A couple of years ago I came across classes for adopters on nonviolent resistance (NVR). At first I wondered “what are they protesting?” I was horrified to find out that the term was being used in relation to parenting adopted children.
The idea of nonviolent resistance was first used by Gandhi and was adopted by subsequent titans in civil rights movements globally. Men like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela used these tactics to rebel against racist and oppressive regimes. I had never heard of them being used in relation to raising children and I can’t tell you how offensive I find it as a woman of colour to see a concept used for over a century in civil rights struggles being taken and used in this context. It is being deployed against vulnerable children—children who have been through more in their small lives than most of us can even contemplate.
The language implies that violent resistance is an option but when I last looked, violent resistance against your child is classed as assault and thoroughly illegal. This language also positions the child as a perpetrator or oppressor, thus continuing the damaging myth that adoptees have either ‘bad blood’ or ‘trauma inflicted before adoption’ (or both).
Some organisations and individuals profit from selling NVR courses for adopters in England and Wales, and they take government money including in England via Regional Adoption Agencies and the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund (ASGSF), which was designed to provide therapeutic interventions for adoptees. Yet here it is being used to teach parents how to manage behaviour. Preparation to welcome a traumatised child into your house should be done before said child even steps foot in your house. Complaining after the fact that parenting is tougher than you imagined is just not good enough and can be supremely damaging for the child, not least because it implies that they are the problem, or a disappointment, and you are the victim or some kind of martyr. Adoptees already feel we are not enough, or that we have been brought into a family to fulfill a certain function or play a certain role. Being treated as someone to be controlled and managed only reinforces these beliefs. This level of unpreparedness surely contributes to the large numbers of adopted children being returned to care.
The NVR phenomenon also highlights the imbalances inherent in adoption. Where are the equivalent courses for the children because there are plenty of children at risk of abuse within their adoption, history tells us that. The children are without a voice, while organisations and individuals profit from their trauma yet offer nothing of value in return.
This lack of care continues into adulthood. There is virtually no post adoption support for adult adoptees which means accessing any form of help is difficult, and mental health services which are already stretched are not set up for adoptees with complex mental health needs.
This vilification of adoptees has to stop. This self-victimisation of adopters has to stop. Adopters are adults who make a decision to welcome a child into their home. They have the agency, and they supposedly have the training, so why are they blaming vulnerable, traumatised children for reacting to being in a situation (living with strangers) which is unnatural and completely beyond their control?