Resilience in maltreated children: Implications for special needs adoption.

Children in the child welfare system face renewed issues of loss as they enter adoptive placements. Every move is a loss and an exercise for the child in establishing the perception of a "safe" environment. Resilient children who have been abused develop coping skills to adapt to their abusing "unsafe" environments. When these children become part of an adoptive family, these coping skills need to be recognized as providing important cues to the child's world, rather than as challenging behaviors. The author deconstructs the words of resilient children into five themes that can help provide access into the children's world, a fresh viewpoint from which to assess the adopted children's reactive behaviors, and a foundation on which an adoptive relationship can be built. A bused children develop a variety of behaviors to cope with and adapt to their abusive environments and to the positive and negative aspects of their relationships with their parents. For many, these coping behaviors are the strengths that enable them to survive in an unsafe environment. When entering new placements (to the children, a new, strange, and "unsafe" environment), children transfer these patterns of relating to their new parenting relationships. Often, the occurrences of these coping behaviors in the new families are viewed not as strengths, but as challenges to parents and placement professionals. Yet these behaviors provide important cues to help parents and professionals access the child's world and begin building new relationships. Resilient children who have adapted to their abusive environments have gained a sense of control in their lives. When they come into new families, they are asked to give up that control to the new parent-child relationship. Understanding the past allows the integration of the child's survival skills and allows the children to grieve their losses, build attachments, and begin the task of identity formation. This article deconstructs the words of resilient children into themes that provide cues to the reoccurrence of behaviors once needed to survive in abusive environments, but now challenging parents and professionals. A qualitative research study of resilient maltreated adolescents identified five themes that provide a basis from which to view children's behaviors during their adjustment to new placements, including adoption. These themes are: loyalty to parents, normalizing the abusive environment, invisibility to the abuser, self-value, and future vision. The research is summarized in the context of risk factors and protective factors, methodology, child narratives, and the emerging themes. Implications for the usefulness of these findings are discussed in relation to current and future practice. Literature Review The concept of resilience was created to help explain why some children do well under disadvantaged circumstances [Baldwin et al. 1993]. Resilience is attributed to children who grew up under unfavorable circumstances without showing unfavorable consequences [Masten 1989; Okun et al. 1994; Radke-Yarrow & Brown 1993; Werner 1993]. It is defined as the capacity for successful adaptation, positive functioning, or competence despite high risk, chronic stress, or prolonged or severe trauma [Egeland et al. 1993]. Interest has grown in the past two decades in identifying factors associated with resiliency in high-risk children [Arend et al. 1979; Beeghly & Cicchetti 1994; Crittenden 1985; Earls et al.1987; Farber & Egeland 1987; Kaufman et al.1994; Masten 1989; Richters & Martinez 1993; Werner 1993]. The research on resilience primarily has identified factors that increase the risk of stress and factors that protect against stress. The risk research has been retrospective, whereas the protective factor research has been progressive [Gero 1992]. No research has been conducted specific to resilience factors for children for whom adoption has been planned. …