Preverbal trauma is memory recalled as emotion. Emotions and memory are always connected. The recall will be the same emotion the infant experienced when the mother was separated never to return. Shock, grief, anger, sadness, confusion, will be the experience of the recall. The memory does nit weaken over time its created again as new with each recall. Time wont heal this wound. Imagine you experience an intense feeling of sadness and cant apply words to it and cant ask for help. Nothing makes us feel more isolated, alone in our pain.
I came across this knowledge by reading one of your papers only recently and it makes all the difference to my understanding of my birth son's issues of trust in our reunion. Thank you. I now realise that he can't ever trust me because with any memory of his life as an adopted infant or child he endures powerful negative emotions of powerlessness, absence of comfort and reassurance and absence of the preverbal mother. I will still try to go ahead with love and patience.
The good news is adoptees can heal and resolve their trauma. Youmuts create
experiences of secure attachment when the child is acting out behaving badly experiencing the recall. The answer is simple when he is bad say Its OK to feel that way and offer a hug. Do not engage in a power struggle
I'm not sure about that. I have no experience of that, and certainly as a mature age adopted person (and those I know personally), it is decades too late to experience that. And we live with a daily sense of loss. Our power struggles are within and without (with the state and it's continued denial of our personhood and equal rights)
Thank you for your reassurance. Good to know I can hope for healing through my "holding" and love and suppressing my tendency to assert my need to control. He is so much in need of the kind and accepting mother.
The trauma memory must be recalled to heal. When hes bad try and hug him align with him and solve the problem. His behavior is not the problem its his solution to the problem. The problem is he doesnt feel attached so make him feel attached
I worry, Robert, that you are pathologising the lived experience of adopted people, particularly those of us who are of mature age. it is too late for so many of us to feel attached. instead we must live in the Bardo
Your words are useful in all sorts of situations. In this case if I try to talk with him on the phone (he is currently working in an Asian country and I am very much in NZ) about adoption at all he clams up, refusing the topic because it reminds him of his terrible childhood. It has taken us seven years of reunion (very late in both our lives) to get to here. He is very deeply scarred so I'll have to keep on pulling out metaphorical hugs and let him heal in his own time. I want this too much probably which exposes my guilt at the shameful act of relinquishment. But it's much better since he found me.
A small request—could we stop using the term 'birth mother'? It is an adoption industry term that defines a woman's role in the birthing process (supplier) while disabling her from being a mother. I understand we need to differentiate, but I prefer to call the woman who gives birth 'the mother' and the woman who acquires her child 'the adopter' or, if you must, 'the adoptive mother.'
Yes, I agree. Perhaps "first mother" is not right either. You suggest 'the mother' as distinct from 'the adoptive mother' and that would be acceptable in academic discourse but I think adoptive mothers might not actually like the distinction - just throwing that out there.
Yes I am the first mother trying to help my son. How wonderful to make that offer. If I can achieve an open space for the topic of “adoption” which at present just repels him I would love to do as you suggest and thank you for it.
I will! And thanks Dr. Barbara Sumner for your excellent reporting and charts and articles. I'm in the states but the same ideas are true for adoption. Best wishes!
Thank you. And yes, you are right. While my area of expertise is the architecture of adoption in New Zealand, the intention in other countries is the same - to enable the taking of children, the allocation of a new identity and the sealing of records.
I also think too much grace is given to adoptive parents with the “we didn’t know” argument. Yes, agency/adoptive parent voices monopolized in the past, and at a time before the internet, however: the National Association of Black Social Workers have been saying since 1972 how harmful transracial adoption is to Black children; Betty Jean Lifton first published in 1975; the internet has been generally available since the 1990s. I have so much trouble with the “they didn’t know” argument because all that time “they didn’t know about the harms of adoption,” these same people managed to graduate from college, buy homes, travel the world, choose doctors … all these things they figured out how to do before ubiquitous social media. The ignorance is willful. Full stop.
Personally, I agree with you. I believe the entire system revolves around satisfying the needs of adopters. In my personal experience the “we didn’t know” defense was a way to disable any debate and to continue to live in wilful ignorance. But I am keen to allow differing opinions from adopted people.
I have counseled over 800 families of all kinds trans racial,which doesnt exist there is only 1 race, gay and lesbian and they all have the ability to raise healed children. It just depends on how to parent an adopted, traumatised child. I worked with a 15 year old adopted by lesbians who got divorced and remarried so she had literally 5 mothers and she was black and the parents white. This young woman was remarkably stable and well adjusted
The blank slate (tabula rasa) was John Locke's idea, 17th century, so it has been around longer that the 20th century. It (still) runs deep in Anglo-American beliefs. I think it's important to avoid pathologizing adoptees while recognizing the impact of severing the mother-infant connection. This can happen to biological children as well. What doesn't happen to them is complete erasure of their pre-adoption history, which usually includes an additional separation from a foster mother. This is why it's so important to support adoptees with understanding and information as they grow into adults.
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), English philosopher John Locke explored the idea that there are no innate principles, no newborn sapience or intuitiveness. Locke famously said that the mind is like a blank slate (tabula rasa) and has ideas only by experience.
Locke’s now debunked theory of the blank mind of the infant is still active in our adoption legislation. By extension, the theory posits that, with diligence and love, the adopter can transform the acquired child into a facsimile of the one they might have had. But, if newborns are blank slates, are all babies interchangeable? If so¬, does it matter which child a mother takes home from the hospital? And why is “switched at birth’ such an enduring headline?
I'm sorry I'm sorry, Barbara, but there is always something, in the republished articles that triggers me. Is it just me. Sometimes I'm left deadened again: "This legal fiction prioritizes adult desires and bureaucracy over a child’s need for connection, identity, and truth. It strips away the adoptee’s origin story and replaces it with a narrative written by others.". It's the ever prevalent overuse in these narratives of "the child". When is someone, other than you, finally going to say the person? I'm old. I, and those of us bowed by the constancy of infantalisation... well, you probably get it, but it continues to cause reaction akin to the deep dive into depression. Is there ever going to be a story, without the saccharin, of those if us still alive? Oh, see? Now I sound petulant. But, then, we're even still called that on legal affidavits. No, thin air. All that remains is thin air.
Preverbal trauma is memory recalled as emotion. Emotions and memory are always connected. The recall will be the same emotion the infant experienced when the mother was separated never to return. Shock, grief, anger, sadness, confusion, will be the experience of the recall. The memory does nit weaken over time its created again as new with each recall. Time wont heal this wound. Imagine you experience an intense feeling of sadness and cant apply words to it and cant ask for help. Nothing makes us feel more isolated, alone in our pain.
This I understand, plus rather than lessen with age, our preverbal trauma appears to increase.
I came across this knowledge by reading one of your papers only recently and it makes all the difference to my understanding of my birth son's issues of trust in our reunion. Thank you. I now realise that he can't ever trust me because with any memory of his life as an adopted infant or child he endures powerful negative emotions of powerlessness, absence of comfort and reassurance and absence of the preverbal mother. I will still try to go ahead with love and patience.
Kate, your words affect me deeply. I believe this to be true.
The good news is adoptees can heal and resolve their trauma. Youmuts create
experiences of secure attachment when the child is acting out behaving badly experiencing the recall. The answer is simple when he is bad say Its OK to feel that way and offer a hug. Do not engage in a power struggle
I'm not sure about that. I have no experience of that, and certainly as a mature age adopted person (and those I know personally), it is decades too late to experience that. And we live with a daily sense of loss. Our power struggles are within and without (with the state and it's continued denial of our personhood and equal rights)
Thank you for your reassurance. Good to know I can hope for healing through my "holding" and love and suppressing my tendency to assert my need to control. He is so much in need of the kind and accepting mother.
https://www.academia.edu/74912091/Parenting_the_adopted_Child
The trauma memory must be recalled to heal. When hes bad try and hug him align with him and solve the problem. His behavior is not the problem its his solution to the problem. The problem is he doesnt feel attached so make him feel attached
I worry, Robert, that you are pathologising the lived experience of adopted people, particularly those of us who are of mature age. it is too late for so many of us to feel attached. instead we must live in the Bardo
There is nothing wrong with us something happened to us and understanding the process leads to healing.
Probably more realistic Barbara.
Your words are useful in all sorts of situations. In this case if I try to talk with him on the phone (he is currently working in an Asian country and I am very much in NZ) about adoption at all he clams up, refusing the topic because it reminds him of his terrible childhood. It has taken us seven years of reunion (very late in both our lives) to get to here. He is very deeply scarred so I'll have to keep on pulling out metaphorical hugs and let him heal in his own time. I want this too much probably which exposes my guilt at the shameful act of relinquishment. But it's much better since he found me.
Give him my name and email roberthafetz@verizon.net and show him my published articles I will help him fr free. Oh I see you the birth mother.
A small request—could we stop using the term 'birth mother'? It is an adoption industry term that defines a woman's role in the birthing process (supplier) while disabling her from being a mother. I understand we need to differentiate, but I prefer to call the woman who gives birth 'the mother' and the woman who acquires her child 'the adopter' or, if you must, 'the adoptive mother.'
Yes, I agree. Perhaps "first mother" is not right either. You suggest 'the mother' as distinct from 'the adoptive mother' and that would be acceptable in academic discourse but I think adoptive mothers might not actually like the distinction - just throwing that out there.
Yes I am the first mother trying to help my son. How wonderful to make that offer. If I can achieve an open space for the topic of “adoption” which at present just repels him I would love to do as you suggest and thank you for it.
I love and respect your commitment to this openness and to your son.
I applaud your efforts. thank you, Kate.
Kate, you are the mother many of us wish we could experience.
Thank you so much Lorah.
So well written and expressed. I want to broadcast this everywhere.
It really is beautifully expressed. Please do share.
I will! And thanks Dr. Barbara Sumner for your excellent reporting and charts and articles. I'm in the states but the same ideas are true for adoption. Best wishes!
Thank you. And yes, you are right. While my area of expertise is the architecture of adoption in New Zealand, the intention in other countries is the same - to enable the taking of children, the allocation of a new identity and the sealing of records.
I also think too much grace is given to adoptive parents with the “we didn’t know” argument. Yes, agency/adoptive parent voices monopolized in the past, and at a time before the internet, however: the National Association of Black Social Workers have been saying since 1972 how harmful transracial adoption is to Black children; Betty Jean Lifton first published in 1975; the internet has been generally available since the 1990s. I have so much trouble with the “they didn’t know” argument because all that time “they didn’t know about the harms of adoption,” these same people managed to graduate from college, buy homes, travel the world, choose doctors … all these things they figured out how to do before ubiquitous social media. The ignorance is willful. Full stop.
Personally, I agree with you. I believe the entire system revolves around satisfying the needs of adopters. In my personal experience the “we didn’t know” defense was a way to disable any debate and to continue to live in wilful ignorance. But I am keen to allow differing opinions from adopted people.
I have counseled over 800 families of all kinds trans racial,which doesnt exist there is only 1 race, gay and lesbian and they all have the ability to raise healed children. It just depends on how to parent an adopted, traumatised child. I worked with a 15 year old adopted by lesbians who got divorced and remarried so she had literally 5 mothers and she was black and the parents white. This young woman was remarkably stable and well adjusted
I can’t even begin to enumerate the problems with this comment, but I will not be engaging further with you.
The blank slate (tabula rasa) was John Locke's idea, 17th century, so it has been around longer that the 20th century. It (still) runs deep in Anglo-American beliefs. I think it's important to avoid pathologizing adoptees while recognizing the impact of severing the mother-infant connection. This can happen to biological children as well. What doesn't happen to them is complete erasure of their pre-adoption history, which usually includes an additional separation from a foster mother. This is why it's so important to support adoptees with understanding and information as they grow into adults.
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), English philosopher John Locke explored the idea that there are no innate principles, no newborn sapience or intuitiveness. Locke famously said that the mind is like a blank slate (tabula rasa) and has ideas only by experience.
Locke’s now debunked theory of the blank mind of the infant is still active in our adoption legislation. By extension, the theory posits that, with diligence and love, the adopter can transform the acquired child into a facsimile of the one they might have had. But, if newborns are blank slates, are all babies interchangeable? If so¬, does it matter which child a mother takes home from the hospital? And why is “switched at birth’ such an enduring headline?
I'm sorry I'm sorry, Barbara, but there is always something, in the republished articles that triggers me. Is it just me. Sometimes I'm left deadened again: "This legal fiction prioritizes adult desires and bureaucracy over a child’s need for connection, identity, and truth. It strips away the adoptee’s origin story and replaces it with a narrative written by others.". It's the ever prevalent overuse in these narratives of "the child". When is someone, other than you, finally going to say the person? I'm old. I, and those of us bowed by the constancy of infantalisation... well, you probably get it, but it continues to cause reaction akin to the deep dive into depression. Is there ever going to be a story, without the saccharin, of those if us still alive? Oh, see? Now I sound petulant. But, then, we're even still called that on legal affidavits. No, thin air. All that remains is thin air.