effort, excel in manual labor, in physical exercise, or demonstrate his artistic abilities. Inclusion in the labor process of a student who has graduated from a completely special school,

It happens much easier than for a student who dropped out of school in the sixth or seventh grade of a regular school.

After a child is enrolled in school (no matter which one), new concerns arise in the family. In some families, they are more attentive to their children’s academic performance, while others are more attentive to their behavior, since some children have problems with learning, while others have problems with behavior. Academic performance must be judged from the point of view of the child's abilities. We advise you to talk about this with a psychologist, consult with a teacher, so that you know what the child is capable of. There is no need to be too pedantic when assessing the behavior of an adopted child. It is known that our own children present some “surprises” from time to time. It is important to form in a child a sense of responsibility, an honest attitude towards work, towards people, to cultivate such moral qualities as truthfulness, devotion, responsibility, which we strive to develop in children in our socialist society.

It is necessary to set educational goals in the everyday life of the family in the form of small, specific tasks for the child. Sometimes an angry parent, discussing with his adopted child some of his misconduct, in a fit of indignation makes a big mistake: he reproaches the child, reminding him that he cannot afford something, since the order in this house is not the same as in his home, that he now lives in a decent family, etc. There is no need to emphasize what harm such speeches cause to education. A child can become so embittered against a parent who brings up his past that he commits a serious offense.

In any case, parents are saved by calmness and prudence, thoughtfulness of the thoughts expressed, and the desire to help the child correct his mistakes.

Some parents entrust their children to their closest relatives, mainly grandparents, to raise them. Experience shows that these related ways of upbringing sometimes differ from upbringing in other people's families. The fact that relatives know the child and he more or less knows their family situation is a definite advantage when deciding the child’s fate. If these relatives still have

If you have a good attitude towards the child’s parents, they will treat the child the same way. In practice, cases are more common when we are talking about maternal educators: for example, a child is born to a too young girl who later marries and starts her own family. Therefore, her first child, whose father is unknown, remains with the mother's parents, who justify their daughter's behavior and maintain a good relationship with her.

However, it happens that the natural mother (married or unmarried) does not care about her child at all, and therefore the family of the child’s father took him in.

Many people think that an orphaned or abandoned child will be much better off in the family of relatives of his parents. It doesn't always happen like this. Experience confirms the opinion that selfless people, having achieved amazing results in raising children with severe disabilities, are very often found in families that are completely alien to the child, because they have taken the position of truly natural parents in the best sense of these words.

When a child is placed in the care of relatives, it is also necessary to carefully weigh all the conditions of their life and require a psychological examination.

It is possible that a mother’s cold and even cruel attitude towards her child and her inability to raise him are largely due to the fact that she lived her childhood in an unfavorable family environment. Is there any guarantee in this case that the maternal grandparents will be able to raise their grandson well? Of course not. They could not raise their daughter to be an honest and kind person.

However, there are cases when grandparents (grandparents) understand the mistakes made when raising their children, and therefore strive to raise their grandchildren correctly.

The main task of targeted, qualified assistance to grandparents raising grandchildren is to explain their functions. They should become parents for the child, not grandparents. And the point here is not at all what the child calls them. The main mistake is the desire of the ancestors

Give your grandchildren everything that they did not give to their child, that is, to the father or mother of the grandson. They try to “make up for this gap in their lives” with toys, excessive affection and pampering their grandchildren. These shortcomings in upbringing can especially manifest themselves in the child’s adolescence and young adulthood.

Consequently, one cannot rashly decide on the issue of raising an orphaned or abandoned child, even when he has grandparents. However, we must keep in mind that grandparents can be truly good educators.

HELP FOR FAMILIES, SINGLE PERSONS WHO HAVE ADOPTED A CHILD

A characteristic feature of adoption in our country is that the socialist state helps these families financially and morally. Specialists conduct constant monitoring of the upbringing of adopted children, provide certain support and methodological guidance, and conduct systematic research observations of the physical, mental and moral development of adopted children.

In the past, there were no special counseling institutions for families who had adopted a child. Citizens to whom the court entrusted custody of a child had no opportunity to consult with specialists on the problems of raising a stepchild. These families usually closed themselves in a narrow circle with their problems; in extreme cases, they shared their difficulties with the pediatrician.

Currently, parents can seek advice and help from psychological and pedagogical consultations. In order to provide qualified assistance to caregivers, groups began to be created, which primarily include children's doctors, psychologists and social security workers. So far, lawyers and teachers are represented in smaller numbers, although their cooperation is absolutely necessary. In regions and districts of the country, these specialists are included in advisory councils that make decisions about children raised outside their family. These councils work closely with orphanages.

In advisory councils, an important and indispensable member of the group is a psychologist, since his diagnostic and advisory functions are necessary in resolving issues.

Psychological diagnostic service is necessary both for children and applicants for guardianship and adoption. In children, a psychologist must determine the level of mental development, assess the extent to which the child’s retardation (if any) is due to external factors (for example, a poor family environment) or internal ones (poor physical condition, serious illnesses, disorders of the central nervous system, etc.). The psychologist’s task is also to determine, in collaboration with the pediatrician (or other specialists), possibilities for correcting deficiencies in the child’s general development, and to look for ways to eliminate them. The point is that the psychologist first of all tries to determine the prospects for the child’s development.

A qualified psychological report is a serious basis for making a decision about the fate of a child. It can only be compiled by a psychologist who has certain practical experience in working with children, is aware of the full responsibility of his conclusion and approaches it not only from a scientific, research point of view, but also from an ethical and universal position.

Observing a child and ascertaining his characteristics without taking into account previous living conditions, without assessing the dynamics, quality of achievements and shortcomings in his development can lead to a serious mistake, for example, a healthy child can be attributed to serious deviations in mental development. Such imprisonment may forever deprive the child of the opportunity to join a new family.

A psychologist's opinion should help people choose an environment for an orphaned child that would optimally help his development.

Applicants who wish to foster a child also undergo a psychological examination. However, many people are surprised and even feel insulted that they have to undergo a psychological examination. This position

This has many reasons. There is also a fairly widespread misconception that a psychologist, by offering some kind of test, will find out who is how smart. Some people are afraid of this "exam". There is hostility towards psychological examination among some men who agreed to take a child into their family, but refused to go for examination. Finally, some people are put off by the fact that the examination of applicants is carried out by a psychologist from the consultation, who, of course, also deals with marital problems and conflicts. In this regard, some men and especially women worry that their visit to counseling can be explained as a certain crisis in their marital life.

If a couple or a single person really wants to have a child in their family and are reasonable people, then they easily understand the importance and necessity of a psychological examination. If applicants abandon their plan to take a child into the family only because they do not want to undergo a psychological examination, then it is obvious that their need to have a child is not strong enough, and perhaps not sincere. In such a case, it will be much better if these people abandon their intention.

A psychological examination, carried out in the form of a conversation with each spouse separately, and then with both together, is primarily aimed at finding out the motives for the decision to take a child into the family. The psychologist assesses how well thought out this step is, whether it is an instant decision under the influence of delight, for example, after watching some television program or seeing orphanage children on a walk, etc. Next, the psychologist determines how much the applicant has the qualities and teacher's abilities. It, of course, excludes people who are unbalanced, degraded, with mental disorders, with tendencies to impulsive actions, alcoholism, etc.

However, there are people who are quite normal at first glance, but who have qualities that prevent the possibility of handing over a child to them to raise. Mostly they are self-centered, too secretive

New, sensually cold, angry, unkind people who, as a rule, have a stable, precise idea of ​​what their child should be like, what methods they will use to raise him so that he fits strictly into their scheme. If in the future the child did not meet the ideas of these people, and their methods had no effect on the child at all, then severe tension arose in the family. This situation most often led to a failed adoption, and in general to a very difficult situation. After a detailed examination of such a family, it usually turned out that the mistake was not at all that they got a “bad” child, which they try to convince everyone around them, but about themselves, in their attitude towards the child. When finding out the motives that led these people to adopt a child, it most often becomes clear that they were driven by the desire to provide themselves with an heir or to have a child, since everyone has children, to have someone who would help in old age, etc. In their motives there is no dream of a child as the goal of their life, there is no desire to provide a happy home environment for an orphaned or abandoned child.

The tasks of a psychological examination also include diagnosing the relationship between spouses, ascertaining the consistency in their views, the balance of their marriage, the harmony of the family environment, etc. Clarity in such matters is an important prerequisite for the successful development of the child. A relatively common situation occurs in which a childless woman, feeling her husband’s cooling towards her, the emptiness of her life, or having information about her husband’s infidelity, decides to raise a child. With the help of the child, the woman hopes to improve the family situation. According to life experience, the situation does improve, but this is most often an imaginary and short-term impression. Very soon, the troubles and concerns of taking care of the child further aggravate the fragile relationship between the spouses and an open conflict breaks out, which can lead to divorce. Such a family situation has a detrimental effect on the child.

Psychological consultations and examinations when choosing children and caregivers are primarily related to diagnostic activities. Many adoptive parents gratefully accept the help of psychologists -

Specialists. However, some parents fear that turning to a psychologist will reveal, for example, their secret about adoption, which they keep strictly secret from others and from their child. Perhaps they are afraid that an unfamiliar psychologist will misunderstand the reason for their request for consultation, etc. Therefore, the most justified method of work is the constant care of one psychologist who has known the family and child since the day of adoption.

A consultation with such a psychologist cannot be compensated for by any examinations by specialists who are not familiar in detail with the general development of the child and are not informed about the life of the family. A psychologist who constantly observes this family gradually becomes its first adviser in various difficult situations, which, as a rule, any family cannot completely avoid. The ideal case is when a psychologist takes part in considering all the important problems in the life of an adopted child, for example, his admission to kindergarten, enrollment in school, and later – the choice of a profession, a higher educational institution, etc.

In our country, methodological assistance to all parents is constantly expanding. Particular attention is paid to helping parents of adopted children. Lectures are organized for them in the presence of specialists and responsible workers who can answer various questions on educational issues.

For psychologists, observing the upbringing of orphaned and abandoned children is a lot of creative work. It brings unique joy when a psychologist encounters the amazing successes of these children and their excellent overall development.

True happiness is gained by a person who sees a once disadvantaged child as a joyful, healthy, thriving person who has known a happy childhood thanks to the kindness, love for him and the great citizenship of adults who once accepted a step-child into their family.;

Most children live in families. Among the many family models, families with adopted or adopted children occupy a special place. Families in which there are adopted children and adoptive parents can consist only of adopted children and the parents who adopted them, or adopted children find themselves in a family where there are already natural children. Therefore, the psychological problems faced by adoptive families largely depend on the structure (numerical and personal composition) of such a family.

The entire civilized world arranges for children left without parental care into families. Abandoned children are kept in so-called child care institutions just long enough to find them a new family. And at the same time, it is not so important whether the child is adopted or taken into custody - what is important is that he will live at home, in a family. There are orphanages only in Russia.

At the same time, it should be noted that the problem of placing children in orphanages as such appeared in Russia only in the twentieth century. Until this period, if a child became an orphan, relatives, as a rule, took him in to raise him. Thus, the child continued to live in the family. Raising an orphan has always been considered a charitable deed. Children from impoverished noble families or children of military men were usually brought up in state institutions. Orphanages appeared in Russia after 1917, where children left without adult care were placed. Impartial statistics show that today in Russia there are about 800 thousand children left without parental care. But these are only those who are registered with the state, and no one, naturally, can count the homeless. It is believed that there are approximately 600 thousand “street children” in the country, but other figures are also mentioned: two million and four million. This means, even according to the most conservative estimates, there are almost one and a half million abandoned children in Russia. Every year, over 100 thousand children are identified in the country who, due to various circumstances, are left without parental care.

Although the system of public maintenance and guardianship has long been considered quite acceptable for raising a child, experts have long noted a very important pattern: graduates of orphanages are practically unable to create full-fledged families; their children, as a rule, also end up in orphanages. Unfortunately, among the people who have broken the law, most often there are children from orphanages. Therefore, against this background, the placement of children deprived of parental care into families is especially welcome. Unfortunately, only 5% of children left without parental support are adopted. This is due to numerous difficulties of various kinds that inevitably arise on the path of those who have expressed a desire to give a child a family, which he was deprived of against his own will. One of the serious problems still remains the secrecy of adoption. Russian adoptive parents are afraid all their lives that their secret will be revealed, and therefore they often change their place of residence in order to maintain peace of mind and ensure the social and psychological well-being of the adopted child. At the same time, recently there has been a tendency to adopt children if there are children of their own in the family, so there is no need to keep this a secret. However, this does not mean that adoptive parents will not encounter a number of problems in building relationships with their stepchild, as well as in establishing contacts between their natural children and their adopted children. Therefore, let us dwell on these issues in more detail.

As a rule, children who do not receive appropriate upbringing in the parental family are placed in a foster family. They may suffer from malnutrition and neglect, lack medical treatment and supervision, and suffer various forms of physical, mental or sexual abuse. Children whose parents were not involved in raising them due to lack of teaching skills or due to a long illness can also become adopted “pets”. Thus, the foster family becomes a kind of “ambulance”, the main goal of which is to promptly support and protect the child in a crisis situation.

At first glance, it may seem that raising adopted children is no different from raising relatives. Indeed, the tasks of raising both relatives and adopted children are the same, especially if the adopted children are small. However, there are also special points that adoptive parents need to know and take into account; they will need the ability to help foster children transition into families. And it’s not easy to create conditions for adaptation so that children feel like full members of the new community.

The psychological problems of a family that has adopted a child can be divided into two groups. The first group of these problems is associated with the characteristics of the experiences, behavior and expectations of adoptive parents. The second concerns the difficulties of entering a new family and adapting an adopted child to it. These problems are closely related to each other, however, their content has its own specific features that should be taken into account by both adoptive parents and representatives of special guardianship and trusteeship services who deal with adoption issues.

Psychological problems of adoptive parents

Adoption has been an important social institution since ancient Rome. However, the attitude towards it is still ambiguous: some believe that it is better for a child to live in a family, others, on the contrary, talk about the advantages of public education in special institutions. This should not be surprising, because a stranger’s child in a family is always something unusual. This is all the more unusual for people who decide to foster a child about whom they know practically nothing. It is not easy for adoptive parents to get rid of some uncertainty and a certain tension when, after a long hesitation, they finally make such an important decision and realize that they have actually become educators, and now another human destiny depends only on them. Many are accompanied by “educational tremors” for a long time: will they be able to cope with their obligations and safely guide the child through the reefs of life, fully satisfy his spiritual needs, helping him become an independent and unique person.

A child who has lost his own parents needs a family environment filled with love, mutual trust and respect for full development. Spouses who cannot have children of their own have many parenting needs that go unmet and many parenting feelings that go unexpressed. Therefore, during adoption, the unmet needs of one and the other party meet, which allows them to quickly reach mutual understanding. However, in life, everything does not always go as smoothly as dreamed: the newly created parent-child union, although noble, is very fragile, which is why it needs attention, help and psychological support. It contains certain dangers that adoptive parents should be aware of in order to warn them in a timely manner.

There is an opinion that the greatest danger to the family community is the disclosure of the secret of adoption. And adoptive parents, succumbing to this misconception, take various precautions: they stop meeting with friends, move to another area or even city in order to protect the child from possible mental shock associated with the disclosure of this family secret. But experience shows that all these precautions are not effective enough, and the firmest guarantee is the truth, which the child must learn from his adoptive parents. Truth is the most important condition for a good educational atmosphere. And if a child, from the first days of being in a foster family, grows up with the consciousness that he is “step-native”, but is loved in the same way as other children, then the family union is not in serious danger.

The second danger of adoptive parents is related to the hereditary qualities of the child. Many of them are afraid of “bad heredity” and spend their whole lives intensely monitoring the behavior of their adopted child, looking for manifestations of those “vices” that their biological parents gave them. Of course, it is impossible to change the natural type of the nervous system and turn a child’s weak abilities into talent, even with the most heroic efforts and tireless educational diligence of the adoptive parents. But this is almost all that education cannot do. It can successfully influence everything else related to the child’s personality. Many of the bad habits that a child acquired in his previous environment, the special manner of behavior with which he tried to balance the emotional limitations of his life, the lack of practical knowledge and the skills of benevolent interaction with other people - focused, consistent and loving upbringing can perfectly cope with all of this. The most important thing that is required from adoptive parents is patience and readiness to promptly provide the necessary assistance to a new family member in his entry into a life to which he is not accustomed.

One can often come across the opinion that the most difficult problems in the situation of forming a new family union are related to the behavioral characteristics of children. However, practice shows that the weakest link in such a union is the parents themselves. Sometimes they are overly excited from waiting for a long time for their predictions, which for some reason are in no hurry to come true, so they try to rush and “spur” the child. Often, having taken responsibility for another person, they are full of uncertainty and have no idea what joys and worries a “stranger’s” child will bring them. Often they bring down their unrealized parental feelings on the child, forgetting that he may not be prepared for them and therefore is forced to defend himself from the emotional flow that has washed over him. People who have just become parents tend to place increased demands on their child, which they simply cannot yet cope with. And although they loudly declare that they will be quite happy if their son (or daughter) studies mediocrely, deep down in their hearts they set higher goals for the child, which, in their opinion, he must definitely achieve. Others, on the contrary, believe only in heredity and fearfully expect what the child has adopted from his biological parents: behavioral deviations, illnesses and much more that is unattractive and undesirable for the family and the full development of the child himself. For this reason, they often secretly observe the child’s behavior, taking a wait-and-see attitude. They tend to attribute manners and hobbies that are unacceptable in the child’s behavior, in the opinion of the adoptive parents, to bad heredity, without thinking that this may be nothing more than a reaction to the unusual living conditions in the new family. In addition, the child may be constantly haunted by thoughts and memories of his biological parents, whom he continues to love in his soul, despite the fact that life with them was not as prosperous as it is now. He is in confusion and does not know how to behave: on the one hand, he still continues to love his natural parents, and on the other, he has not yet managed to love his adoptive parents. For this reason, his behavior may be inconsistent and contradictory; he is afraid of “offending” his former parents with his attachment to his adoptive parents. Sometimes aggressive behavioral reactions in relationships with adoptive parents are nothing more than a psychological defense against the internal contradictions that they experience while loving both their stepparents and their natural parents. Of course, such behavior of a child is perceived very painfully by his new parents, who do not know how to behave in such a situation, whether he should be punished for certain offenses.

Sometimes adoptive parents are afraid to punish their child for fear that he may feel that they are strangers to him. Sometimes, on the contrary, they fall into despair because they do not know how else to punish him, because all punishments are useless - nothing works on him. If you clearly understand that the educational impact of punishment is based on a temporary severance of the emotional connection between a child and an adult, then it is easier to understand that there is no need to be afraid of this. It is important that punishment is followed by forgiveness, reconciliation, and the return of former relationships, and then, instead of alienation, the emotional connection only deepens. But if the emotional relationship in the adoptive family has not yet been established, then no punishment will have the desired effect. Many children who end up in foster families simply have not yet learned (are not used to) loving someone, becoming emotionally attached to someone, or feeling good in a family environment. And they perceive what is usually considered punishment rather indifferently, just like natural phenomena - snow, thunderstorm, heat, etc. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to build an emotional connection in the family, and this requires time, patience and leniency on the part of the adoptive parents.

Adoption should not be viewed as a sacrifice made by the new parents for the child. On the contrary, the child himself gives a lot to his adoptive parents.

The worst thing is if adults, by adopting a baby, are thereby trying to solve some of their own problems. For example, they plan to preserve a disintegrating marital union or see a child as a kind of “insurance” for old age. It also happens that, having an only child, spouses try to find a peer or companion for him, that is, when an adopted child serves as a means to solve some personal or intra-family problems of adults, and is not a goal oriented towards himself and achieved for the sake of him. Perhaps the most acceptable situation is when a child is taken into a foster family in order to make her life more fulfilling, if the foster parents see in him their continuation in the future and believe that their union is equally beneficial to both parties.

Psychological difficulties in adaptation of adopted children to the family

Children end up in someone else's family for various reasons. They may have different life experiences and each of them has their own individual needs. However, each of them experiences psychological trauma caused by separation from their family. When children are placed into foster care, they are separated from people they know and trust and placed in a completely different environment that is foreign to them. Getting used to a new environment and new living conditions is associated with a number of difficulties that a child is practically unable to cope with without the help of adults.

How a child copes with separation is influenced by the emotional bonds that develop in early childhood. Between the ages of six months and two years, a child develops an attachment to the person who encourages him the most and is most responsive to all his needs. Usually this person is the mother, since she is the one who most often feeds, dresses and cares for the child. However, it is not only the satisfaction of a child’s physical needs that contributes to the formation of certain attachments. The emotional attitude towards him is very important, which is expressed through a smile, physical and visual contact, conversations, i.e. full communication with him. If a child has not formed attachments by the age of two, the likelihood of their successful formation at an older age decreases (a striking example of this is children who have been in special institutions since birth, where there is no constant individual contact with the adult caring for them).

If a child has never experienced any attachment, he, as a rule, does not react in any way to separation from his parents. Conversely, if he has formed a natural attachment to members of his family or people replacing them, he will most likely react violently to being taken away from his family. A child may experience real grief for some time, and everyone experiences it differently. It is very important that adoptive parents can anticipate the child’s reaction to separation from family and show sensitivity.

Stepparents can help children cope with their sad feelings by accepting them as they are and helping them verbalize their feelings. Often this may be due to an ambivalent attitude towards their parents. On the one hand, they continue to love them, but on the other hand, they feel disappointment and resentment towards them, because it is their fault that they have to live in someone else’s family. The feeling of confusion that children experience due to feelings of love and longing for their family and hatred of their parents for their imagined or real actions is very painful. Being in a state of prolonged emotional stress, they may aggressively perceive attempts by adoptive parents to get closer to them. Therefore, adoptive parents need to anticipate the occurrence of similar reactions on the part of adopted children and try to help them get rid of their negative experiences as quickly as possible and adapt to a new family.

It is very important for adoptive parents to understand that children experience no less difficulties than adults when they find themselves in new living conditions. At the same time, due to age characteristics, they quickly adapt to changed circumstances and often either do not realize or simply do not think about the complexities of their new life.

The process of adaptation of a child in a foster family goes through a number of periods, at each of which social, psychological, emotional and pedagogical barriers arise.

The first period of adaptation - introductory. Its duration is short, about two weeks. Social and emotional barriers manifest themselves most clearly during this period. Particular attention should be paid to the first meeting of potential parents with the child. Here, preliminary preparation for the meeting of both sides is important. Even small children get excited before this event. The day before they are excited, cannot fall asleep for a long time, become fussy and restless. Older children experience a feeling of fear before meeting their prospective adoptive parents and may turn to the adults around them (educators, medical workers) with a request not to send them anywhere, to leave them in an orphanage (hospital), although the day before they expressed their readiness to live in a family, to leave with new parents to any country. Older preschoolers and schoolchildren develop a fear of unfamiliar speech and learning a new language.

At the moment of meeting, emotionally responsive children willingly meet their future parents halfway, some rush to them shouting “Mom!”, hug, kiss. Others, on the contrary, become overly constrained, cling to the adult accompanying them, do not let go of his hand, and the adult in this situation has to tell them how to approach and what to say to the future parents. Such children have great difficulty parting with their familiar surroundings, crying, and refusing to get to know each other. Such behavior often confuses adoptive parents: it seems to them that the child did not like them, they begin to worry that he will not love them.

The easiest way to establish contact with such a child is through unusual toys, objects, gifts, but at the same time, adoptive parents need to take into account the child’s age, gender, interests, and level of development. Often, in order to establish contact with a child, adults have to “give up principles”, as if to follow the child’s lead, to indulge his desires, since it is difficult to gain the favor of a little person with prohibitions and restrictions during this period. For example, many children from an orphanage are afraid to sleep alone, to remain in a room without adults. Therefore, at first you have to either take the child into your bedroom or stay with him until he falls asleep. Disciplining educational restrictions and punishments will have to be applied later, when such a child gets used to new conditions and accepts adults as his own family. It is necessary to accustom a child to a regime, a new order in these conditions, tactfully but persistently, constantly reminding him of what he has forgotten. This is natural for any person, even an adult, who finds himself in new conditions. Therefore, at first, the child should not be overloaded with various rules and instructions, but one should not deviate from one’s requirements either.

Many new people appear in the child’s environment, whom he is unable to remember. He sometimes forgets where dad and mom are, doesn’t immediately say what their names are, confuses names, family relationships, asks again: “What’s your name?”, “Who is this?” This is not evidence of poor memory, but is explained by the abundance of impressions that the child is not able to assimilate in a short time in a new environment. And at the same time, quite often, sometimes completely unexpectedly and, it would seem, at the most inopportune time, children remember their former parents, episodes and facts from their previous life. They begin to share their impressions spontaneously, but if you specifically ask about their previous life, they are reluctant to answer or speak. Therefore, you should not focus on this and allow the child to throw out his feelings and experiences associated with his previous life. The conflict that a child experiences, not knowing with whom he should identify himself, can be so strong that he is unable to identify himself either with his previous family or with his current one. In this regard, it will be very useful for the child to help him analyze his own feelings underlying such a conflict.

The emotional difficulties of a child are that finding a family is accompanied by the experience of joy and anxiety at the same time. This leads many children into a feverishly excited state. They become fussy, restless, grab onto many things and cannot concentrate on one thing for a long time. During this period, curiosity and educational interests awakened in the child by circumstances become a gratifying phenomenon. Questions about everything that surrounds him literally pour out of him like a fountain. The adult’s task is not to brush aside these questions and patiently explain at an accessible level everything that interests and worries him. Gradually, as the cognitive needs associated with the new environment are satisfied, these questions will dry up, since much will become clear to the child and he will be able to figure out some of it himself.

There are children who, in the first week, withdraw into themselves, experience fear, become gloomy, have difficulty making contact, talk to almost no one, do not part with old things and toys, are afraid of losing them, often cry, become apathetic, depressed, or adults’ attempts to establish interaction are responded to with aggression. In international adoption at this stage, a language barrier arises, which greatly complicates contacts between the child and adults. The first delights from new things and toys give way to misunderstanding, and when left alone, children and parents begin to feel burdened by the impossibility of communication and resort to gestures and expressive movements. When meeting people who speak their native language, children distance themselves from their parents, asking them not to leave them or to take them in with them. Therefore, adoptive parents should take into account the possibility of such difficulties in mutual adaptation and prepare in advance to find the necessary means to quickly eliminate them.

Second period of adaptation - adaptive. It lasts from two to four months. Having become accustomed to new conditions, the child begins to look for a line of behavior that would satisfy the adoptive parents. At first, he obeys the rules almost unquestioningly, but, gradually getting used to it, he tries to behave as before, taking a closer look at what others like and don’t like. There is a very painful breaking of the existing stereotype of behavior. Therefore, adults should not be surprised by the fact that a previously cheerful and active child suddenly becomes capricious, cries often and for a long time, begins to fight with his parents or with his acquired brother and sister, and a gloomy and withdrawn child begins to show interest in his surroundings, especially when no one is watching him. observes, acts on the sly. Some children show regression in behavior, they lose existing positive skills: they stop following the rules of hygiene, stop speaking or begin to stutter, and they may experience a recurrence of previously existing health problems. This is an objective indicator of the significance for the child of previous relationships, which make themselves felt at the psychosomatic level.

Adoptive parents should keep in mind that the child may clearly lack the skills and habits necessary for living in a family. Children stop liking brushing their teeth, making the bed, tidying up toys and things if they were not accustomed to this before, since the novelty of impressions has disappeared. During this period, the personality of the parents, their ability to communicate, and their ability to establish a trusting relationship with the child begins to play a major role. If adults have managed to win over the child, then he refuses the fact that he does not receive their support. If the adults chose the wrong educational tactics, the child slowly begins to do everything “to spite them.” Sometimes he looks for an opportunity to return to his previous way of life: he starts asking to see the kids, remembers his teachers. Older children sometimes run away from their new family.

During the second period of adaptation in the adoptive family, psychological barriers are very clearly revealed: incompatibility of temperaments, character traits, habits, memory problems, underdeveloped imagination, narrow-mindedness and knowledge about the environment, lag in the intellectual sphere.

Children raised in orphanages develop their own ideal family; each one lives with the expectation of a mother and father. This ideal is associated with a feeling of celebration, walks, and playing together. Adults, busy with everyday problems, sometimes do not find time for the child, leaving him alone with himself, considering him big and completely independent, capable of finding something to do to his liking. Sometimes, on the contrary, they overprotect the child, controlling his every step. All this complicates the process of a child’s entry into a new social environment and the emergence of emotional attachment to adoptive parents.

Pedagogical barriers become significant during this period:

• lack of knowledge among parents about the characteristics of age;
• inability to establish contact and trusting relationships with the child;
• an attempt to rely on one’s life experience, on the fact that “we were raised this way”;
• a difference in views on education and the influence of authoritarian pedagogy is revealed;
• the desire for an abstract ideal;
• overestimated or, conversely, underestimated demands on the child.

Successful overcoming of the difficulties of this period is evidenced by a change not only in the child’s behavior, but also in the external appearance: the expression of his face changes, it becomes more meaningful, animated, and “blooms.” In international adoptions, it has been repeatedly noted that the child’s hair begins to grow, all allergic phenomena disappear, and the symptoms of previous diseases disappear. He begins to perceive his foster family as his own, tries to “fit into” the rules that existed in it even before his arrival.

Third stage – addictive. Children remember the past less and less often. The child feels good in the family, he hardly remembers his previous life, appreciating the benefits of being in the family, attachment to his parents appears, and reciprocal feelings arise.

If the parents were unable to find an approach to the child, all the previous personality shortcomings (aggressiveness, isolation, disinhibition) or unhealthy habits (theft, smoking, the desire to wander) begin to clearly manifest themselves in him. Each child is looking for his own way of psychological protection from everything that does not suit him in a foster family.

Difficulties in adapting to adoptive parents can make themselves felt in adolescence, when the child awakens interest in his “I”, the history of his appearance. Adopted children want to know who their real parents are, where they are, and there is a desire to look at them. This creates emotional barriers in the parent-child relationship. They arise even when the relationship between the child and the adoptive parents is excellent. The children's behavior changes: they withdraw into themselves, hide, start writing letters, go on searches, and ask everyone who is somehow related to their adoption. Alienation may arise between adults and children, and the sincerity and trust of the relationship may temporarily disappear.

Experts say that the older the child is, the more dangerous adoption is for his mental development. It is assumed that the child’s desire to find his true (biological) parents plays a large role in this. In approximately 45% of adopted children, mental disorders, according to a number of authors, are associated with the child’s constant thoughts about his real parents. Therefore, families raising children should be aware of the specific skills that they will have to learn first. Adoptive parents need skills to establish and maintain relationships with adoption agencies. In addition, they must be able to interact with legal authorities during the adoption of a child.

What determines the duration of the adaptation period? Are the barriers that arise in the process always so complex and are their occurrence necessary? It is quite natural that these questions cannot but worry adoptive parents. Therefore, they should learn several immutable truths that will help them cope with the difficulties of the adaptation period in the family.

Firstly, it all depends on the individual characteristics of the child and the individual characteristics of the parents. Secondly, much is determined by the quality of the selection of candidates for adoptive parents for a particular child. Thirdly, the preparedness of both the child himself for changes in life and the parents for the characteristics of their children is of great importance. Fourthly, the degree of psychological and pedagogical education of adults about relationships with children and their ability to competently use this knowledge in their educational practice is important.

Features of upbringing in a foster family

When adopting a child, adoptive parents will need the ability to create a positive family environment for the child. This means that they must not only help the child adapt to new conditions and feel like a full member of the family that adopted him. At the same time, new parents should help the child understand his family of origin and not interrupt contacts with it, since quite often it is very important for children to know that they still have natural parents, who are, as it were, an integral part of their ideas about themselves. to yourself.

Adoptive parents may also need skills to interact with older children if, before adoption, they lived in certain child care institutions that replaced their family. Therefore, they could have individual emotional problems, which the adoptive parents would be able to cope with only if they had special knowledge and parenting skills. The adoptive parents and the adopted child may come from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Appropriate parenting skills can help adopted or adopted children cope with feelings of separation and disconnection from their old world.

Sometimes fostered children may not know how to communicate with their adoptive parents due to poor relationships in their own family. They expect to be harshly punished for minor infractions or that adults won't care what they do as long as they don't interfere. Some children may be hostile toward their stepparents because they either feel like everyone is conspiring to take them away from their family or because they cannot cope with the anger, fear, and hurtful feelings they have toward their parents. own parents. Or children may become hostile to themselves and do things that are primarily harmful to themselves. They may try to hide or deny these feelings by withdrawing from their adoptive parents or being completely indifferent to them.

The feeling of confusion that children experience, on the one hand, due to feelings of love and longing for their family and, on the other hand, hatred of their parents and themselves for imaginary and real actions, is very painful. Being in a state of emotional stress, these children may commit aggressive actions towards their adoptive parents. All this should be known to those who have decided to take the serious step of adopting a child who has separated from his family of origin.

In addition, the child may have mental, mental and emotional disabilities, which will also require specific knowledge and skills from the adoptive parents.

Very often, children, especially those under ten years of age, absolutely do not understand why they are taken away from their own family and placed to be raised in someone else’s. Therefore, later they begin to fantasize or come up with various reasons, which in itself is destructive. Often, the emotional state of children is characterized by a whole range of negative experiences: love for their parents is mixed with a feeling of disappointment, because it was their antisocial lifestyle that led to separation; feeling of guilt for what is happening; low self-esteem; expectation of punishment or indifference on the part of adoptive parents, aggression, etc. This “trail” of negative experiences follows the child into the adoptive family, even if the child has been in the center for a long time and has undergone a course of rehabilitation and preparation for life in a new surroundings. It is also obvious that these experiences inevitably influence the atmosphere of the foster family, requiring a revision of the existing relationships between its members, mutual concessions, specific knowledge and skills. With a high degree of probability, we can conclude that parents who are able to understand the essence of the new relationships they are entering into, who have taken the initiative in this process, will be able to better predict and analyze the process of upbringing, which will ultimately lead to a creative and successful family life.

Most of the responsibility for the process of social formation of the child, as well as his personal and psychological development, lies with the adoptive parents.

Both adopted children and adoptive parents, as well as their natural children, also need time to adapt to the habits and characteristics of the child taken into care. At the same time, natural children no less than adopted children need to protect their interests and rights. In the development of relations between an adopted child and natural children, it is very important that the latter have the right to vote in the decision to accept another child into the family. Native children can provide invaluable assistance in caring for him if they, firstly, understand the importance of the task they are performing and, secondly, are confident that they have a strong position in the family. Very often, natural children are much better than parents in helping a newcomer get used to the family’s daily routine, express his feelings, get to know neighbors, etc. Natural children can serve as an example for an adopted child of interaction with parents, especially if the adopted child’s relationship with adults is in its the old family left much to be desired.

A difficult situation arises in a foster family, in which parents constantly compare their children with their adopted ones. At the moment of comparison, the “bad” child is forced to be bad and unconsciously acts badly. Parents become wary, begin to educate, prohibit, threaten - hence again a bad deed out of fear that they will refuse it.

Therefore, it is necessary to dwell separately on the nature of parent-child relationships in those families that, for various reasons, after a certain time, abandon their adopted child and return him to the orphanage. Features characteristic of this group of families appear primarily when studying the motives of family upbringing and parental positions.

Two large groups of educational motives can be distinguished. Motives, the emergence of which is largely connected with the life experience of parents, with the memories of their own childhood experiences, with their personal characteristics. And the motives of education, which arise to a greater extent as a result of marital relationships.

• education as the realization of the need for achievement;
• education as the realization of highly valuable ideals or certain qualities;
• education as the realization of the need for the meaning of life.

• education as the realization of the need for emotional contact;
• education as the implementation of a certain system.

This division of motives for upbringing in a foster family is, of course, conditional. In the real life of a family, all these motivational tendencies, emanating from one or both parents and from their marital relationships, are intertwined in daily interaction with the child, in the existence of each family. However, the above distinction is useful, as it allows, when constructing a correction of motivational structures, to make the personality of the parents the center of psychological influence in one family, and in another to direct the influence to a greater extent on marital relationships.

Let us consider the situation of parents of adopted children, for whom education has become the main activity, the motive of which is to realize the need for meaning in life. As is known, the satisfaction of this need is associated with justifying for oneself the meaning of one’s existence, with a clear, practically acceptable and deserving of the approval of the person himself, the direction of his actions. For parents who have adopted children, the meaning of life is filled with caring for the child. Parents do not always realize this, believing that the purpose of their life is completely different. They feel happy and joyful only in direct communication with the child and in matters related to caring for him. Such parents are characterized by an attempt to create and maintain an excessively close personal distance with their adopted child. Growing up and the associated age-related and natural distance of the child from his adoptive parents, the increase in the subjective importance of other people for him is unconsciously perceived as a threat to his own needs. Such parents are characterized by the position of “living instead of the child,” so they strive to merge their lives with the lives of their children.

A different, but no less alarming, picture is observed among parents of adopted children, whose main motive for raising them arose largely as a result of marital relations. Usually, even before marriage, women and men had certain, fairly expressed emotional expectations (attitudes). Thus, women, due to their personal characteristics, felt the need to love and take care of a man. Men, due to the same characteristics, predominantly felt the need for care and love for themselves from a woman. It may seem that such compatible expectations will lead to a happy, mutually satisfying marriage. In any case, at the beginning of their life together, acceptably warm and friendly relations prevailed between the spouses. But the one-sided expectations of the husband and wife in relation to each other became more and more obvious and gradually led to a worsening of emotional relations in the family.

An attempt by one of the spouses to change the nature of their expectations in relation to the other, for example, to make them the opposite or mutual (harmonious), met with opposition. The family begins to “fever.” Consent is violated, mutual accusations, reproaches, suspicions, and conflict situations arise. Problems in intimate relationships between spouses are beginning to worsen more and more clearly. A “struggle for power” occurs, ending with the refusal of one of the spouses to renounce claims to dominance and the victory of the other, establishing a rigid type of influence. The structure of relationships in the family becomes fixed, rigid and formalized, or a redistribution of family roles occurs. In some cases, there may be a real threat of family breakdown.

In such a situation, the problems and difficulties that arise in raising adopted children are, in the main social directions, the same as those that arise when raising natural children. Some people who want to foster a child judge him by his external appearance, without taking into account his previous experiences. Adopted children taken from dysfunctional families are usually weak, suffering from malnutrition, uncleanliness of their parents, chronic runny nose, etc. They do not have childishly serious eyes, they are experienced and closed. Among them there are apathetic, dull children, some of them, on the contrary, are very restless, annoyingly imposing contact with adults. However, in a family, sooner or later these characteristics of neglected children disappear; children change so much that it is difficult to recognize them.

It is clear that we are not talking about beautiful new clothes, which are usually prepared in sufficient quantity for welcoming a child. We are talking about its general appearance, its relationship to the environment. After just a few months of living in a good new family, the child looks like a confident, healthy, cheerful and joyful person.

Some doctors and psychologists are of the opinion that it is better not to tell new parents much about the fate and blood parents of the child, so as not to frighten them and force them to live in anxiety, in anticipation of some undesirable manifestations in the child. Some adoptive parents themselves refuse to receive information about the child, assuming that without it they will become more attached to him. However, based on practical experience, it can be argued that it is better for adoptive parents to find out all the basic information about the child.

First of all, it is necessary to find out about the child’s capabilities and prospects, about his skills, needs and difficulties in upbringing. This information should not disturb new parents or cause them anxiety. On the contrary, this data should give them confidence that nothing will surprise them, and they will not learn something that parents usually know about their own child. The awareness of parents should facilitate the quick choice of their correct position in relation to the child, the choice of the correct method of education, which will help them form a real, optimistic view of the child and the process of his upbringing.

So, the adopted child came to a new family. This significant and joyful event is at the same time a serious test. If there are other children in the family, then the parents usually do not expect complications; they are calm, as they rely on their existing experience of upbringing. However, they may also be unpleasantly surprised and disoriented by, for example, the fact that the child does not have hygiene skills or does not fall asleep well, wakes up the whole family at night, that is, requires a lot of patience, attention and care from parents. Unfortunately, some parents react inappropriately to this first critical moment, comparing their adopted children with their relatives, not in favor of the adopted children. Sighing and saying something like that in front of children is very dangerous for the entire future life together.

If parents do not have children, then the situation arises somewhat different. Usually, adoptive parents who have never had children of their own, before adopting a foster child, study many articles and brochures, but look at everything only “theoretically”, with a certain concern for practice. The first adopted child poses many more tasks for parents than the first natural child, since the adopted child surprises with his habits and demands, because he has not lived in this family since the day of his birth. Adoptive parents face a difficult task: understanding the child’s individuality. The smaller the child, the sooner he gets used to the new family. However, the adopted child’s attitude towards the family is initially wary, primarily due to his anxiety about losing his family. This feeling occurs even in children of that age at which they cannot yet fully understand this feeling and speak about it in words.

The process of an adopted child’s integration into a family depends on the personality of the parents who adopted him, on the general family atmosphere, as well as on the child himself, primarily on his age, character and previous experience. Young children, up to about two years old, quickly forget about their previous surroundings. Adults quickly develop a warm attitude towards a small child.

Children from two to five years old remember more; some things remain in their memory for the rest of their lives. The child relatively quickly forgets the environment of the orphanage, social rehabilitation center (shelter). If he became attached to some teacher there, then he can remember her for quite a long time. Gradually, the new teacher, that is, his mother, becomes the closest person to him in her daily contact with the child. A child's memories of his family depend on the age at which he was taken from that family.

In most cases, children retain bad memories of the parents who left them, so at first they are distrustful of adults in the family that has adopted them. Some children take a defensive position, some show a tendency to deception, to rude behavior, that is, to what they saw around them in their own family. However, there are children who remember with sadness and tears their parents, even those who abandoned them, most often their mother. For adoptive parents, this condition causes anxiety: will this child get used to them?

Such fears are unfounded. If a child in his memories shows a positive attitude towards his birth mother, then it will be absolutely wrong to correct his views or statements in connection with this displeasure. On the contrary, we should be glad that the child’s feelings were not dulled, because his mother at least partially satisfied his basic physical and psychological needs.

You can ignore the child’s memories of his family. In response to his possible questions, it is better, without remembering his own mother, to say that he now has a new mother who will always take care of him. This explanation, and most importantly a friendly, affectionate approach, can calm the child. After some time, his memories will fade, and he will become deeply attached to his new family.

Children over five years old remember a lot from their past. Schoolchildren have especially rich social experience, since they had their own teachers and classmates. If from the day of his birth the child was under the care of certain children's institutions, then the foster family is at least the fifth living situation for him. This certainly disrupted the formation of his personality. If a child lived in his own family until he was five years old, then the situations he experienced left a certain mark that must be taken into account when eliminating various unwanted habits and skills. From the very beginning, the upbringing of such children must be approached with great tolerance, consistency, consistency in relationships, and understanding. Under no circumstances should you resort to cruelty. You cannot squeeze such a child into the framework of your ideas, insist on demands that exceed his capabilities.

School performance usually improves after moving into a family, as children want to please their parents. You can observe in adopted children who enjoy living in a new family the ability to suppress their memories of their family of origin and the orphanage. They don't like to talk about the past.

Adoptive parents are usually faced with the question of whether or not to tell their child about his or her origins. This does not apply to those children who came into the family at an age when they remember all the people who surrounded them in early childhood. With a very young child, adoptive parents are often tempted to keep silent about his past. The views of specialists and the experience of adoptive parents clearly indicate that there is no need to hide things from the child.

The awareness and understanding of an informed child can subsequently protect him from any tactless remark or hint from others, and preserve his confidence in his family.

It is also necessary to answer openly and truthfully to children who want to know about their place of birth. A child may not return to this topic for a long time, and then suddenly he develops a desire to find out details about his past. This is not a symptom of a weakening relationship with the adoptive parents. Even less does such curiosity act as a desire to return to one’s original family. This is nothing more than a child’s natural desire to connect together all the facts known to him, to realize the continuity of his development as a person.

The manifestation of emerging social consciousness quite naturally appears, as a rule, after eleven years. When adults talk to a child about his past, under no circumstances should he speak disparagingly about his former family. The child may feel insulted. However, he must clearly know why he could not remain among his former environment, that his upbringing by another family was his salvation. A school-age child is able to understand his life situation. If the child does not understand it, you can get into a difficult situation. This is especially true for pedagogically ignorant parents. The child may react chaotically, with dissatisfaction to manifestations of pity and tenderness towards him and have difficulty enduring the demands of his adoptive parents. It is even possible, due to the demands placed on him, usual for a normal family, that he may yearn for his past, regardless of the suffering he has experienced. In that family, he was free from responsibilities and was not responsible for his actions.

When talking with a child about his past, it is necessary to show skill: tell him the whole truth and not offend him, help him understand everything and comprehend it correctly. The child must internally agree with reality, only then will he not return to it. It is advisable to begin creating “traditions” when a child arrives in a foster family, which will help strengthen his attachment to the new family (for example, an album with photographs). The creation of family traditions is facilitated by the celebration of a child’s birthday, since previously he hardly knew about such joyful experiences.

In this regard, it is necessary to pay attention to mutual appeals. In most cases, children call their adoptive parents the same as their natural parents: mom, dad, or as is customary in the family. Young children are taught conversion. They repeat it after their older children, feeling an internal need for it. Older children who have already approached their natural parents in this way do not need to be forced; they will gradually do it themselves over time. In rare cases, the child addresses his adoptive mother and father as “aunt” and “uncle.” This is possible, for example, in children about ten years old who loved and remember their natural parents well. It is quite clear that the stepmother, no matter how well she treats the children, will not be able to call them mother for a long time.

If a family that wishes to adopt an adopted child has small children, then they must be prepared before the arrival of the adopted son or daughter. Without preparation, young children can become very jealous of a new family member. Much depends on the mother, on her ability to calm her children. If natural children have already reached adolescence, then they should be informed about the parents’ desire to take in another child.

They usually look forward to the arrival of a new family member. It is completely inappropriate to talk about the shortcomings of an adopted son or daughter in the presence of your children, while appreciating his imperfections with a sigh.

In relationships with adopted children, the same problems can arise as in relationships with natural children of one age or another. The development of some children proceeds relatively calmly, while others develop so rapidly that difficulties and problems constantly arise. Children taken into foster care, after overcoming the difficulties of mutual adaptation, as a rule, begin a joyful period of rapid development and the formation of emotional connections. It is advisable for a child under the age of three to be raised by his mother, since after all the experiences he needs to calm down and get along with his family. It is possible that his stay in the nursery will complicate or disrupt the important process of forming the relationship between mother and child. When the child fully adapts to the family, he can attend kindergarten. For many educators, this period brings about another critical moment: the child comes into contact with the children's team. For children who did not attend kindergarten, this critical moment occurs at the beginning of school, when the child is affected by the wider social environment. It is in the best interests of the children that parents need to work closely with kindergarten teachers and teachers. It is advisable to introduce them to the fate and previous development of the adopted child, ask them to pay a little more attention to him, adhering to an individual approach. If a child is being observed by a psychologist, then teachers, first of all the class teacher, must be informed about this, because the psychologist will also need the teacher’s information. In collaboration with the school doctor, they will take care of the child's further development.

In preschool age, children usually have fewer serious problems. Sometimes, due to a delay in speech development, children in a group of children encounter language difficulties because they cannot understand each other. We need to pay attention to this and correct it if possible.

Before entering school, children undergo a medical examination. If the doctor and psychologist who are monitoring the child, after an examination, advise sending him to school only after a year, then, of course, you should not resist this advice. It must be borne in mind that enrollment in school is sometimes postponed for various reasons, even for natural children who had incomparably better conditions for development. Such a decision will help level out the gap in the child’s general development and create conditions for building self-confidence. The child will then be able to master school material better without stress. The possibility of completely correcting a child’s pronunciation and diction before entering school should not be underestimated. Foster parents need to visit a speech therapist with their child before school.

Some children, before entering school, exhibit very specific signs of health and development that indicate the need for their education in a special school. However, sometimes they try to teach them in a regular school first and only then transfer them to a special school. When a child taken into a family experiences a similar situation, some parents, warned about this possibility even before the child was handed over to them, panic from disappointment. It `s naturally. All parents try to ensure that their child achieves as much as possible. However, what is more and what is better?

When a child is overloaded in a regular school without taking into account his physical and mental capabilities, then, despite all efforts, he will have low academic performance, he will be forced to repeat the second year, and therefore he will not experience the joy of learning, since he developed a negative attitude towards school and education in general. In a special school, the same child may become a good student without much effort, excel in manual labor, in physical exercise, or demonstrate his artistic abilities. Inclusion in the labor process of a student who has graduated from a completely special school is much easier than that of a student who dropped out of school in the 6th or 7th grade of a regular school.

After a child is enrolled in school (no matter which one), new concerns arise in the family. In some families, they are more attentive to their children’s academic performance, while others are more attentive to their behavior, since some children have problems with learning, while others have problems with behavior. Academic performance must be judged from the point of view of the child's abilities. It would be good for adoptive parents to talk about this with a psychologist, consult with a teacher, so that they know what the child is capable of. There is no need to be too pedantic when assessing the behavior of an adopted child. It is known that our own children present some “surprises” from time to time. It is important to form in a child a sense of responsibility, an honest attitude towards work, towards people, to cultivate such moral qualities as truthfulness, devotion, responsibility, which we strive to develop in children in our society.

It is necessary to set an educational goal in the form of specific tasks for the child in the everyday life of the foster family. Sometimes an angry parent, discussing with his adopted child some of his misconduct, in a fit of indignation makes a big mistake: he reproaches the child, reminding him that he cannot afford something, since the order in this house is not the same as in his home, that he now lives in a decent family, etc. A child can become so embittered against a parent who brings up his past that he commits a serious offense. In any case, parents are saved by calmness and prudence, thoughtfulness of the thoughts expressed, and the desire to help the child correct his mistakes.

Observing a child and stating his characteristics without taking into account previous living conditions, without the dynamics, quality of achievements and shortcomings in his development can lead to a serious mistake. Such imprisonment may forever deprive the child of the opportunity to enter a new family.

A psychologist's opinion should help people choose an environment for an orphaned child that would optimally help his development.

Applicants who wish to foster a child also undergo a psychological examination. However, many people are surprised and even feel insulted that they have to undergo a psychological examination. If a couple or a single person really wants to have a child in their family and are reasonable people, then they easily understand the importance and necessity of a psychological examination. If applicants abandon their plan to raise a child only because they do not want to undergo a psychological examination, then it is quite obvious that their need to have a child is not strong enough, and perhaps not sincere. In such a case, it will be much better if these people abandon their intention.

The tasks of a psychological examination include diagnosing the motives for the decision to take a child into the family, the relationship between spouses, finding out the consistency in their views, the balance of their marriage, the harmony of the family environment, etc. Clarity in such matters is an important prerequisite for the successful development of the child.

There are several stages in the formation of a foster family: the first stage is resolving issues directly related to the forming foster family. It is important to find not ideal people, but those who treat children kindly. It is important for adoptive parents to realize that they have time and emotional space for their adopted child.

At the first stage of forming adoptive families, it is necessary to talk with the own children of the future adoptive parents, find out their attitude towards the arrival of new family members in the family. It is important that such problems in the family are resolved: how parents expect to leave the child while they go to work, what he will do alone at home.

It is also important to discuss issues such as alcohol use in the family, as this may be a factor in the failure of adoptive parents to fulfill the most important family functions. Adoptive parents must learn or be able to recognize the child’s problems and find ways to solve these problems (they must understand what is behind the child’s problematic behavior). We must live with a positive attitude towards the adopted child and cooperation with him.

The next important stage in the formation of a foster family is the stage related to identifying (identifying and understanding) the problems of the adopted child and ways to solve them. It should be taken into account that many children in foster care come from “difficult” families and therefore carry their characteristics and their problems. Therefore, adoptive parents should be prepared for the fact that they will most likely have to first solve the long-standing problems of their adopted children and only then move on to the implementation of their educational tasks, which they defined for themselves even before the adoption of the child. Without this, the process of establishing a favorable psychological climate in the family and trusting relationships between new parents and adopted children will not be fruitful.

Adoptive parents can be married couples with or without children (no age limit, although it is desirable that they be able-bodied people), single-parent families, single people (women, men under 55), persons in an unregistered marriage. Depending on which family in its original form adopted the child, in addition to those discussed above, problems characteristic of these types of family organization may arise in the child-parent relationship. Therefore, adoptive parents should keep in mind that they will have to face a double burden of psychological difficulties in family relationships. In this regard, a problem arises that is relevant mainly for adoptive families - the problem of special training for adoptive parents.

In such training, two interrelated stages can be distinguished: before adoption and after they make the decision to adopt and implement this decision. Each of these stages is fundamentally different in the content of training for adoptive parents.

Training foster parents before they accept a child gives them time to reconsider the consequences of taking on the responsibility of raising someone else's children. Typically, the corresponding program focuses on the interaction of adoptive parents and official institutions, problems caused by the child’s feeling of isolation from his family of origin and associated emotional experiences, as well as communication with the child’s natural parents (if such an opportunity exists). This training helps adoptive parents decide for themselves whether they can cope with the difficult burden that they voluntarily place on themselves.

Training for adoptive parents after they have adopted someone else's child focuses mainly on issues of child development, methods of maintaining family discipline and behavior management, interaction skills and problems of deviant behavior. Such a different orientation of these two types of training for foster parents is explained by the fact that everyday life with someone else’s child leaves a big imprint on the entire family life. Foster parents need to understand the need for training and prioritize the information they can directly rely on in their daily practice. Among the problems that should be given special attention are the following:

• training parents to interact with children with emotional, physical or mental disabilities;
• mastering by parents the skills of relationships with children experiencing learning difficulties;
• assimilation of information and mastery of special skills about interaction with teenagers (especially those with previous convictions);
• acquiring the necessary skills to establish contact with young children;
• mastering the experience of interaction and providing the necessary psychological support to street children who have experienced cruel treatment by adults.

When organizing training for adoptive parents, one should keep in mind the fact that they may have different levels of education, different social and financial status. Some of them are certified specialists with permanent jobs, others have only secondary education and work that does not require high qualifications. Currently, most foster parents (at least one of them), in addition to raising other people's children, are engaged in some other type of activity. However, they should not forget that raising children should be considered as a type of professional activity that requires special training. Therefore, when training adoptive parents (as well as parents of relatives), they should be oriented to the fact that such training cannot be superficial and short-term and immediately give practical results. They will have to learn the parental profession all their lives, because the child grows and changes, and therefore the forms of interaction with him and the types of pedagogical influences must change. In addition, a foster parent, taking in someone else's child, must understand that he will simply need to share his experience with other interested parties, including social service workers. Adoptive parents, planning their activities in accordance with the needs of the child, must be able to work together with consultants, doctors, teachers and other specialists in order to learn how to resolve the problems that they will encounter in raising adopted children and eliminate the difficulties that naturally arise in any family.

In a new family;
- heredity;
- child's health.

Adaptation of an adopted child to a new family

An adopted child at almost any age has not the most rosy experience behind him. And even if you immediately surround him with maximum care and love, the emotional trauma experienced at first will manifest itself one way or another. This could be anxiety or sleep disorder, lack of appetite, non-standard reactions to what parents do. At the first stage, it is a mistake to believe that warmth, care, a cozy home and a variety of toys will immediately change the child. He often has questions about why he was abandoned, why he was abandoned, why no one cared about him or loved him before. You need to prepare for such problems in advance and, if necessary, provide the child with psychological support. There is no need to be scared if the child begins to withdraw or, conversely, to throw out accumulated emotions.

Sometimes a child may begin to reject his parents in a variety of ways: swearing, behaving badly, coming up with pranks that cause a negative reaction from adults. These problems are solvable, the main thing is to approach them correctly and, if necessary, consult a psychologist.

The opposite situation often occurs. A child who has not received a sufficient amount of love in the past tries to fill this gap and becomes very attached to those who care about him; these can be not only parents, but any person who shows attention and care to the child. In such a situation, the child has several objects of adoration, but in fact this leads to the fact that the child is not truly attached to anyone. He is passive and trusting, which is a certain kind of problem for establishing normal relationships and contacts with others and, first of all, with his parents.

In the process of upbringing, it happens that parents, not finding contact with the child, begin to blame not only themselves, but also the child for not appreciating them, not trying to improve relationships, and causing conflicts and quarrels. But in this case, parents simply forget that such behavior is simply protection on the part of the child, most often it is hardwired on a subconscious level for everything that the baby has experienced previously. In this case, there is no need to abandon the child (and this often happens), you need to consult with specialists and, with their help, resolve all problems. With the right approach, in a short period of time the child will change behavior and will not only be happy himself, but will also make his adoptive parents happy.

Heredity

Many adoptive parents are terrified of heredity, and this often becomes one of the problems in parenting. The fear of heredity appears for a reason, but because of many years of assertions that the apple does not fall far from the tree, and the child of an alcoholic, drug addict, or dysfunctional person will also not be able to become a good and full-fledged member of society. But such an opinion is a relic of the past; geneticists have repeatedly proven that heredity, although it influences personality development, is not dominant. Only upbringing can shape a child’s personality, and only upbringing will determine how he grows up.

There is no need to be afraid of heredity, there is no need to be afraid that the child’s parents have instilled something bad in him. First of all, you need to think about how to ensure that your approach to parenting does not provoke negative consequences.

Health

The health of an adopted child scares parents no less than heredity. The fears are justified, since often raising a child in an orphanage does not allow for close attention to his health, but this should not frighten future parents. The level of development of medicine is now so high that all existing health problems are easily solved. And diseases are often not so serious as to scare yourself with them. Moreover, there is a possibility that even the healthiest child sometimes develops health problems with age, but absolutely no one is immune from such a situation.

If you decide to take a very serious and responsible step, weigh all the pros and cons so as not to make a mistake and harm neither the child nor yourself. There will always be problems, but with the right approach they will be resolved almost instantly. When raising an adopted child, you need to think about every step and action, since only you will determine how the child will grow up and how he will treat you and others. In most cases, both children and parents are happy in adoptive families, and it is often impossible to assume that the child is not his own.

Video on the topic

When accepting an adopted child, a family may encounter various difficulties in raising them. How to deal with an adopted child?

Instructions

You should not demand gratitude from your child. Often parents of adopted children expect that the child will express this feeling towards them in every possible way, because the new parents warmed him up and gave him a chance for a better future. Children always feel grateful to the people who accepted them into a new family, but perhaps no one taught them how to show it correctly, or how to express feelings at all. Therefore, time, education, and the right approach will definitely change everything.

It happens that an adopted child in a new family feels lost, especially if there are other children in the family. He cannot understand what his place is in the family and what will happen to him next. Such children often behave badly. Parents should immediately pay attention to this and take action. Education should be carried out in such a way that the child does not have such feelings. Make him immediately feel like a full member of the family, a loved and needed person. If it is difficult for a child to adapt, you can contact social workers and psychologists.

After a child has moved from, you should not give him a lot of freedom. He was raised in quite strict conditions, so this is the norm for him. Of course, you immediately want to show the child a different life, surround him with care and love, pamper him a little, but be careful, such parental behavior can lead to permissiveness, and the child will become more difficult to control. So don't be afraid to be stricter with him. Only over time, gradually show more and more gentleness to the child.

Children from an orphanage can bring bad habits with them to their new family. For example, the ability to use obscene language. Don't immediately shout, punish, or beat out bad manners. Gradually, calmly explain and wean the child from using rude words, show by example how to behave correctly. Once in a different environment, children are able to quickly re-educate.

Don't expect your child to quickly become emotionally attached to you. Be patient, it may take a long time for this connection to occur. With good, correct treatment, the child will love you as his own parents and all the work, time spent, all the experiences will be fully rewarded.

Tip 3: What difficulties await adoptive parents?

A family that is unable to have a child sooner or later thinks about adoption. But an adopted child is not a toy or a test subject for an experiment. When planning to take a child from an orphanage, be prepared for some difficulties.

The stumbling block at the initial stage of adoption is often the collection of necessary documents. Many couples abandon their decision to adopt a child, not wanting to waste their time on paperwork.

Be patient and don't stop thinking about your goal. To adopt a child, you must confirm your legal capacity as a parent: fill out a form, submit a marriage certificate (preference is given to married couples rather than single parents), certificates of housing, work and stable income, absence of criminal record and serious illnesses.

One of the problems may be the form of acceptance of the child into the family. There are two forms: guardianship and adoption. If there is no official evidence of the absence of parents (decree on deprivation of parental rights, death certificate), then care for the child can be temporary - guardianship.

If documents are available, adoption is permitted, that is, the child becomes a full member of the family. Sometimes guardianship can turn into adoption if official information appears about the insolvency or death of the natural parents.

The main difficulties come during the period when the child grows and develops. Serious illnesses may be discovered that could not be detected during infancy. Think about whether you are ready to spend all your energy and finances if you discover health problems with your adopted child.

The child also shows his character and his own opinion. Noticing the bad habits of their adopted child, parents begin to think in horror: “Oh, he’s just like his drug-addicted mother!” etc. However, any habits can be eradicated if the child is raised correctly.

When adopting children over 2 years old, adaptation problems may arise. A child who has seen enough violence and scandals in his real family may be frightened by any rustle, change in voice intonation, etc. However, sincerely loving their true parents (whatever they may be), children sometimes cannot get used to calling strangers “mom” and “dad”. Do not demand unconditional recognition of you by parents immediately; this may take several months or even years.

Remember that repeated refusal and return can cause serious trauma to the child’s psyche. Your patience, love, care and readiness for the hardships of family life will become a strong foundation on which you will build a happy family together.

Sources:

• Remuneration for foster parents

The article is based on a clinical case. From the parents' story - the adopted child does not obey:

“Vasya was two years old when we adopted him. Now he is seven. He was a healthy, cheerful baby and we liked him right away. We have been trained in foster parenting. All was good. The problems started when he entered kindergarten. I didn’t want to go there, I threw tantrums and became stubborn. Then he began to steal other children's toys and bring them home. I hid these toys under the mattress. How embarrassing it was in front of the parents of these children!

They forced him to ask for forgiveness! They had to search him every time they picked him up from kindergarten. He didn’t obey no matter what they asked, he did everything the opposite. He even soiled his clothes on purpose. We talked to him in a good way, but he doesn't understand. They put me in a corner and sometimes punished me with a belt. They deprived me of a computer. He doesn’t care, he even started stealing and hiding food.

Now I'm in first grade. He stole money from the closet. I bought sweets with them and ate them. It took us a long time to find out where he had put the money; we had to beat the words out of him with a belt. We found chocolate wrappers and hid them behind the table. Then they believed that he spent it on sweets. He also steals from stores. He doesn’t want to study at school, is rude to the teacher, and shows aggression towards other children. The teacher found him and a boy from the senior class smoking a cigarette. He's only seven, and he's already smoking! And already a thief! What to do? We can't handle him!

Natural and adopted children - is there a difference? Why do problems arise in raising adopted children?

When a woman gives birth to her child, she does not know what it will be like; she does not choose either the gender or the mental characteristics of the baby. A child is born naturally as he is, and a woman has a maternal instinct towards him. This is a natural mechanism, it is necessary for the preservation of offspring in both animals and humans.

In the presence of maternal instinct, the life of the baby is assessed by the mother as a priority over her own life. The mother takes care of the child, invests the best in him and unconsciously does not expect any return from him. They love their own child, no matter what he is and no matter what he has done.

When adopting, people can choose the child themselves. When people adopt, they use their own minds and preferences. They choose the one they like. Those who are not liked are not taken, and if they are adopted, it is with the goal of making him into someone who would be liked. There is no maternal instinct towards adopted children. Adoptive parents consciously do everything for the baby, but something may not go the way they want. If, in the presence of maternal instinct, a mother is naturally aimed by nature at giving the child everything she has, even her own life, then a different attitude is formed towards adopted children.

During adoption, the natural mechanism of the child’s priority over the parents does not work. Nature planned everything correctly, because the future is children who must survive and get the best so that the human species continues to exist and develop. Therefore, the mother is ready to give her life for her child. Adoptive parents act differently.

The best intentions can push people out of an orphanage. Some cannot give birth to their own child and take them into the family to love them as if they were their own. So that there is someone to pass on the family business and inheritance to. Others want to give a destitute, abandoned child a home out of compassion. One way or another, people act out of their desire, that is, out of their unconscious egoistic desire, which they do not realize. This means that they perform an action with the expectation of return, that is, receipt. Give to receive in return. There is no unconscious regulation between adopted children and parents, as happens with a natural child through the maternal instinct. Adoptive parents are guided by their own minds, which can be wrong.

Your own children can delight you with their achievements - excellent studies, obedience, help, success in sports. But they may not please, but on the contrary, upset. Nevertheless, they remain their own, and even if the son is a young thief and criminal, the mother will protect him and justify him.

We expect results from an adopted child. This is an internal attitude and it is unconscious. It turns out an exchange: “I’m for you, and you for me.” If the adopted child does not live up to expectations and behaves badly, then the parents do not get what they want unconsciously. Not receiving the desired obedience and development of the adopted child, parents punish him in a way that they would not do with their own children. The unconscious expectation of a return from the adopted baby makes relationships with him very difficult. That is why so many problems arise in raising adopted children - they can start stealing, show aggression, and express protest in different ways. There are often cases when parents return their child back to the orphanage because they could not cope with him.

Seven-year-old Vasya was beaten, humiliated in front of the public, and punished. Parents did this involuntarily, because their own children are often punished and beaten. In this same case, the child became so uncontrollable that the parents turned to a psychiatrist for help.

How to solve the psychological problems of raising an adopted child in this family?

Any child, natural or adopted, needs a sense of security and safety, and Vasya is no exception. This is necessary for the development of his psyche. The baby unconsciously feels that his parents, especially his mother, preserve his life and health, including mental balance. This means that he can develop calmly and subsequently begin to preserve himself independently when he mentally matures for puberty.

The psyche develops until adolescence, and before this time the child manifests himself as not yet mature, not an adult. You can’t ask him like an adult. As they did with Vasya - “steals.” He didn't steal. Vasya, being deprived of a sense of security and safety, was forced to preserve himself, that is, mentally he had to behave like an adult with an immature psyche.

This is how mental development delays occur - both in adopted and natural children. The difference is that the adopted child does not initially receive a sense of security and safety based on maternal instinct. If a native child loses security and safety when he is shouted at, beaten, humiliated, then the same actions of his adopted Vasya aggravated his developmental delays more and more. Therefore, improper upbringing of adopted children, ignorance of the psychological nuances and peculiarities of raising adopted children can lead a family to disastrous consequences.

There will be no maternal instinct towards an adopted child. But it is possible to create an emotional connection with him. This is sensual, confidential communication. You can start by reading bedtime stories.

An emotional connection will allow you to create and maintain a strong relationship with your child for life. And reading bedtime stories and reading together as a family is the education of feelings, the key to a child’s future ability to perceive the world as beautiful, to see the beauty of another person’s soul, and to create happy couple relationships.

The tradition of a common family table strengthens relationships. When people enjoy food together and at the same time share their sensory experiences about something, it brings them even closer together. Joint dinners should be in all families, and not just those where a foster child is being raised.

In order to properly raise an adopted child, as well as in order to avoid problems in raising both adopted and natural children, it is necessary to know the characteristics of their psyche. The baby is born with already given abilities. According to the system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan, the psyche consists of parts (vectors), there are eight of them in total. This means that the child already has several innate vectors out of eight that make up his psyche. Each vector is endowed with its own special properties and talents.

They are in their infancy and need to be developed. In the process of development, the child himself, through his behavior, shows where upbringing mistakes are made. Vasya did this many times. Theft is a sign that a child is physically punished, who is able to develop from a little thief into a talented engineer, manager, and representative of the law.

A sense of security and safety, emotional connection, family traditions, correct development according to innate properties (vectors) will help solve problems in raising not only Vasya’s adopted child, but also his own child.

How to avoid problems when adopting a child and raising him in a foster family?

First of all, it is necessary to realize that by adopting a child, we take responsibility for his life. He needs to feel. When parents stand over him like strict censors, ready at any next moment to punish him for not living up to what was invested in him, this is the path to parenting problems and developmental delays in the adopted child.

The question arises: how to choose a child for adoption? One from which parents have nothing to gain, but can only invest in - they can adopt. We are talking about physically disabled people. Those children who cannot please us with achievements in anything, even grandchildren. Thus, adoptive parents deliberately put themselves in a situation where they will only invest in the development of the child and will not expect anything in return. Unconsciously it will work and it is the right choice. Mentally ill children cannot be adopted - they can be patronized, but not taken into the family.

When a child of a deceased relative is adopted, the mechanism of giving to the child and giving priority to the child over the parents also comes into play. Such a child is unconsciously perceived as one of our own; he can and should be adopted.

To learn more about raising children according to their innate abilities, start studying system-vector psychology by Yuri Burlan. Register for June 16, 2018