What's wrong with people ? How can an American family in Shelbyville, TN

[secondwind]

just put a small boy on an airplane back to Russia with just a NOTE?

It seems that they had just adopted him a few months ago, and they said he "was violent", etc....the boy says his adoptive mother pulled his hair "almost every day".....

WHAT'S WRONG WITH PEOPLE?

Russia is putting a halt to American adoptions because of this incident, until they investigate the situation.

[baldguy]

1. Bring the kid back, ship the "parents" to Russia.

[rrneck]

12. +1

:rofl:

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JCMach1]

3. Russian official who interviews the boy were indicating that the grandmother may have abused

the boy... Hair pulling and diety knows what... This was on Al Jazeera.

[Mopar151]

4. Returns are not autorized without an R/A number.

Please contact Customer Service.

Jesus wept! Its a child, not a fucking toaster! There has to be more to it than this - I bet nobody comes out looking good.

[jobycom]

5. They didn't want a child, they wanted a pet.

The damned thing barked all night, so they dumped him on the roadside.

[Honeycombe8]

6. I'll take heat for this, but I sort of understand the adoptive mother's position.

I don't defend what she did. But to be fair, they didn't ship him back totally alone. They arranged for a stewardess to watch over him during the flight, the grandma took him to the flight and turned him over to the stewardess' care, and someone was waiting for him in Russia when his plane arrived (they had paid someone to pick him up).

What's not being talked about much is something I read in an article about the adoption. The adoptive mother had taken care to inquire about the child's mental health, behavior, etc. The adoptive family is convinced that the adoptive agency actively lied to them about these things. That he's obviously had serious, violent behavior problems for some time that the agency HAD to have known about, but lied to the adoptive family about.

So in that sense, I understand that if a family doesn't feel it's in a position to handle such a case (the child expressed murderous intentions), it has little recourse.

If an agency lies to a couple about a child, does that mean the adoptive family must then keep the child that they would not wanted, if the agency had told them the truth?

And they can't keep a violent child in the home. That's not an option. So they could've put him in an orphanage here in the U.S., I guess.

It's a dilemma. The action they took to resolve it...I'm not sure that was the way to go. But I'm not sure there were any other options that they wouldn've have been villified over if they had done that.

I also wonder, though, how much time they had spent with the child before adoption. He wasn't an infant, so they should've been able to detect something wrong in his behavior, I would think. It's risky adopting from another country. I wonder why they did. Was the mother single and unable to adopt here in the U.S.? What a mess.

[JoDog]

7. Do you have a link to that article?

I am interested in reading it. My old newsie sense is tingling. There has got to be more to this story. It really does sound like the action of a woman at the end of her wits.

[Honeycombe8]

11. It's all over the place. I just looked and found links to videos, but was too ...

pressed for time to wait thru the ads to look at the videos.

But that's the adoptive family's official position: the boy has mental problems and is violent and wants to kill people, and the Russian agency had lied to them about the boy's mental health and/or behavior.

Who knows what the truth is. Maybe the boy is psychotic and violent, but maybe not. But clearly the adoption didn't work out, so it's best that the boy was gotten out of that home, whatever the situation.

I think the boy flying on his own is no big deal. Children fly alone on planes a lot. But just returning him like you'd return a package to Wal-Mart isn't right, esp. without at least trying to call Russian or American authorities about the situation. Of course, if she had made calls, the boy likely would've been stopped at the plane and not allowed to be sent back to Russia.

The Russians say there's nothing wrong with the boy's mental health, that the adoptive mother's story isn't true. But....this is the country that "approved" her as an adoptive mother. So they didn't do a very good examination of her qualifications to be an adoptive mother. So that tends to make me think that the adoptive mother's story IS true...that they were trying to get rid of the boy.

[Lavender Brown]

8. The arrangements that were made, I think, are part of what make the story so sick

and really show the "mother's" lack of intelligence. The man who picked the child up was just a stranger she contacted online. There was no way to know he would be trustworthy... he could have been a monster.

[Brickbat]

9. Having worked at an organization that facilitated Russian adoptions, and having seen the condition

some of these children are in, I understand the woman's desperation but condemn her actions. Beyond a certain age, you can't love a child so hard he grows out of attachment reactive disorder. You need lots of support, an extremely regimented daily life, and the strength to deal with a lot of backsliding. I'm not one to give up on kids, but children from these kinds of situations need a lot more than the vast majority of adoptive parents can give them, and the pain and devastation these families go through -- including the children -- is not something I'd wish on anyone.

[Honeycombe8]

10. Ah. It sounds, then, like the adoptive family wasn't prepared to take on...

an older child from this sort of situation, and wasn't advised of the risks and the sacrifices that would be required.

I'm wondering if it was just a quickie adopt-over-there a good lookin' kid 'cause I can't afford one from here, and/or don't want to be "examined" and go through the long wait required here.

I now see the need for an "examination" by an agency of the qualification to be an adoptive family, and the need to be financially stable.

What a mess.

I feel for the child, though. It's not his fault, whether he's damaged or violent, or not. And now he's been rejected outright at an age where he'll remember it. Nothing good came from that adoption.

[gmoney]

13. A US orphanage wouldn't be much better

The language and cultural problems alone would tax the resources of a US orphanage, let alone if he's a violent kid. His chances for adoption here would be nearly nil, and the orphanage might not take him either. So, do they just abandon him on the orphanage doorstep in the middle of the night, handcuffed to the porch railing? At least sending him "home" he'd be in familiar surroundings and would know the language.