Individual Transition Plan for Internationally Adopted Teenagers

The purpose of this article is to help families with internationally adopted (IA) adolescents plan their youngsters' life after high school and ensure that they gain the skills, self-confidence and social connections they need for adulthood. The Individual Transitional Plan (ITP) is designed to create the basis for their future independent (or semi-independent) life, gainful (or supportive/sheltered) employment, and most importantly, the emotional stability and social connectedness that is the foundation for what is commonly known as "normal life".

IA children with an educational classification (designation of educational handicapping condition) constitute a special group among students with different educationally related disabilities. IA child may have any of the 13 educational classifications listed in the major federal law, IDEA-2004 (Individuals with Disability Education Act, re-authorized by the Congress in 2004), or a combination of two or more of those conditions). Statistically, the most often classifications given to IA children are, in descending order, Other Health Impaired, Learning Disabled, Emotionally Disturbed, Speech/Language Impaired, Multiple Disability, Autism (Gindis, 2009).

Transition to adulthood is particularly hard for IA youngsters with special educational needs because their mental, neurological, and educational "profile" includes the following major features:

Neurological impairment(s) related to pre-and-post birth adverse conditions. Sometimes they have a distinct neurologically-based disorder such as Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Autism (Gindis, 2014). In most cases, however, there is a generalized (undifferentiated) weakness of the Central Nervous System that reveals itself in sensory-motor dis-integration, emotional reactivity and rigidity, dis-regulated attention and concentration, and a host of "soft" neurological signs (Miller, 2004, Marlow, 2005).
Exposure to severe neglect, abuse, and deprivation in the early, most formative years of their life has mediated their development and led to what is known as Developmental Trauma Disorder (Van der Kolk, B.A. 2005). Among most prominent characteristics of children affected with DTD are "mixed maturity" (delays in self-regulation of emotions and behavior), hyper-arousal and hypo-arousal, emotional fragility/oversensitivity, and cumulative delays in cognitive/academic functioning in comparison with age norms and expectations (Nemeroff, 2004, Gindis, 2005, Marlow, 2005, Perry, 2006, Gunnar, & Van Dulmen, 2007).
A range of atypical features resulting from the abrupt loss of their first language and a specific mode of learning English (Gindis, 2008) and difficulties in adjustment to their new social/cultural environment and more advanced educational system as consequence of social/cultural/educational deprivation in the past (Gindis, B. (2005).
A constellation of specific adoption issues (abandonment syndrome, attachment difficulties, negative self-perception, etc.) that creates a depressive emotional background for learning and socialization, particularly in the adolescent period of life (Welsh, 2007, Rolnick, 2010).

Read the complete article
Read about Dr. Gindis' psychological services