age 11, has been stealing since he was placed with Dan and Rita seven years ago. Dan stated, “Cody, you have sticky fingers and it needs to stop!” Cody, puzzled, began to feel his fingers. He replied, “Dad, I washed my hands a few minutes ago. My fingers aren’t sticky.” Dan, annoyed, said, “Cody, you know what I mean.” Cody replied, “No, really, I washed my hands just a few minutes ago.” Dan then stated, “Enough. I don’t want to hear anymore.”
Actually, Cody had no idea what his father was talking about. His immature thought processes only allow for literal interpretations. Because of this, arguments frequently occur due to the child’s exacting manner. The rule “no running in the house” is taken as fact. Kids like Cody do not understand that implied in the rule about running are similar behaviors such as hopping, skipping, and jumping across the living room. A once peaceful household may become teeming with anger and frustration. Exasperation permeates the home. The family’s ability to relax and have fun gradually diminishes.
Lastly, many traumatized children, due to their cognitive delays, receive labels as being learning disabled (Perry 1997). Tutoring and special education services require time to locate, negotiate with a school district, and monitor, as well as time if travel is involved or meetings need to occur. The child with special needs begins to dominate the family’s time.
Social development
This domain of development includes how the child interacts with other people—individually and in groups. The development of relationships with parents, brothers and sisters, and peers, assuming social roles, learning the values and norms within groups, internalizing a moral system, and eventually assuming a productive role in society are all social tasks.
The development of social skills is emphasized in today’s society. Parents spend much time involving their children in a variety of organized sports. There are also martial arts, dance classes, band, camps, and play dates. It is with good reason that we strive to teach children social skills:
• Children have a high probability of being at risk unless they achieve minimal social competence by about age six. The risks of inadequate social skills are many: poor mental health, dropping out of school, low achievement, other school difficulties, and poor employment history (Peth-Pierce 2000; Katz and McClellan 1991; McClellan and Katz 1993).
• Indeed, the single best childhood predictor of adult adaptation is not school grades and not classroom behavior, but rather the adequacy with which the child gets along with other children. Children who are generally disliked, who are aggressive and disruptive, who are unable to sustain close relationships with other children, and who cannot establish a place for themselves in the peer culture are seriously at risk (Hartup 1992).
Social skills begin to advance in early infancy. Infants only months old watch and imitate others, are sensitive to social approval and disapproval, are interested in getting attention and creating social effects, and enjoy simple games such as peek-a-boo and bye-bye. The 12- to 23-month-old likes to lug, dump, push, pull, pile, and knock down. She also likes to climb and kick. During this time period, there is pleasure in stringing beads, learning to catch a large ball, looking at pictures in books, nursery rhymes, and interactive games such as tag. By 24 to 35 months, there is lots of physical play such as jumping, climbing, rolling, throwing and retrieving objects, and pushing self on wheeled objects. This is also the age of developing first counting skills, as well as the time children begin to draw and mold with clay. Children of this age enjoy matching objects, sorting objects by size, and playing with patterns. Imaginative play increases. The main interest is still in parents; however, there is the beginning of cooperative play with others.
This last sentence is a key point for any family wanting all of their children to play and get along. Social skills develop early and they develop within the parent–child relationship. Later, at about age three, kids are more inclined to participate in group play with other children including their own brothers and sisters. In effect:
• Social competence is rooted in the relationships that infants and toddlers experience in the early years of their life. Everyday experiences in relationships with their parents are fundamental to children’s developing social skills (Peth-Pierce 2000).
• In particular, parental responsiveness and nurturance are considered to be key factors in the development of children’s social competence (Casas 2001). Children who have close relationships with responsive parents early in life are able to develop healthy relationships with peers as they get older (Peth-Pierce 2000).
Consider the chosen daughter who was confined to her crib in her orphanage, or the child who resided in a birth home wherein he was neglected and abused and was consumed with his own survival. Toys there were minimal, as was quality adult interaction. This child enters an adoptive family with limited ability to play. The expectation that the adoptee will make a playmate for the birth and/or previously adopted children is immediately shattered. In fact, it is not uncommon that neglected children chronologically ages eight, ten or 12 years old are still parallel playing. They have not developed the skills to know how to enter a group. They are unable to take turns, lose graciously, or play a game according to the rules. Frequently, they move from toy to toy. They are unable to choose an item and sit for a period of time to enjoy the item. Other children simply sit among their toys not knowing exactly what to do with them. Their play is often filled with themes of their life experiences.
Tammy is currently age six. She joined her adoptive family four and a half years ago. She enjoys playing house. However, Jean, her mother, states, “When she plays house, she lines up many dolls—five to ten dolls. Then she goes from doll to doll, offering each a bottle or a diaper change. Really, she is playing orphanage.”
Paula, the adoptive mother of two female siblings, described that doll after doll had been purchased. “One by one, their clothes disappeared, and their arms and legs were removed. It was as if they were breaking the dolls in the same manner they felt broken by the sexual abuse they had sustained at the hands of their birth father.”
Such social lags create a variety of difficulties in the adoptive family. The resident children lose interest in playing with their new brother or sister, as do children in the neighborhood. Invitations to parties and play dates, for the adoptee, may be rare. This area often leads typically developing children to make statements such as “I don’t want to play with him. He’s no fun.” “I want to go to my friend’s house alone. He is embarrassing to have around my friends.” “Do we have to adopt him?” “Why can’t we send her back to China?” Frequently, the brothers and sisters will begin spending more time at the neighbor’s house than at home.
“My friends and I have to always go into my room and lock the door so that my brother doesn’t keep bothering us. He’ll scream and pound on the door until Mom or Dad calm him down. Whenever we offer to have him play with us, he goes crazy. He only wants to play what he wants to play, and he will scream until he gets his way. No one wants to play with him because we always have to play what he wants or else he will throw a big fit and cry and scream. It gets really embarrassing when he throws fits in front of my friends.”
Delayed moral development also impacts adoptive family interactions. Moral development is the capacity to control one’s own behavior internally (Santrock 1995). We can all most likely recall a childhood situation in which our peers wanted us to do something that would definitely lead to parental disapproval and consequences. Instantly, the following thought popped into our heads: “My mother would kill me if I did that!” Our moral system went into effect and we were able to make a decision about how to best handle the situation. Mom and Dad were with us—internally. Everywhere we went and in all situations, their voices resonated as a guide to our conduct.
Moral development is a process that involves acquiring and assimilating the rules about what people
