Developmental Trauma

Newsletter #141 for Internationally Adopting Parents
February 11, 2011
PAL Center Inc.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

New Specialist
in the BGCenter
Spanish Bilingual Extension

Initial screening
of your internationally adopted child
in the Spanish Language
is now available both at
the Phoenix &
New York
BGCenter offices!

Psychologists
Dr. Boris Gindis &
Carol Napier

team up
to offer two decades of expertise in psychological assessment of international adoptees and knowledge of the native language and culture of your
Spanish speaking child.

The initial psychological screening
in the native language
will help determine the appropriate school placement and services and insure that remedial programming will be started as early as possible for your child.

For information
Call the BGCenter
at 845-694-849

Internet Digest

Kathie Harrington
Autism is a Reason,
Never an Excuse

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Developmental Trauma

B. Gindis Ph.D.
Developmental Delays in Internationally Adopted Children
There are two major causes of developmental delays of non-organic nature in international adoptees: Developmental trauma that results in "mixed maturity" and emotional/behavioral problems and can accumulate into Developmental Trauma Disorder and a profound cultural/educational neglect that leads to Cumulative Cognitive Deficit in these children. Both causes may often co-exist in a particular child.

A significant body of research and clinical practice have confirmed that many internationally adopted post-institutionalized children demonstrate the presence of developmental trauma as a result of repeated traumatization in their early childhood (deprivation of their basic physical and emotional needs, abandonment, life in an institution, adoption and sometimes disruption and re-adoption, transition to a foreign country, the loss of culture and language, ongoing frustration at school, etc.).

Attachment is a buzz word, but it is limited to a specific set of interactive behaviors at a certain age between mother and child. Developmental trauma (the stress-shaped brain) encompasses attachment as well as other areas of development, such as attention, activity level, tactile/auditory and other sorts of sensitivity. Based on this concept, Dr. Patty Cogen in her workshop, the book and the online course offers her own approach to therapy of a traumatized child.

Patty Cogen, M.A., Ed.D.
the author of the book
Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child,
the author and instructor of the online course
The First Year Home: What to Expect and How to Respond

Workshop
for Psychotherapists and Other Mental Health Professionals
Childhood Attachment Trauma And The Stressed Shaped Brain
Working with Internationally Adopted Children and Their Parents

1101 South Winchester Blvd., San Jose, CA 95128
April 9 and 10, 2011
9:30am – 3:30pm (each day)

This two day workshop will prepare you to understand the new diagnosis, Traumatic Developmental Disorder, that has been proposed by Bessel Van Der Kolk, Alicia Leiberman, Frank Putnam, Robert PynoosMichael Scheeringa and others. This diagnosis describes the way that the experience dependent brain develops in unique and predictable ways following traumatic events from infancy and early childhood onward up to adulthood. From this context you will learn about the types of therapeutic and parenting strategies that are most effective with children who exhibit symptoms of TDD. Specifically we will learn about how attention, regulation, attachment, social interactions, and cognitive learning are impacted. These initial impacts result in a widening cascade of disorders, such as ADD, Sensory Integration, Learning disabilities, Conduct Disorders, Somatozation etc.

Certain groups of children are particularly prone to experiencing TDD, such as international adoptees, older domestic adoptees and foster-adopt children, as are children who experience neglect and/or abuse from their biologically related parents. Parents (adoptive or not) have enormous resistance to accepting this diagnosis. There is an urgent need to learn how to educate parents to uses effective and often counterintuitive parenting strategies to help a child move from "survival" behaviors to "family-oriented" behaviors.

More details

Paul Consbruck, Attorney at Law
But I Can’t Do Any More Paperwork!
By the time you get home with the newest member of your family, you probably already feel you’ve completed enough paperwork to last a lifetime, and now your child is finally in that new bedroom in your home. But don’t stop there. Especially if you use a qualified adoption lawyer to assist you, the re-adoption process (also frequently referred to as a “Recognition of Foreign Adoption”) is an important final step.