Adoption and parent-child relationships in families with adopted children. The attitude of the adoptive family towards the blood relatives of the adopted child and their interaction

Adopted child. Life path, help and support Panyusheva Tatyana

Stages of destruction, family relationships with an adopted child

(This chapter is based on ideas from the book How to Tell the Truth to an Adopted Child. How to Help Your Child Understand His Past by Betsy Kiefer, Jane E. Schooler, 2009.)

The moment when the decision to separate a family from an adopted child (bilateral or unilateral) is made and announced becomes the beginning of the separation process. Formally, the completion of this process can be considered the actual return of the child to the institution and termination of the contract. But in fact, the process of internal breakup begins much earlier and goes through a number of stages, and ends much later than the separation itself. Both the child and the parents, after the breakup, worry about what happened for a long time, constantly returning to it in their thoughts, losing different variants developments of events, and sometimes at the level of actions they try to return to life together.

In any family, moments of crisis mark a new stage in a relationship and usually do not serve as a reason for separation. In foster families, natural crises are more severe and sometimes become the cause of family breakdown. An uncontrollable growing conflict requires the participation of external specialists in working with families in crisis.

As mentioned above, one of the main reasons for the destruction of relationships is parents’ unrealistic expectations for a particular child and the inability to change these expectations. Expectations themselves are a normal part of planning for future events and relationships. The viability of the relationship will depend on whether expectations can withstand adjustments by reality. This happens in all forms of partnerships between people: marriage, friendship, business cooperation, volunteering, etc. The extent to which people are willing to accept the differences between real relationships and expected ones depends on a number of factors. The main ones are: a person’s own personal stability and well-being, flexibility and tolerance of differences, life experience. But the main thing on which the possibility of maintaining a new relationship depends is its consistency with the basic life values of a person. The word "values" seems a bit pretentious, and it is obvious that most people do not speak or think in such terms in their lives. Everyday life. Nevertheless, the “acceptability” of life events and relationships with people is determined precisely by these guidelines. Therefore, it is very important for a foster family that, during the preparation process, adults become aware of their values, life attitudes and the boundaries of their loyalty.

When people are ready to accept any child and are driven by the desire to raise him and make him viable - the way he is - this is the motivation of a helping adult who can accept a fairly wide range of the child’s personal characteristics. For a child this means an opportunity

remain yourself, gradually changing thanks to affection and new living conditions. In this situation, adults need little from the child for themselves; they are more inclined to give. There are very few such people.

Basically, future parents have a number of wishes regarding the child, but over time and as mutual attachment strengthens, adults make a choice in favor of a relationship with the child, abandoning some of the initial expectations. What they get in return is love and closeness with the child.

A completely different case is when people are motivated by the motivation of “appropriating” a child. Such families are looking for “their” child, implying that either they will search hard and find a child who will fit into their family like a “puzzle”, or they will “make” the child to suit their family. All parents have initial wishes, but in this situation we are talking about the fact that the child’s compliance with the parents’ requirements becomes a condition for his life in the family. Instead of mutual compromises and gradual getting used to each other, a rigid position (“We don’t ask for much, but be what we want, since we took you into our family”) leads to quick mutual disappointment and separation. What is important is not the ban on personal or behavioral characteristics (aggression, intellectual retardation, disobedience), but the categorical and intransigent attitude of adults. If adults cannot imagine relationships with those for whom their values are not as significant as for themselves, then they will feel traumatized and literally feel the threat of destruction of everything on which their lives are built. They will not be able to maintain a relationship with another person in such a situation. Anxiety and rejection will be felt literally on a physical level, and these are not feelings that can be easily dealt with. It is unnecessary to remind that a person’s values are formed primarily in the environment in which he lives. Obviously, adopted children who lived in dysfunctional birth families and institutions have completely different social and cultural experiences than their adoptive parents, and their values are also different. Therefore, the task of the adoptive family is to plan the formation of these values in the child over time. The child’s ability to accept the values of the adoptive family depends, firstly, on his individual human characteristics, secondly, on the nature of the attachment between the adoptive family and the child and, thirdly, on his life experience. That is, it is impossible to guarantee that adopted child will fully accept the values of his adoptive family and become an organic part of it, although this happens. Some children live in foster families, remaining “different.” And the responsibility of adults is to realize this lack of guarantees before accepting a child into the family and decide for themselves whether they are ready to become a family for the child even if he does not become “one of their own”; accept him as he is and help him despite his differences. It is worth mentioning that rejection for “not meeting” expectations also happens to natural children. In such situations, parents and child exist as if on parallel planes. Adults are waiting for the child to become what they want, and the child is waiting for them to understand that this is impossible. If the position of adults does not change, there will soon be no chance of intimacy and mutual understanding with the adopted child.

When a family's relationship with an adopted child begins to break down, it happens in several stages.

Stage one: “showing differences”

As the child adapts, his differences from the family begin to appear more and more clearly. They may not be negative in themselves (for example, the child is slow), but for some parents this can be very unpleasant. If there are more such differences than parents can accept, then a process of mutual confrontation begins, the severity of which depends on the temperament and individual characteristics of both the parents and the child.

Stage two: “negative social reaction”

When people around them begin to actively react to a child’s “bad behavior,” parents have three possible types of behavior. The first is to protect your child in any situation, attacking offenders (“no one has the right to criticize our child, regardless of what he has done”). The second option is to attack your child together with other people, feeling guilty and making excuses to society (“we are bad parents and we have bad child"). The third option is to try to constructively correct the situation and help the child understand that it is not he who is bad, but his action is bad, and it would be correct to do otherwise, while explaining exactly how (“even good people sometimes do wrong things; correct the consequences and learn from our mistakes”). At this stage, parents who are internally dissatisfied with the relationship with their child receive from society a kind of “objective confirmation” that their child is really not as it should be, and that the problem lies with him. They have the opportunity, by joining external critics, to express their irritation towards the child. Adults are supported in feeling their right to reject a child. Thus, at this stage, parents who do not accept their child choose the second option to respond to his problem behavior, criticizing and scolding him, often publicly, whenever strangers make comments to him and the parents. In such a situation, a child’s sense of basic psychological safety, which underlies the ability to make positive changes, is destroyed. The child begins to defend himself and increases protest and negative behavior. Thus, tension increases, and parents begin to believe that the child is “incorrigible.”

Third stage: “turning point” or “reason for rupture”

Against the backdrop of increasing tension and parental dissatisfaction with the relationship, a child may commit some serious offense from the parents’ point of view - theft, lying, failure at school. For parents, this moment can become an internal breakdown, a moment of loss of trust and hope for building a relationship with the child. In essence, this is the moment of “internal” abandonment of the child, although formally he still continues to remain in the family. It is obvious that children commit a large number of offenses in the course of their lives and growing up, and some of them are objectively quite serious. Thus, there will always be a reason that will be the “last straw” - if the situation is ripe.

Stage four: “ultimatum”

This is the stage when parents, from a formal point of view, give the child “ last chance“, but they really don’t believe in the possibility of improving the situation and want to gain the moral right to officially break off relations with the child, shifting responsibility onto him: “We set conditions for him, but he did not fulfill them. This means he doesn’t want to live in our family.” Regarding the ultimatum, we can say that it provokes a protest from any person to whom it is presented. In addition, ultimatums are often impossible for a child to fulfill in his specific life situation: “NEVER skip school”, “ALWAYS come home exactly at 20 o’clock”, “Don’t lie AT ALL”, etc. Strict demands that the child and before it was not possible to comply, and the prospect of catastrophic consequences usually leads to the opposite effect - the put forward requirements are violated immediately. The child acts on the principle of “throw it or you’ll drop it.” The paradox of the situation is that deep down, parents do not believe that the child will be able to fulfill their requirements, and simply want this to become obvious. A child in a situation of strong emotional stress feels the desire not to prove something to someone, but to leave the situation. In addition, the life experience of a child who was once rejected by his parents suggests that the chances of success are extremely small: what happened once can happen again. Children are able to change for the better only with the support of their parents and for the sake of relationships with them. If this is not the case, they will definitely not fight, but will try to speed up the inevitable. Therefore, children violate ultimatums almost immediately. Adults tend to interpret this as manifestations of cynicism and indifference on the part of the child.

Fifth stage: “final crisis and decision to break”

Usually, after a violation of the ultimatum, another major conflict occurs, a showdown with mutual accusations, as a result of which the emotional intensity reaches the point where both parents and the child want only one thing - to separate. At this stage, we are no longer talking about the possible preservation of the relationship, but usually social services are involved in participation precisely at this stage, since the parents officially declare that their family is in crisis and they intend to return the child. At this moment, no intervention can help, since the internal decision has already been made by both parties, and the relationship is completely destroyed. If specialists are brought in at this moment, then their work, which will not be successful, will only serve as another argument for parents in favor of their opinion that the child is “incorrigible.” Guardianship authorities are not always able to notice the complexity of the family situation at previous stages. Work with a family in crisis should be carried out earlier, in the first two stages of conflict escalation, even before the moment when the internal intention to part with the child is accepted by the parents. It is clear that only the parents themselves can seek help in a timely manner. Another option is that if the adoptive family is accompanied by specialists, they may notice increasing problems and offer assistance to the family.

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The attitude of the adoptive family towards the blood relatives of the adopted child

and their interaction

For all adoptive parents, the issue of relationships with the child’s birth family, especially with the mother, is the most acute and painful. It also worries the staff of the institutions where the child is located.
This happens because adoptive parents, teachers, social workers want, first of all, to protect the child from the negative influence of dysfunctional parents, to protect him from the experiences that the child experiences after such meetings. In addition, after adoption, registration of guardianship, many consider the child to be theirs and do not want to let him in. new life the child’s past so as not to traumatize him.
Social workers, specialists from guardianship and guardianship authorities, before transferring a child to a new family, take all possible measures to preserve the family one. Why? There are several reasons for this. And the first, most important thing is the child’s attitude towards his parents.
It is known that no matter how well a child lives in an institution for orphans and children left without parental care, he strives to go home. He either wants to return to his own family, or he dreams that his new mom and dad will find him. English scientists draw attention to the unjustified belief that a child will forget his home and start living again if he is moved to new, good conditions. Maintaining contact with relatives has a beneficial effect on the child. His self-esteem increases, he receives Additional information about yourself, the child’s learning abilities increase, the risk of the child’s rejection of the new home decreases, qualitatively new relationships are established with people around him; meetings with relatives help overcome crisis situations; the child is guaranteed a family for life (brothers, sisters and other close people).
The next reason is that most children, after being in a child care institution, foster family, or family-type orphanages, return to the place where they are assigned housing, i.e., to parents deprived of parental rights. Life has already shown the shortcomings of the current system, which allows you to first take a child away from the family, which causes enormous trauma, and then return him back to an environment in which little has changed. About 80% of such children repeat the path of their unlucky parents.
Due to the fact that the institution of foster family is actively developing in Russia, family educational groups are being created, it is necessary to pay attention to building relationships between foster families and natural parents. It turns out that new parents are completely unprepared for the fact that they will have to face the child’s birth family. Both foreign and our Russian experience shows this. Foster parents are not prepared for the children's reaction to such meetings and are painfully aware of changes in the child's behavior after such meetings. They do not want to recognize the importance of regular contact between children and their parents. If foster parents begin to understand the need for a child’s connection with his birth parents, then it is easier for them to accept the existence of the child’s natural family and somehow adapt to it than to avoid conversations with the child on this topic.
There is a parable that very accurately reflects the meaning of how to build relationships and talk with a child about his blood parents and those who accepted him into a new family.
There were two women in the world who did not know each other. You don’t remember one, you call the other mom. Two different women who created your life. One became your guiding star, the other became your sun. The first woman gave you life, and the second taught you how to live it. The first gave you the desire to be loved, and the second gave you love. One gave you a nationality, the other gave you a name. One gave you talent, the other gave you purpose. One gave you feelings, the other calmed your fears. One saw your sweet smile at birth, the other dried your tears. One could not provide you with a home, the other prayed for a child, and God heard her. And now you ask me through tears a question to which no one has yet found the answer: heredity or environment - whose fruit am I? Nobody's, my dear, nobody's! Just two different loves.
Psychologists are convinced that if a child feels or knows that there is agreement between the people who surround him now (adoptive parents, guardians, foster parents) and his former parents, then he is calm and comfortable. This mainly applies to children who retain positive memories of their parents. Under no circumstances should you adjust these relationships or speak disapprovingly of the blood parents, or try to displace or change the child’s feelings. You should be glad that the child’s feelings have not been dulled, and carefully preserve and develop them.
If between the adults surrounding him in this moment, and a child develops conflictual relationships, then the thought often arises in his mind: “Since my parents are bad, then I am the same (or they think about me the same way).” Psychologists categorically assert that one must speak about one’s blood parents either positively (they are in a difficult life situation and so far they can’t get out of it) or not at all.
The moment when to speak is individual for everyone.
Very important aspect This issue is the organization of contacts and meetings between the child and his family.
A frequently asked question: Does a guardian have the right to prevent biological relatives from visiting the child in their care?
Yes, it does, if there are good reasons for it. Clause 3, Article 150 Family Code The Russian Federation says: “a guardian (trustee) does not have the right to prevent a child from communicating with his parents and other close relatives, except in cases where such communication does not meet the interests of the child.” If parents are deprived of parental rights, they have no right to communicate with the child at all; according to the law, they are strangers to him. If the child's relatives come to a meeting drunk or otherwise indecent, or behave aggressively, incite the child against the guardian, or otherwise negatively influence the child, the guardian may decline the meeting. In addition, the guardian independently establishes the order, place and time of communication between relatives and the child. If a conflict arises with relatives, it is resolved with the participation of the guardianship authorities, and if an agreement cannot be reached, then through the court.
Article 75 of the Family Code of the Russian Federation states: “Parents whose parental rights are limited by the court may be allowed contact with the child if this does not have a harmful effect on the child. Contact between parents and a child is permitted with the consent of the guardianship and trusteeship authority, or with the consent of the guardian, the child’s adoptive parents or the administration of the institution where the child is located.”
Adoptive parents are often concerned about the question of whether or not to tell their child the truth about his parents, because it is not very pleasant: his parents died in a drunken brawl, and before that the issue of depriving them of parental rights was decided?
According to our observations, Russians most often either remain silent, or avoid conversations on this topic, distracting the attention of children, or invent beautiful story O former parents. Naturally, the choice of course of action depends on many circumstances. I would like to talk about how, according to psychologists’ research, children relate to their biological parents.
If children under two years old hardly remember their past, then children 2-6 years old retain some memories for the rest of their lives. The behavior of children in a new family depends on this. Negative impressions cause distrust of all adults, children take a defensive position, some behave aggressively and defiantly, deceive, and steal things. Children involuntarily reproduce the behavior that they observed in the family. But, quite often, there are those who sadly remember their parents, especially their mother.
Children over 6 years old remember their past, which has already left its mark on their development and personality formation. Such a child is distrustful of new people. Having settled into a new environment, he demonstrates much of what he has seen in the family. This behavior alarms the adoptive parents; they are lost and cannot determine the line of behavior. Experts and those parents who already have experience raising adopted children advise: nothing should be hidden from the child, much less tell a lie. There are also folk wisdom, applicable to this case: “You can’t hide an awl in a bag.”
Children come into this world to love their parents unconditionally, just as they are. There are many cases where a child’s ignorance leads to tragedies, but awareness protects him, instills faith in his new family, and evokes gratitude to the parents who accepted and loved him.

“Raising adopted children is not an exhibition of achievements”
One of the fears of adoptive parents is “heredity”. Why does a child who doesn’t even know his birth parents suddenly go into all sorts of troubles, as if there were no titanic efforts of his adoptive parents? Is heredity omnipotent or can it still be defeated? About this, and also about whether you should immediately expect love for your adopted child and talk to him about his past.
One of the most common fears of adoptive parents is that heredity will “come out”, and the grown-up child will suddenly go into all serious ways. And this is what happens. Then are all the efforts of the adoptive parents in vain?
Such situations can arise when a child has not worked through the situation with his past, when he begins to do what his blood parents did, even if he does not remember them - he thus seems to be trying to justify them for himself. These are things of a social and spiritual nature; you cannot touch them with your hands, but nevertheless they exist. And this is understandable. After all, in order for a person to grow normally, he needs to rely on real things. Consanguinity is a reality; no one can abolish it. When the blood parents have some kind of sin, there is something they couldn’t cope with, they didn’t solve some spiritual problem, this places an additional burden on the child. Not because he is to blame for the sins of his parents, but when they failed, it is even more difficult for him to cope with the same life task. Because if there is no reserve of strength, no spiritual experience that they could pass on to their child, then the child has less strength. Why is it so difficult for adoptive parents? Because the full weight of this slab falls on them.
Adoptive parents who do not talk to the child about his past simply leave him alone: to figure it out, figure it out, treat it as something forbidden. Without the help of adults, children still try to find answers to difficult questions, but they can come to the following conclusions, for example: my parents are monsters that cannot even be talked about, they abandoned me because I am a monster - but they don’t abandon others.

The topic of a child’s past is like a minefield that needs to be neutralized. This does not necessarily have to be done by psychologists; parents can do this too, but it must be done with preparation.

When there is an open discussion of the past, the child understands what kind of family he had, why what happened to her, what happened to her, what is the meaning of his “second birth” - finding an adoptive family, and how he can, without rejecting his blood family, have a good life be like her, and try to overcome the bad. And it is important to talk about this “bad” in the child’s past not in terms of condemnation, but as a problem: alcoholism, drug addiction, theft - these scourges affect all people, and they must be resisted so that they do not take over your life. Some people are able to fight, and some are not. And then their lives and the lives of their children disappear. Your parents couldn’t cope, they didn’t have enough strength, so it will be doubly difficult for you to fight. But we will help you. You can say that “this is your battle, and you need to endure it, this makes sense not only for you, but also for your blood parents, through you, perhaps, they will be justified.” And of course, this battle must be fought with with open eyes. Then for the child this arises as a life task on a conscious level.

It is also very important that the child understands that he does not exist in a vacuum. That the family from which he descended included not only his parents, that there were some other ancestors there, and there were probably wonderful people among them. The theme of good in the blood family is very important. People love to talk about bad heredity, while everyone who has dealt with adopted children knows that, in addition to problems, they also have talents and character traits worthy of respect - and, in fairness, we should not forget that much from this they also received from the blood family.

RELATIONSHIP OF A CHILD WITH FOSTER PARENTS

Tugovikova A.V.

Lesosibirsk Pedagogical Institute - branch of Siberian Federal University

Lesosibirsk

For a child, a family is a whole world in which he lives, acts, makes discoveries, learns to love, hate, rejoice, and sympathize. Being a member of it, the child enters into certain relationships with his parents, which can have both positive and negative influence on him.

When raising adopted children, foster families often face a number of problems and need qualified help from psychologists to diagnose and correct not only the individual characteristics of the child, but also internal family relations, the functioning of the foster family as a whole.

The definition of “foster family” is as follows - this is a legal form of fostering children left without parental care into a family on the basis of an agreement concluded between citizens who want to foster a child and the guardianship and trusteeship authority.

Let's consider the dysfunctional motives for adopting children, which can lead to certain difficulties in raising adopted children, and sometimes to tragedies.

The relationship of parents with adopted children, depending on the dysfunctional motives for adoption, looks like this:

motive one - in the history of the family there was the death of a child, and the parents want to find a replacement for him. In this case, the child-parent relationship is characterized by a symbiotic interaction; the child is “loaded” with certain expectations from the parents that do not take into account his individual psychological characteristics. The child is characterized by a negative self-attitude, low self-esteem, he suffers from a lack of emotional contact with his parents. Such a family has rigid external boundaries and blurred internal ones. Family members are characterized by rigidity in choosing roles and inflexibility. In a family there are many rules governing communication, and hidden conflicts between spouses are likely.

The second motive is that the family cannot have children for medical reasons, so they decide to take the child into the family. Here, parent-child relationships are characterized by overprotection, a large number of parents’ expectations about the child, and families are characterized by problems in marital relationships. Family cohesion is high, with mother and child united and the father on the periphery. A special feature of this motive is the large number of expectations from the child and fantasies about him at the time of adoption and during the upbringing of adopted children.

motive three - the family wants to “do a good deed”, take a child into the family, caring about children in general and wanting to help them with deeds. At the same time, child-parent relationships are characterized by a symbiotic attachment, the need for parents to constantly express gratitude for their actions. Adoptive parents are characterized by a special need for love, a lack of it, which is associated with a lack of love in the marital subsystem.

motive four - the family takes in a foster child for implementation pedagogical abilities, wanting, with the help of successful upbringing, to make a worthy and successful child out of a “difficult” child. Adoptive parents of this type are characterized by a constantly anxious expectation of the “manifestation of an unfavorable gene pool,” distrust of themselves as a parent, idealization of the family situation, fear of being a bad parent, and the desire to constantly show and prove their love and care for the child. In this regard, adoptive parents can turn to doctors and psychologists for help; often their children are in hospitals for treatment, while others put upbringing in a central place, they actively study literature, visit and organize various communities in which topics related to foster care are discussed. raising adopted children.

motive five - a single woman, not having her own family, decides to create one by adopting a child into an incomplete family. The child has the responsibility to make his adoptive mother happy, because that’s why he was taken. The child functionally and psychologically plays the role of a spouse; the boundaries between the child and parental subsystems are blurred. There is also a great connection between individual characteristics the child, the nature of his relationship with the adoptive parents and the presence of the secret of adoption in the family.

The dysfunctional motives for adopting children that we have listed can lead to disharmonious relationships in the adoptive family. By disharmonious relationships in the family we understand, in accordance with researcher E.G. Eidemiller, who dealt with issues of family psychology, family relationships, is like a kind of authoritarianism, lack of mutual support and understanding, increased conflict, aggression and violence. Disharmony in family relationships gives the adolescent patterns of instability, hostility, and antisocial behavior. Following the main idea in the works of N.A. Ackerman in the field of family psychotherapy, disharmonious families are characterized by a low level of cohesion among parents, disagreement in the family in matters of raising children, increased conflict in everyday communication with the child and an insufficient level of emotional acceptance of the child, as well as violations of protection in relation to the child.

In this regard, we conducted a survey of the adoptive family in order to identify the reasons for the disharmonious relationship between the child and the adoptive parents and help establish favorable relationships in the adoptive family.

Consequently, the objectives of our work were:

conduct a survey in the adoptive family using the methods we propose;

identify the causes of disharmonious relationships in the foster family.

To solve these problems, we prepared and carried out a methodology to identify the personal characteristics of a child (teenager, 15 years old): the Big Five personality questionnaire (authors R. McCrae, P. Costa), studied the attitude of parents towards the child using the PARi questionnaire (authors E. S. Schaefer, R. K. Bell).

Analyzing the results obtained using the first method - the Big Five personality questionnaire (authors R. McCrae, P. Costa), we found that the subject scored high on factors such as:

Extraversion/introversion – 58 points.

Self-control/impulsivity – 67 points.

Expressiveness/practicality – 52 points.

This fact indicates that the subject’s psyche is directed towards extraversion. Typical extroverts are characterized by emotionality, sociability, love entertainment and group events, have a large circle of friends and acquaintances, feel the need to communicate with people with whom they can talk and have a good time, do not like to bother themselves with work or study, gravitate towards sharp, exciting impressions, often take risks, act impulsively, thoughtlessly, on the first impulse. They have weakened control over feelings and actions, so they are prone to hot temper and aggressiveness. They adhere to moral principles, do not violate generally accepted norms of behavior in society and observe them even when the norms and rules seem to be an empty formality. He treats life as a game, committing actions that others see as manifestations of frivolity. A person who scores high on this factor satisfies his curiosity by showing interest in various aspects of life. Such a person often does not distinguish fiction from the realities of life. He often trusts his feelings and intuition rather than common sense, pays little attention to current daily affairs and responsibilities, and avoids routine work.

The subject scored average scores on the following factors:

Attachment/Separateness – 40 points.

Emotional stability / Emotional. instability - 43 points.

This indicates a person’s desire to be independent and self-reliant. Such people prefer to keep their distance and have a separate position when interacting with others. They avoid public assignments. They are tolerant of other people's shortcomings. They rarely understand those with whom they communicate. They are more concerned about their own problems than the problems of the people around them. They put their interests above the interests of other people and are always ready to defend them in competition. Such people usually strive for perfection. To achieve their goals, they use all means available to them, regardless of the interests of other people. Average values for the factor “Emotional Stability / Emotional Instability” characterize individuals who are unable to fully control their emotions and impulsive drives. In behavior this manifests itself as evasion from reality, capriciousness. Their behavior is largely determined by the situation. They anxiously expect troubles; in case of failure, they easily fall into despair and depression. Such people work worse in stressful situations in which they experience psychological stress. He is more often in a good mood than in a bad one.

Interpreting the results obtained on the PARi questionnaire (authors E.S. Schaefer, R.K. Bell), we found that for the first indicator “Attitude towards family role”, described using 8 signs, high scores are found for such signs :

Dependence on the family: limitation of a woman’s interests within the family, caring exclusively about the family;

Lack of independence and dependence of the mother (no dominance of the mother).

If we talk about low indicators, then we can highlight the following signs: “ family conflicts“, according to the parents, they are not present in the family and the indicator “husband’s indifference” also has low values - this, on the contrary, means his involvement in family affairs.

The second indicator, “Attitude of parents towards the child,” includes a description of three more indicators:

1) According to the indicator “optimal emotional contact”, consisting of 4 signs (encouraging verbal manifestations (verbalization); partnerships; development of the child’s activity; egalitarian relations between parents and child), we found that all signs have average values. We conclude that, according to the parents, there is good emotional contact in their family;

2) Looking at the digital data on the indicator “excessive emotional distance with the child,” which consists of 3 signs, we found that the signs “irritability, hot temper” and “severity, excessive severity” have high scores. This indicates the presence of these signs in parents in relation to the child;

3) According to the indicator “excessive concentration on the child” (described by 8 signs), the following signs have high scores:

excessive caring, establishing dependent relationships

creating security, fear of offending

exclusion of extra-family influences

excessive interference in the child's world.

Thus, we discovered the problem of disharmonious relationships in the adoptive family: the subject is overprotected by the adoptive parents Andestablish a relationship of dependence, but the child, due to his individual psychological characteristics, is irritated by this situation and leads to aggression in their direction. On this basis, disharmonious relationships and conflicts arise in the family.

In connection with the obtained result, we recommend that adoptive parents reduce the amount of guardianship over the child, because excessive care and the establishment of a dependent relationship with the parents does not allow the guy to become independent and self-sufficient, as he wants. It is advisable to conduct training with the family to reduce irritability and temper. We also offer joint leisure activities:

Family Readings or fun conversation. Time spent playing board games (playing Monopoly will help bring people together, and twister will cheer you up and have fun); It will be very interesting and original to collect custom-made puzzles together, so you can order a joint family photo or a photo of the family pet.

A joint visit to a cinema or theater performance, a trip to a circus or an amusement park;

We offer the whole family to play sports; family leisure can be diversified by trips to nature, to the forest or to the lake, which will help improve the health of each family member;

Among other things, you can visit educational institutions and take away something new from visiting a museum or exhibition. useful information;

All this will unite the family and have a beneficial effect on the atmosphere within the family. Do not forget that the child should be given time for individual pastime, and there is no need to interfere excessively in his world.

LIST OF SOURCES USED

1. Akkerman N.A. The role of the family in the emergence of disorders in children // Family psychotherapy. - St. Petersburg: Publishing house "Peter", 2000.

2. Baburin S.N. Handbook on adoption and guardianship in the Russian Federation. - M., 2004.

3. Bayard R.T., Bayard D. Your restless teenager. - M., 1991.

4. Basalaeva N.V., Kolokolnikova Z.U., Mitrosenko S.V. Technologies for working with foster families. - Lesosibirsk, 2013.

5. Krasnitskaya G.S., Prikhozhan A.M. You have decided to adopt a child. - M., 2001.

6. Morozova E.I. Problem children and orphans. Advice for educators and guardians. - M., 2002.

7. Eidemiller E.G. Methods of family diagnostics and family psychotherapy. - M. - St. Petersburg: Folium, 1996.

Federal Agency for Education

State educational institution

Higher professional education

"East Siberian State Academy of Education"

Pedagogical Institute

Department of Pedagogy

Parental attitude of the adoptive parent

Completed:

Terentyeva Ekaterina, Teterina Natalya,

Ropel Alina, Kuznetsova Ekaterina

Irkutsk 2011

Introduction

When raising adopted children, foster families often face a number of problems and need qualified help from psychologists to diagnose and correct not only the child’s individual characteristics, but also intra-family relationships.

Adoptive family- this is a legal form of fostering children left without parental care on the basis of an agreement concluded between citizens who want to foster a child and the guardianship and trusteeship authority.

Adoptive parents can be both spouses and individual citizens of both sexes.

The selection of adoptive parents is carried out by the guardianship and trusteeship authorities. This takes into account their moral and other personal qualities, ability to raise a child, the relationship between them and the child and the attitude of other members of their family towards the child.

The following persons cannot be adoptive parents:

recognized by the court as incompetent or partially capable;

deprived of parental rights by court or limited by court in parental rights;

removed from the duties of a guardian (trustee);

former adoptive parents, if the adoption was canceled by the court due to their fault;

persons who, for health reasons, are unable to fulfill the responsibilities of raising a child (patients with tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases and other serious illnesses

In the last decade, our country has seen an increase in the number of orphans and street children. At the same time, the number of adoptions is increasing, and new options for placing children deprived of parental care are emerging.

When raising adopted children, foster families often face a number of problems and need qualified help from psychologists (and sometimes psychiatrists) to diagnose and correct not only the individual characteristics of the child, but also intra-family relationships and the functioning of the foster family as a whole.

Let's look at dysfunctional family rules and boundaries that can negatively impact parent-child relationships in stepfamilies.

· Families with rigidity family rules.

The birth of a child is associated with the need to change the habits and rules of the entire family, often the family is not ready for this. Child-parent relationships are characterized by coldness; parents are disappointed in the child and dissatisfied with family functioning. The child is characterized by a negative self-attitude and lack of emotional and personal communication with adoptive parents.

· Families with strict family roles. If the system accepts the child, coming into balance with his appearance, then any change social situation in the future, or simply changes in the child due to development or other factors can lead to a loosening of the system. In such a situation, the family must “adapt” to changes, which can be difficult due to the rigidity of family roles and functions. As a result, either a crisis or symptomatic behavior occurs, or the child is removed from the system (for example, hospitalized). Child-parent relationships are accompanied by parents' uncertainty in the child, frequent disappointments in him, and lack of acceptance of the child as a whole. Children are characterized by a negative self-attitude, aggressive manifestations, and antisocial behavior.

· Situational need for a foster child. In cases where, some time after the adoption of the child, changes in the family situation occur, and the adopted child was needed to solve situational problems, problems may also arise in the parent-child relationship. For example, if parents adopted a child because their own daughter grew up and left home, then when she returns to live with her parents, problems may arise in her relationship with the adopted child.

The nature of parent-child relationships when raising adopted children is determined by 3 key factors:

· motive for adoption;

· the presence or absence of secrecy of adoption and the attitude of adoptive parents towards the child’s natural parents;

· degree of flexibility-rigidity of the family system.

Classification of types of parental attitudes towards children

One of the main psychological and pedagogical concepts for identifying different types family education is the style of parental relationship, or style of education. As a socio-psychological concept, style denotes a set of ways and techniques of communication in relation to a partner. There are general, characteristic and specific communication styles.

Most often in psychological and pedagogical research, two criteria are used to determine and analyze parental attitudes:

· degree of emotional closeness, warmth of parents to the child (love, acceptance, warmth or emotional rejection, coldness)

· degree of control over his behavior (high - with a large number of restrictions, prohibitions; low - with minimal prohibitive tendencies).

Taking into account the combination of extreme variants of the manifestation of these factors (criteria) allows us to more accurately characterize the parental attitude and corresponding behavior. There are four types of education:

.Liberal (warm relationships, low level of control).

.Indifferent (cold relationships, low level of control).

In psychology it is described various options parental positions, attitudes, parental (usually maternal) attitude:

· Symbiosis (excessive emotional closeness), authoritarianism, emotional rejection (“little loser”) (A. Ya. Varga)

· Support, permission; adaptation to the child's needs; a formal sense of duty in the absence of genuine interest in the child; inconsistent behavior (V. N. Druzhinin).

· Cooperation, isolation, competition, pseudo-cooperation.

· A positive model of behavior is flexible or balanced, where various techniques are used not automatically, but consciously, taking into account the consequences of one’s actions (V. Satir).

The optimal parenting position must meet three main requirements:

1. Adequacythe position of an adult is based on a real, accurate assessment of the characteristics of his child, on the ability to see, understand and respect his individuality. A parent should not concentrate only on what he basically wants to achieve from his child; knowledge and consideration of his capabilities and inclinations is the most important condition for successful development.

2. FlexibilityThe parental position is considered as the readiness and ability to change the style of communication, ways of influencing the child as he grows up and in connection with various changes in the living conditions of the family. A “ossified”, infantilizing position leads to barriers to communication, outbreaks of disobedience, rebellion and protest in response to any demands.

3. Predictivenessposition is expressed in its orientation towards the child’s “zone of proximal development” and towards the tasks of tomorrow; This is a proactive initiative by an adult aimed at changing the general approach to the child, taking into account the prospects for his development.

Thus, modern parents must have the most important ability to reflect on individual and age characteristics child, readiness to consciously search for the most effective style of his individual upbringing.

child parent foster family adoption

Let's consider the dysfunctional motives for adopting children, which can lead to certain difficulties in raising adopted children, and sometimes to tragedies.

The relationship of parents with adopted children, depending on the dysfunctional motives for adoption, looks like this:

Motive one. In the history of the family there was the death of a child, and the parents want to find a replacement for him. In this case, the child-parent relationship is characterized by a symbiotic interaction; the child is “loaded” with certain expectations from the parents, who do not take into account his individual psychological characteristics. The child is characterized by a negative self-attitude, low self-esteem, and suffers from a lack of emotional contact with his parents. Such a family has rigid external boundaries and blurred internal ones. Family members are characterized by rigidity in choosing roles and inflexibility, the same applies to family rules. In a family there are many rules governing communication, and hidden conflicts between spouses are likely.

Second motive.The family cannot have children for medical reasons, so they decide to adopt a child. Here, parent-child relationships are characterized by overprotection, a large number of parents’ expectations about the child, and families are characterized by problems in marital relationships. Family cohesion is high, with mother and child united and the father on the periphery. As a private option, we can consider those cases when there are no children of a certain gender, and the adopted child is selected based on gender. A special feature of this particular case is the even greater number of expectations from the child and fantasies about him at the time of adoption and during the upbringing of adopted children.

The third motive.The family wants to “do a good deed”, take a child into the family, caring for children in general and wanting to help them with deeds. At the same time, child-parent relationships are characterized by a symbiotic attachment, the need for parents to constantly express gratitude for their actions. Adoptive parents are characterized by a special need for love, a lack of it, which is associated with a lack of love in the marital subsystem.

Motive four.A family takes in an adopted child to realize his teaching abilities, wanting to use successful upbringing to turn a “difficult” child into a worthy and successful one. Adoptive parents of this type are characterized by a constantly anxious expectation of the “manifestation of an unfavorable gene pool,” distrust of themselves as a parent, and idealization of the family situation. In this case, there are two types of behavior of parents when raising adopted children. In the first case, parents often turn to doctors and psychologists for help; often their children are in hospitals for treatment. In the second case, parents put upbringing at the center; they actively study literature, visit and organize various communities in which topics related to raising adopted children are discussed. Here there is a lack of trust in oneself as a parent, a fear of being a bad parent, a desire to constantly show and prove one’s love and care for the child.

Fifth motive.A single woman, without her own family, decides to create one by adopting a child into an incomplete family. The child has the responsibility to make his adoptive mother happy, because that’s why he was taken. The child functionally and psychologically plays the role of a spouse; the boundaries between the child and parental subsystems are blurred. There is also a great connection between the individual characteristics of the child, the nature of his relationship with the adoptive parents and the presence of the secret of adoption in the family, as well as the attitude of the adoptive parents towards the child’s natural parents.

There is also a great connection between the individual characteristics of the child, the nature of his relationship with the adoptive parents and the presence of the secret of adoption in the family, as well as the attitude of the adoptive parents towards the child’s natural parents.

Let's consider how the presence of a secret adoption can cause dysfunction in the relationship between children and adoptive parents.

1) The presence of a secret adoption in the family; the child does not know that he is adopted. On the part of parents, there is a constant fear of revealing the secret, anxiety, suspicion, the relationship between parents and child loses its clarity. The child is characterized by anxiety, negative self-attitude, and lack of communication with loved ones. Communication in the family is disrupted, external boundaries are very strict, the family is closed from society, and is wary of everything outside of it. Such families are characterized by increased cohesion and isolation, and many rules governing communications. Parents who tell someone (a doctor or psychologist) the secret of adoption enter into a coalition with this specialist.

) The family had a secret of adoption, but it was unexpectedly revealed (the child found out that he was adopted by accident). Child-parent relationships are characterized by distrust of the child’s adoptive parents and disappointment of all family members. The child is characterized by aggression towards his natural and adoptive parents, and fantasies about his natural parents develop. The fear of losing family is observed both in the child and in the parents.

) There is formally no secret in the family, but the child only knows the fact of adoption or he does not have enough information about it. The child has a disturbed idea of the family as a whole, of its boundaries, and there is a fear of losing the family. Such children include strangers in the family, cannot name relatives, identify family relations. In the end, the child develops a latent desire for his own family.

) There is no secret of adoption in the family, but the role of natural parents is devalued. The child is characterized by a negative self-attitude, since by devaluing the natural parents, the adoptive parents partially devalue the child himself. The parents themselves see family relationships as prosperous and idealize them.

Since the appearance of an adopted child in a family requires a change in existing family relationships, much in the relationship with him depends on how easily the family adapts to the changing demands of the environment and the intrafamily situation.

Parental attitude

The concept of parental relationship is the most general and indicates the mutual connection and interdependence of parent and child. The parental attitude includes a subjective-evaluative, consciously selective idea of the child, which determines the characteristics of parental perception, the method of communication with the child, and the nature of the methods of influencing him. As a rule, the structure of the parental relationship is divided into emotional, cognitive and behavioral components. The concepts of parental position and parental attitude are used as synonyms of parental attitude, but differ in the degree of awareness. The parental position is more likely associated with consciously accepted, developed views and intentions; installation is less clear.

The nature and degree of influence of the parental relationship on the child is determined by many individual factors and, above all, the personality of the parent himself as the subject of interaction:

religiosity;

social status;

Considering the interdependence of relationships in the family, they are described through the roles that the child performs. According to A. S. Spivakovskaya, the role of a child can be clearly identified in a disharmonious family, where they treat each other in a formulaic, stereotypical manner, maintaining for years a frozen, rigid relationship that no longer corresponds to reality. A role is a set of patterns of behavior towards a child in a family, a combination of feelings, expectations, actions, assessments addressed to the child by adults

The nature and degree of influence on the child is determined by many individual factors and, above all, the personality of the parent himself as the subject of interaction:

its gender (same as the child’s or opposite);

age (young, teenage mother, elderly parent, parent of a late child);

temperament and character traits of the parent (active, impatient, hot-tempered, domineering, indulgent, careless, restrained, etc.);

religiosity;

national and cultural affiliation (European, English, German, Japanese, American and other models of education);

social status;

professional affiliation;

level of general and pedagogical culture.

The formation of parental behavior and adaptation to the role of a parent is one of the main directions of personal development of an adult. The difficulty of this task is that it cannot be solved once and for all: as the child grows and matures, the parental role changes many times and is filled with more and more new content. A child goes through certain stages in his development, but his parents also go through one natural stage after another, and each stage has its own specific task, features, dangers, difficulties

Bibliography

1.Druzhinin V.N. Family psychology - St. Petersburg: Peter, 2006.

2.Kryukova T.L., Saporovskaya M.V., Kuftyak E.V. Family psychology: life difficulties and coping with them - St. Petersburg: Rech Publishing House, 2005.

.Karabanova O.A. Psychology of family relationships with the basics of family counseling. - M., 2006.

.Chernikov A.V. Systemic family therapy. - M.., 2008.

.Analytical material on identifying and placing children without parental care // Bulletin of Education, 2001

.Savateeva T. Relatives among strangers and strangers among relatives // RG. 1995

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