To think this mother needs to accept a proportion of blame for the way her dd's turned out?

[Memoo]

The father does too of course but he isn't the one being interviewed.

I actually felt quite angry reading this article and sad for the dd's who were dumped back into care. The poor girls had shit upbringings. It's no wonder they grew up angry and violent. And the stupid mother seems intent to blame everyone but herself.

Sorry daily fail link

That is lovely beautiful

MrsDV has it- I know 3yos that are already too damaged to be adopted, and will stay in care the whole of their childhoods.

A huge percentage of adoptions eventually break down, I believe it's as high as 40%.

The adoptions I know that have broken down are mainly the result of parents unable to deal with seriously disturbed children, depsite support throughout the adoption.1 is imprisoned for murder (at age 16), others have multiple children of their own in care now, or imrpisoned for robbery, assault etc.

Adoption is sadly not always the answer.

It's always impossible to tell how much of a story like this is "spin" from the DM journalist, and how much is true.

However I'm shocked that 1:5 adoptions fail, and I think more resources need to be put into supporting the adoptive families who struggle, instead of leaving them to sink or swim.

It appears that both children - the oldest in particular, had special needs which were never met. Whether these were innate, or as a result of early neglect doesn't matter really. We certainly can't tell from reading a newspaper article. What does matter is that nothing was done about it.

I've had a lot of dealings with adopted children, I understand the rate of adoption breakdown to be well over half, although some of these might not be "official".

This poor woman has dedicated her life to doing everything she could for two children who were already preprogrammed to self distruct when she met them. I'm not talking aboiut genes, I'm talking about attatchment disorder. Some people recover, some don't but unfortunatly, so little is understood about helping children with this condition that the profesional help and guiidance these parents were looking for in all probability does not exist, and will not exist any time in the next few decades, if ever.

This is a very importent story, because it is so common. It highlights the need we have as a society to urgently address the plight of abused and neglected children.

Right at the start of this story it mentions that the children had already been through several foster homes, that is a recipe for catastrophe for a start, and should not happen.

I am very interested in "concurent planning": when prospective parents train as fosterers and adopters, then take a child immediatly that child is removed from the parents, and will adopt the child if adoption is eventually judged to be the best option, or will return the child to the parents if not.

Childrens lives ae disrupted far else, and they have a far better chance to develop more normally.

Unfortunatly the flip side is that foster carers and their families can be put in the heartbreaking situation of loving and raising a child as iftheir own, for years, evenualy to have to pass him or her back.

One memory I have as a teenager, is when I went around to a friend's house. Friend's family had fostered a lovely little girl whom they hoped to adopt. After four years she was taken away from them. My friend was in floods of tears, her mother was wailing. I had never in my life to that point seen someone wailing. It was horrendous and heartbreaking. There are no easy solutions.

What I think is incredibly sad is that the couple obviously weren't short of a bob or two, for the love of God, why didn't they use their own cash to pay for psychologists and therapy? :(

Alpine pony, perhaps they did. I don't think it would have made the slightest difference

The message that comes to me out of this is that when parents are adopting children who have clearly been through horrific early months/years, those parents are going to need lots of medical / psychiatric / educational help for those children. Perhaps it's not available, perhaps this couple couldn't access it, but sounds like it was definitely required and not given.

With judgey pants firmly on, I d think there are some pointers in this article that suggest the adoptive parents did things in a way I disagree with - leaving a 14 year old in Spain for two years? Naughty chair for hours? Inconsistent parenting From mother and father.

Who knows how much, if at all, any if that had an impact.

Poor woman. She's has a really shit life. No one wants to lose their partner or have their children end up in prison.

Handmini true - and that was after 2 stillborns, 5 miscarriages and 2 ectopics.... some people really get everyone elses' share of bad luck. Can we really judge her? I don't think so. I think she gave it a bloody good shot. Lots of factors in this complicated mess. Maybe she just thought sharing her story would help someone - like many of us do on here.

my reply is based on a daily mail article, and we all know how much they edit what people say to make it what they want... so i am not sure how much of what they say is actually true to life

but a couple of things stood out to me.
it seems like the mother thought that giving them a big house, tons of toys, and loads of "stuff" would somehow fix them.

and this:
"?John was old-fashioned. He?d been educated privately and believed sterner discipline was the key, such as sitting on a naughty chair for long periods. But Maryann didn?t care ? she could sit there for hours.
?I believed hugging her when she had a tantrum was the answer. Nothing worked, but discussing what to do for the best caused endless heated rows between us"

having 2 parents with polar opposite opinions on discipline is going to confuse even the most well-balanced child.
we have a father forcing a small child to sit on a naughty chair for hours and a mother giving her a hug for the same behaviour.

It seems clear from what it says about her behaviour as a young child that there were underlying issues and quite possibly SN.

I think the parents were naive, but I do think the family were let down by the school, by their GP and other HCP's and by social services, all of whom had the opportunity to step in early and say "this isn't normal" and to give help, but who just didn't give them what they needed.

it's incredibly sad

A lack of stable adult in the earliest days can create an attachment disorder. Secure attachments play a huge role in the development of the ability to empathise. Lack of empathy can make a person quite dangerous.

Also young children who experience extreme trauma learn to dissociate in order to protect themselves. Dissociated emotional states can prevent empathy.

One of the biggest problems I see in social care is the amount of distress children go through before being removed, and the length of time the adoption process takes. I know that doing everything to enable children to live a safe and happy life in their birth family home is for the best, but so much damage can be done. And I know that there is so much to take into account during the adoption process (position of birth family, legal processes, matching adopters) but in that period of time secure attachments are compromised.
No easy solutions :(

what is really bad imo in both the DM bit and on here
is how little mention is made of the victim of the girls appalling crime.
I wonder how her family feel reading that report

OP, YAB so U it's making me angry

I hate the DM spin on the article - the implication that a lovely middle class lifestyle will fix all, no real mention of the moves in foster care, and the impact of neglect, abuse and multiple carers on a childs brain. And sadly, the damage caused by that trauma can become irreversible very very quickly.

But there was one clear message at least - support is lacking. Many adopted children need lots of professional help, but the funding for it is lacking, and importantly, understanding is very limited. People still have this idea that if a child can't remember being moved/neglected/abused, then it's all fine. Not true in the slightest. People think that reward charts or the naughty chair or other simple behaviour modification techniques will on their own have any impact on a child with complex emotional problems. That came across strongly in the article, and things haven't changed at all in some areas. There is such a postcode lottery as to whether parents will be supported well or not by SS and CAMHS teams, added to the problems school can cause.

She didn't dump the girls in care. Do people (looking at you OP) seriously think it was just a case of the daughter shouting and being a bit rude and staying out late too often, and getting into a few fights??? The adoption of my eldest DD nearly did disrupt, mainly because of lack of support, but believe me, the behaviour of such traumatised children can be extreme, and more than most parents can hope to cope with (including the OP). Sometimes children need more than a home life, and parents can't be expected to cope with everything a child could throw at them.

I do wish the mother had not talked to the DM. There are much better, less sensationalist, and more informative ways of talking about these issues

It just strikes me that parenting a child with this kind of start in life is not at all akin to parenting a child who has not. A whole host of support should be put in place, especially for couples with no experience of childcare

Lilka - me too. The DM always has this sneery "5 bed-house" way of talking (they are obsessed with property!)

2shoes - do you really think we don't care about that crime? We are talking about how you prevent that.

Agree with Lilka.

What is your motivation for linking the article, Memoo? Do you feel good now that you can sneer over a tabloid story? Beyond unreasonable but, however you like to get your 'kicks', I guess.

The daughter will only be around 25 when she is released,so lets hope that a lot of work is done with her in that time.

I would also like to know how this mother is 'stupid' and 'to blame'

I think she is stupid to do an interview with the DM.

I feel despertely sorry for all involved. Memoo I wouldn't gloat and blame the mother too much, none of us knows what the future holds for any of our dc's. These dc's had the odds stacked against them from the start.

It's a terribly sad story. Those girls were horrendously damaged at such a young age and the couple clearly weren't equipped to deal with them.

I've worked with some children in care and it can be so hard to repair the damage that is caused by the bad parenting and then the trauma of them leaving their families. It also doesn't help that some professionals think that as they are only young they don't need support or counselling. Then they wonder why they have out of control teens on their hands.

A lot of damage can occur in the early days.....I know of a boy who was adopted at 18 months, his mum was a drug addict who would water down his powdered milk, because she'd then be able to sell the unused tins. He was taken into care when he was still a very young baby.

I don't think it's a coincidence that 13 years on he has issues with hoarding food and binging.

Shit article tho......yabu btw.

MrsShitty you have no clue what your talking about I am a foster carer and I can assure you suffering systematic abuse whilest your at the peak of your development is no joke the abuse almost gets hard wired into

Often no matter how much these children are loved or cared for they will never recover

The children don't go straight from home to adoption so sadly many of these children are still having contact with their abusive parents whilest in foster care in which the parents sometimes use this period to futher damage their children.

Also the process o being separated for a foster carer whom they might have lived with for years often is a issue with in it's self

I had A foster child with me for 3 years before she went for adoption she thought we were her parents for gods sake

She didn't understand why we couldn't keep her already suffering form attachment disorder form the birth parents

Often these children are suffering for post traumatic stress disorder

I seen children who are two able to mimic the rolling of a splif

she should not of went to the papers putting of those thinking of opening up their homes and almost placing the blame of her marrige collapse on the girls

I think she may have gone into this blinkered she mentioned behaviour at the foster carers that type of behaviour can be pretty standared with children in care

I had to deal with spitting
Children Pooing and hiding it Around the house
All sorts

As a carer I am more worried when a child shows no signs of truma when they have been exposed to abuse

A child that is bubbly, obendant and well behaved after being sexually abuse or neglected is far more troubling that a child that acts out