Chapter 7

A recent survey by the NSPCC revealed that one in five children has experienced serious physical or sexual abuse or severe physical or emotional neglect at some point in their short lives.3

These are the children for whom your nightmares have been a reality. The horror of what has happened to them will probably haunt them in some way for the rest of their lives, however much care and love their adoptive and foster carers give them.

They are the innocent victims of evil behaviour. Their past is often so deeply buried in their subconscious that they don’t understand why certain everyday events, sounds and words can trigger panic and make them shiver with fear. One foster mother of an abused child recounted how her child screamed every time she turned on the Hoover.

Though desperately in need of understanding, appropriate love and care, abused children often find it hard to accept love and respond appropriately to it. Those who were supposed to love them most and teach them how to love were also those who abused them.

‘Caring for children who have been sexually abused can be a daunting task for the most committed carer. Because of their horrendous previous experiences some of their behaviour can be so extreme that placement can disrupt at an almost alarming rate,’ said the director of a residential project caring for grossly sexually abused children. Mistrust of almost everyone, a need to feel in control and an eerie watchfulness can dominate their behaviour.

These children need very careful handling. House rules must be clear, but care intuitive. An old-fashioned bear hug from dad is probably off the agenda permanently. ‘They have to be shown how to love appropriately and to understand what love is,’ said one seasoned adopter.

Many adopters take on an emotionally, sexually or physically abused child without realizing the depths of what they have been through. Social workers often don’t know the full horror of what they have been through. It’s like a time bomb waiting to go off. And at an unlikely moment, perhaps when a child is suddenly feeling secure, the horrifying truth of their past comes tumbling out.

There is no universal remedy. Some need to regress to their earliest childhood days which passed them by in a blur of abuse; others don’t. A combination of personal traits and circumstances makes each child unique in his or her ability to cope and come to terms with their past. However, recent research published in the Journal for Abnormal Psychology shows that even the most resilient child will remain vulnerable throughout their lives if they were severely abused as a child, even if they are taken out of their problematic environment and raised in a loving, caring family.4

A lot of support and understanding for the child and for the adopter is needed. Adopters of these children need counselling for themselves as they try to come to terms with the terrible truth of their child’s past.

To adopt an abused child, a family needs a double dose of emotional strength and determination. But the rewards are enormous. One adopter of an abused child who was ‘frozen’ (she flinched if anyone touched her and she touched no one) remembers the sudden breakthrough. ‘Something had really upset me and I was standing in the kitchen shedding a few tears when she came up to me, quite spontaneously, and put her arms around me and she gave me a cuddle. I knew then that we would win.’

I do not regret adopting Robbie. OK, it hasn’t quite turned out the way I hoped it might, but he’s my son. Some people have children with disabilities, or children who suffer from terrible illnesses. We have a child full of trauma. But also a child who’s capable of loving, most importantly, and many other wonderful things. I love him more than words could ever communicate.

We have a lot of work ahead of us. But it’ll all be worth it if Robbie learns to make and keep friends, is able to hold a job (I frankly don’t mind if he gets a PhD or stacks shelves in a supermarket as long as he’s happy), manages and keeps a relationship that is not abusive and eventually has children who won’t get hurt, therefore breaking the circle of violence that’s been going through his family for generations. For that he’ll have to learn to trust others, to love himself and let go of the past. We’ll be there for him as long as he allows us to. We’re not giving up.

When Jane’s daughter Louise was struggling at school with a new teacher who had no idea of her abusive background, Jane wrote the teacher a letter from the viewpoint of her daughter. This is an extract.

I can’t remember much but I do remember I had an older brother and sister. They played with me and I miss them. Don’t know what happened to them? Are they OK? Are they dead? Are they still with Mum? Maybe they weren’t bad like me?

There was shouting, I don’t like loud noise. It means hurt is going to happen. I don’t like it, but I don’t realize that it’s not supposed to happen. I’m often hungry, sometimes we children are left alone. The neighbours called social services once. They told Mum and Dad things had to be different. Nothing really changed.

Mum had another baby, a little girl. Does that mean I am not Dad’s princess anymore? Will he touch her now instead of me? Shouting, hurting, touching, hurting.

We all go to visit my granddad, Dad says he’s taking me and my little brother to the shop for sweets. We drive a long, long way. There is no shop. From now on there is no mum. That was the last time I ever saw her. From now on there are no older brother and sister. That was the last time I ever saw them. What about my baby sister? …

I am four years old. I think I am bad inside but I don’t tell anyone. Now things are different. I really am Daddy’s little princess. I don’t have to go to nursery, I stay with Dad, we watch programmes together, we sleep together. He seems to like it when I dance for him. He smiles and holds me. I need to make sure to keep him happy because otherwise he might go too.

Sometimes we are hungry and cold but we have worked out how to climb out the window and ask the neighbours for food. Sometimes the way my dad shows me I’m special hurts me inside, underneath. I go to hospital a few times because I have pain underneath and when I wee. I don’t tell about what Dad does.

Dad brought my little sister back today. Where was she? She is funny! She sleeps with the dogs sometimes, she likes that. She’s not Dad’s special little princess like me.

Last night a lady got us out of bed and put us in her car. She was kind, she gave us blankets. She had yellow hair. I didn’t know then that I would never see my dad again. Now I know I had stuff, my toys, not many but they were mine, my clothes, they may be dirty and not fit well but they were mine, my bed, my house, my dogs, my dad… All gone forever… I decide from now on I don’t want stuff, what’s the point?

They take me to a house with other children but they don’t leave our little sister with us. Now I’ve lost her too. Once Mum finds out she’ll get us, won’t she? I scream, I cry. Nice people, nice to us, only because they don’t know yet that I am bad. I watch their faces waiting… Waiting for them to see I’m bad… Waiting for them to shout and hurt… I try to make the grown-up man (foster dad they say) like me, maybe I can be his special princess? I don’t mind if it hurts a bit… But he looks worried and cross when I dance for him or try to touch him… I don’t understand… I must be really bad…

There is so much food. A few times I have eaten till I was actually sick. I try my best to learn things like reading and stuff but I can’t really because watching keeps me very busy, and I have learnt that watching is the most important thing. I watch faces so that I can work out if I am doing OK and they will let me stay, I watch conversations so that I won’t get any nasty surprises, I will know before the car comes to get me, I watch for the day when the hitting starts, I watch the food, I don’t want to be hungry again. I watch, I watch, watch, watch… I watch for my dad to come and get me.

My teacher doesn’t know about me, I think my teacher knows I am bad and might tell my mum. She thinks that it’s kind to pretend I am just like everyone else. I may appear that way to her but that’s because I am trying hard to. She likes the pretend me, this makes me sure that the real me is bad. She doesn’t get that I am different, different because, as I said before, I know stuff, stuff about hurting, stuff about losing, and stuff, a lot of stuff, about watching.

My son Ben is an emotionally vulnerable child and would like to be spoilt. He wants the best and latest mobile phone. He wants the latest Xbox. He wants the freedom to go to the street corner and ‘hang out’ with his mates. He wants the freedom to come and go as he pleases.

However, because we don’t allow it we are mean parents. We are too hard. We are the strictest parents in class because we treat him like the much younger child he really is emotionally. We do not let him roam the streets like some of his peers. We do not even let him walk into town to buy a magazine.

I know my son has suffered terrible hardships so I would love to indulge him. I often feel that my son has this desperate desire for things and for love that will never be satisfied. He seems to carry around a black hole, and however much love or however many things I give him, it will all just be swallowed whole. It doesn’t even touch the sides. This has made me realize that just loving him isn’t enough. He really does need structure as well as nurture.

The fights over freedom and responsibility are the hardest. He is a good actor and even his head teacher has said, ‘He can look after himself.’ Unfortunately, he thinks he is able to cope too. Well, we know him better and we know he is very vulnerable child. He just hides it well, sometimes very well. But all the major issues we have had at school have been at playtime – basically unstructured time. He finds it difficult to understand social situations, to regulate and to control himself, yet he desperately needs to control everyone else.

Sending Ben out to play on a street corner for ten minutes would be crazy, let alone for an hour. We tell him he will be able to one day but he is not strong enough yet. We have given him golden rules for when he is out in social situations like: don’t try to take control and if anyone gets upset let them have time out (including himself). We also tell him if he feels upset or angry to just come and find us and hold our hand until we are ready to give him our full attention. He is now brilliant at coping with this. So we do see light at the end of the tunnel.

A couple of weeks ago our nine-year-old adopted daughter Lily was in the middle of a fairly run-of-the-mill tantrum when my husband (feeling exasperated) said to her, ‘How old are you?’ I replied, ‘She’s three at the moment,’ as I led her firmly to the sofa for some ‘time in’ with me (as opposed to ‘time out’ when a child is left on their own).

This set me to thinking about all the behaviours our children exhibit that are utterly confusing given their chronological age but which can give us an insight into their developmental age, or at least give us a clue about what developmental stage they might be lacking.

Many adoptive parents complain of crazy lies and incredible stories. One of the problems is that when an older child is doing this, because they are at the wrong developmental stage, adults think they must be telling the truth. My daughter told her teacher that I was going to adopt a new baby called Lil and showed her a photo she had got from the internet and gave her a whole image history. Her teacher was astounded when she congratulated me and I revealed it to be a fabrication. I reminded her that, although she is nearly ten, developmentally and intellectually my daughter is pre-cognitive (has not developed reasoning skills) and is simply displaying normal traits for her developmental age. Although the school knew this, they had not considered its social and emotional impact.

Fact or fiction can be very blurred for children at this stage as they believe what they see in a very literal sense. For example, having watched her favourite Disney film, my daughter said how she likes Labrador puppies. I agreed with her before saying gently that she did know that they cannot really talk, didn’t she? ‘Oh yes,’ she said. Then added, ‘But those ones can!’

Her logical thinking function has not yet developed, even though at nine you would expect this to have happened.

From the moment my son Charlie started school he found it difficult to stay out of trouble. Looking back, I believe it was his inability to self-regulate his emotions that led to the kind of behaviour and outbursts which don’t go down well in a classroom environment. His overreactions could disrupt a whole lesson, classroom and on occasion the whole school.

I can remember one day going into the cloakroom with him to try to help him deal with the transition from home to class without incident. As I looked on, my XL son had accidentally knocked two XS girls out of the way and taken off his coat in such a way that his arm clipped another child around the head. Said child then ran off complaining my son had hit him. This all happened in the space of 15 seconds. I despaired for the rest of his day and how these innocent-enough actions could escalate from him feeling misjudged and angry to all-out rages. There is not a malicious bone in his body, yet he always seemed to be upsetting someone or getting upset himself.

Since those early, bewildering days, I’ve done lots of reading and attended training events trying to decipher the messages contained in my son’s behaviour. One central factor stemming from his early losses, neglect and abuse was the missed opportunity to learn how to self-regulate himself. This is something we all learn to do and are shown by an attentive and responsive carer, usually Mum! When you’ve missed this nurturing part of babyhood, it can take some time to learn how to deal with feelings and needs that overwhelm you. In fact, it explained so much about why my son felt it was the end of the world if he was told he might have to wait to do something.

When you are able to regulate yourself, much of it takes place without you even knowing. For example, our brains are continually assessing our body’s needs, setting off a stress alarm when it senses something is wrong such as low blood sugar, a need for a drink or a threat that needs you to move away. When we eat a sugary snack, reach for a glass of water or run away from danger, we are in effect self-regulating. Our self-regulation matures as we grow, but if as a young child you were not helped to self-regulate, you don’t learn how to cope with stressful situations.

In a healthy mother–baby relationship, a child’s cries signal that they are thirsty or hungry. They are met by a responsive adult attuned to meet their needs. This cycle happens over and over many thousands of times, helping to move the child from external regulation to self-regulation. Child psychiatrist Dr Bruce Perry says, ‘When a child’s capacity for self-regulation does not develop normally, he will be at risk of many problems – from persistent tantrums to impulsive behaviours to difficulty regulating sleep and diet.’

I learned quickly not to make a promise unless I could keep it. Unfortunately, as you know, this doesn’t always happen in the wider world when we are let down by others. The ensuing tantrums were difficult to deal with and seemed like a ridiculous overreaction to outsiders.

You have probably heard therapists recommend ‘time in’ for children who have experienced early abuse and neglect. This again is closely linked with the child’s lack of self-regulatory skills. A time out may be good for a child who has grown up in one safe, secure and consistent home. A time out for a child who has experienced moves and feels unsafe and insecure and cannot regulate their reaction can result in all kinds of feelings of rejection and abandonment.

The few occasions I sent my son to his room, he took it as a chance not to calm down but as a chance to destroy his toys, write on the walls or bang his head on the wall. He had no idea how to deal with the big feelings inside him.

By keeping a child close, you are able to transmit your calm – of course, you do have to be calm in order to achieve that, which can be easier said than done.

Modelling how you want your child to behave and giving them the right words when they might be struggling to express themselves or using words that you wouldn’t expect to hear before the TV watershed is helpful. Now that my son is quite a lot older, I still find myself trying to help him out. Over the years his inability to cope with stress has led him into trouble and making poor decisions. He still has problems with his emotions and impulses and he can still react angrily, but I know now he will calm down and we can reflect on what happened and on his response. Within ten minutes, we might be laughing together about what just happened. The change in our conversations is amazing if he feels he is being listened to and sympathized with. My advice to new parents, or some not so new, is to practise keeping yourself calm. As the much-quoted saying goes – keep calm and carry on!

During his teenage years Ruairi was pretty haunted by his early life with his birth family. He had nightmares of what had happened to him and his younger sister. He had 18 moves of house before he was three years old and witnessed domestic violence.

It was during those teenage years that Ruairi wrote poems to help himself to deal with his feelings. Each poems focuses on a photograph included in his and his sister’s shared life story book – one which offers no commentary but whose illustrations do not hide the neglect and sadness undergone by the children. He put the poems in the form of a downloadable book to raise funds to help him through university.

Ruairi’s story is one of success. It travels along a winding road with hold-ups and potholes, but which gets there in the end. But most of all it illustrates the resilience of some children who are able to overcome their bad beginnings.

This poem relates to a photo which shows Ruairi and his sister (11 months younger) with their birth mother. They look ready to go out, dressed in coats, and his sister is in a baby buggy. All are looking at the camera, but only Ruairi is trying to smile. His sister looks unhappy and anxious. Ruairi remembers the buggy because they would hide under it when his parents were fighting.

Adoptive mum Clara looks back at how life has changed for her son Caydon over eight years.

Caydon doesn’t know where his name came from or why it was chosen. He doesn’t know the colour of his birth mother’s eyes or what country his father comes from. He doesn’t know why his mother hurt him so much and forgot to feed him, leaving him in his cot, sore, hungry – his only comfort coming from his own gentle rocking motion. He didn’t understand why she disappeared when he was 18 months of age and why new people looked after him.

He doesn’t know why this house was always full of people, children and babies coming and disappearing, people in suits having meetings.

He didn’t know why he had to go and live with another woman (me), leaving behind everything familiar. He didn’t understand why he wanted to love this new lady so much but he hit her when she came close and screamed when she walked away.

He didn’t know why he hurt so much inside that he wanted to kill himself and hurt himself by punching his forehead and banging his head against a wall. He couldn’t understand why the other kids at school were scared of him or why the teachers called him naughty – couldn’t they see it was an accident when he knocked over his friend he was trying to hug?

He was only four and he didn’t understand why he was terrified that this new mum would not want him anymore. So please don’t ask him why.

A lot of what he does and feels come from feelings held deep inside. Ask yourself why does the smell of chips on the seafront make you think of certain things or the feel of Fuzzy Felt take you instantly back to your childhood? These are feelings held in your body that you have no control over. Feelings are evoked for all of us by certain smells, sounds, textures. For most of us they are nice, comforting feelings of childhood or happy holidays. But not for everyone.

If most of those feelings were of being terrified, out of control, scared, hungry, lonely, wouldn’t we be overreacting and appear to others to be acting irrationally? If all we can do as parents and teachers is to demand that this girl or boy must do their homework, must clean up their room, must go and sit on the naughty step, then we are missing the point. If a child has suffered months or years of abuse and neglect, we must all try to get them to really feel and believe that life is now safe, to know that when you are out of sight you are not gone forever. To know that you won’t shout at them because you know that for them it feels like the end of the world and to know that you are not going to turn out to be as abusive as the last mummy.

Over the years Caydon has had a lot to learn and a lot to try to understand. He has done brilliantly. For him to be able to read and write as well as he does when he couldn’t speak at the age of four because of neglect shows he is bright. The holes in his brain which formed because of neglect he suffered as a baby – the time when your brain grows at its fastest – are slowly repairing though some will always remain. He has begun to develop a conscience and empathy and will try and help others less able than him – such as older people and small children.

I’ve managed to stand by him through all his ups and downs, his achievements and his falls. I love my son Caydon and he loves me and he is finally now able to show me this in so many ways. It has taken many years to get here, but for anyone who feels there is no light at the end of the tunnel, then at least know in my house there is now a light which is shining brightly. He has grown to be so caring, patient, insightful and loving that I have to keep pinching myself or touching wood. He has moved on from a life where he only felt safe if he lashed out at everyone or ran away, where he destroyed his things and threatened to hurt himself, to a completely new way of being, feeling, behaving.

Today he comes home from school, goes off to do his newspaper round, asks Mum for a hug and agrees to come home at a certain time – and then does! No doubt there are more trials and tribulations to come in the future – not the least of which may crop up when contact and searching start to take up his thoughts. But for now he is doing what I always dreamed and that is being an ordinary teenager who is going out and enjoying his life.

3NSPCC (2016) ‘Domestic abuse facts and statistics.’ Available at https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/child-abuse-and-neglect/domestic-abuse/domestic-abuse-facts-statistics, accessed on 5 October 2016.

4J.B. Kaplow and C.S. Widom (2007) ‘Age of onset of child maltreatment predicts long-term mental health outcomes.’ Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116(1), 176–187.