I read a very disturbing Newsweek article called When Adoption Goes Wrong. I wrestled with whether to write about it but concluded that this is information that hopeful adoptive parents need to know about to protect themselves.

The article begins with a story about an adoptive mother who beat her adoptive two-year-old child to death. (Can you see why I hesitated to write about this?) While there is no justification for what this adoptive mother did, hopeful adoptive parents can benefit from reading her story so they can avoid being put through the stress that drove this woman to doing such a horrific act.

Peggy Hilt and her husband adopted a child from the Ukraine. A couple of years later, they decided to adopt two more children from Russia. They chose a sibling group that became unavailable, but they were offered two girls who were close in age, a lively 18-month-old and a quiet and withdrawn 9-month-old named Nina. While they were encouraged to spend lots of time with the older child, they only saw Nina once before the adoption.

When the couple returned to adopt the girls, they were told that the older child was now unavailable, but they could move forward with adopting Nina, who is the child the adoptive mother later killed. Officials insisted that the couple sign papers stating they had spent much more time with Nina than they had. Even though the couple felt uneasy about the way the adoption transpired, they figured they could love any child and ignored the warning signs.

Nina exhibited multiple behaviors that would fit right in on Nancy's Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) blog. After two years of Nina having violent tantrums, being aggressive with her older adopted sibling, and repeatedly damaging property, Peggy Hilt snapped when Nina smeared feces on the walls and furniture. Of course, beating the child to death was way out of control and out of proportion to the "crime." That being said, much could have been done to prevent this tragedy from occurring in the first place.

Hopeful adoptive parents need to listen to that voice that tells them that something is not right. They also need to be educated about the risks of RAD when adopting an older child, even if the older child is only 9 months old. If Peggy Hilt had been educated about RAD, she could have gotten Nina help and prevented this tragedy.

The article shares other stories that do not have the same tragic ending and provides a list of warning signs that indicate that professional assistance might be needed. Before you adopt a child who has lived anywhere before joining your home, do your homework about the warning signs of RAD. You cannot "love these children to health." Children with RAD much choose to heal. If they do not, then you have a very bumpy road ahead of you.

Photo Credit: Lynda Bernhardt