NVR: an adoptee’s account

This was written by Georgie Q in response to our recent blog on nonviolent resistance training for adoptive parents. It contains descriptions of physical and emotional abuse, self harm and an eating disorder.

When I was young, adoptive families could access subsidised therapy to help their newly-adopted child adapt. We got one such therapist. My adoptive mother was narcissistic and controlling. She didn’t like that my first therapist was asking questions about her and my adoptive father. In her eyes, all the questions should be about me and “my history”—in other words, the blame for our problems should be on me and my baggage. So she rang and readily demanded a different therapist. Oh, and she wanted to now be a part of the sessions. Goodbye, privacy. This new therapist was a keen adopter of many children who provided a kind of music therapy intended to get us to bond through the use of harmony and teamwork. From her, my adoptive mother learned a kind of non-violent resistance (though it was not called by that name). The therapist was bad enough, shouting at me and blaming me for our family problems, but my mother took her recommendations and tailored them perfectly to her needs. Her new behaviour followed a particular pattern, which went something like this:

1) provoke an argument by loudly and publicly bullying “it” (as I was sometimes called). I was ugly, disgusting, stupid, a moron, etc.

2) lock herself in a room when I started to react aggressively and ring my adoptive dad to complain that I was “out of control”, and finally

3) physically restrain me and sit on my back until I “calmed down”. This was the goal, and I still remember the pleasure in her face when she would get to restrain me.

Sometimes, the alternative was to lock me out of the house for hours at a time because she “needed a break”. Her responsibilities to ensure my well-being would have to take a back seat. I took to hanging out in the dodgier parks in the area.

When we were out together, I was made to sit in the car for hours while she did what she wanted to do; or, if I was allowed to walk around the shops with her, I had to walk at least six feet—sometimes eight—behind her. She would say simply, “I don’t want to be seen with you”. I spent most days over summer breaks in the public library, for about the length of time I now spend at work each day. I would cross the street to Waitrose to go to the bathroom. Most strangely, she would occasionally be parked outside watching, and would challenge me when I went to Waitrose—was I going to buy contraband snacks?

These techniques of reticence, surveillance, removal, restraint and her own empowerment above all else were taught to her by that accredited and seemingly much-admired therapist who, according to her LinkedIn, now supervises therapists. 

So I am not surprised by this NVR course at all—remember that Adoption UK is a charity set up “by adopters, for adopters”. In the course description, they eerily give nothing away as to the techniques they will teach adoptive parents. “Practical solutions.” I wonder if they still teach them to sit on children and to demand a hug to make up after the fact. I remember those hugs more viscerally than I remember the restraint.

I also remember the smug look on my adoptive mum’s face every time we came out of our subsidised therapy. It offered her a place to see me berated for ruining our “family”, and to receive positive feedback about her efforts. Looking back, the very practice of musical therapy as “creating harmonies” to facilitate bonding now feels like a horror show. These were strange people I had no intention of bonding with, and yet I had no choice in the matter. Conform or be returned. That was the message.

The course providers of the current training describe adopted kids’ behaviour as “controlling”. Of course, trauma often causes socially unacceptable, even dangerous, behaviours. But perhaps the behaviour they’re referencing is better described as rebellion. Adoptees are expected to accept their loss and act as though these strangers are our parents. They aren’t. I’d go so far as to say it’s natural, even commendable, to rebel against lies.

At any rate, it is a sick joke for the powerful to employ the language of resistance to facilitate the suppression of the more vulnerable in society, such as children. This is precisely the project of courses like these. Many adopters see themselves eternally as victims, their adopted children as problems to be solved. Real nonviolent resistance is a bold practice in the face of oppression. This is the comparison Adoption UK and other providers are making. This is how they characterise adopted children. The children themselves are oppressive. The language is violent, and it is on full display.

I know now that I was characterised as a “problem child”, one for whom these “non-violent practices” of restraint and adopter empowerment were recommended. My tantrums were loud, my tongue was sharp, and my rage was quick to appear. But as an adult, I know where this violence was learned: my adoptive dad threw me down the stairs and flung plates at my head, as did my adoptive mum. She told me I should kill myself, and that nobody would care. I want to advocate for my childhood self. While my rage was clearly explosive, it was largely directed at myself—I broke my own toys, ripped my own books—though I did also take a strange delight in unwinding the cassette tapes that belonged to my adoptive sister. The course description references “smashed objects” in the house, ostensibly caused by the problem child. To begin with, the only smashed objects in my house were thrown by my adopters. Countless mugs of tea, plates, headphones. It seemed to calm them down. So I learned to throw things too.

I will say that the non-violent restraint worked, in its way. I learned to stop throwing things at the wall, and to stop screaming. Instead, I turned my trauma inward and learned to self-harm, from which I still have the scars, and started to make myself sick after eating. When my school reported my self-harm to my parents at home, it was met with more rage. And when my adoptive mum told me to kill myself? She was enraged at finding me with two fingers down my throat over the toilet.

In their eyes, they learned to suppress my outward “violence”, after finding “therapeutic” advice for the problem child worthy of being an experimental subject for these practices, and so I won too. I got to stop going to the haunting music therapy.

You might think this therapist was simply too clueless to see what was happening in our family, which would be bad enough. But she too kept me after therapy one day for hours to “give my parents a break” and over a plate of coronation chicken, shouted at me about how lucky I was, how grateful I should be, and how close I was to being “sent back”. This philosophy is ingrained into many adopters. They expect gratitude. We are lucky.

The issue is not the content of the course, ultimately. We know that if the scientists still supported violent discipline, that is what these charities would favour. They go out of their way to specify that the course is “not behaviour management” but instead “raising parental presence”. Loophole after loophole. The child in me trembles. When beating is no longer accepted, they move to behaviour management. When behaviour management is taken off the table, they teach NVR. Their real intent is right there in their language. To mould the adopted (or, acquired) child to fit the acquiring family’s needs. According to the course description, it is the adoptive parents who will come away “feeling empowered and stronger”—not the adopted child who has faced trauma these adopters can’t comprehend. The priority remains, as it always will for these people, maintaining the fantasy of a family which does not exist.

The insidious characterisation of an adopter defending themself against a child deliberately ignores the strength, dominance and power of the adoptive family and all the provisions that exist to support them. This means that the adoption support sector sees adoptive parents, with their money, house keys, control of the narrative, cars, physical might, friends, fully-developed brains, insight, use of the internet, supportive charitable organisations, and ability to make rational choices, as the victims of oppression. Their oppressor? The tyrannical child. How strong these children must feel. How in charge, how powerful.

It’s time people stopped taking training courses from adoption charities just because they have the word “adoption” in the name. It’s time such charities were prevented from being able to offer such advice to adoptive parents without proper supervision and input from adoptees who suffered under such experiences.

Children are not abusers. Adopters are trapped not by their acquired property, but by their own fear of failure, and fear of shattering their family fantasy beyond repair. They, and charities who represent adoptive families, conveniently choose to forget that there is someone else trapped for their very fantasy to exist in the first place. I no longer have sympathy for adopters who “didn’t realise” that their new ward might exhibit unpleasant behaviours, suffer from PTSD, or be filled with distrust and incomprehensible rage. This is not a new problem, nor is it one that love (even perfect love) can solve. I used to feel something for these parents. I felt guilty for my own behaviour. But how precisely, in the age of information, does one haplessly wander into adoption unaware that you might bring home a knife-wielding, insatiable tiger, regardless of how nice or nasty their biological family was? It should be pretty clear, with all our collective knowledge about perinatal trauma, neuroscience, and psychology of grief, that we can expect children whose childhoods have been characterised by loss to behave in scary, socially unacceptable, sometimes dangerous ways.

The fact is, adoption as a fantasy persists simply because children are unable to consent. As adults, neither you nor I would consent to being legally assigned a new family tomorrow selected for us by the state, no matter how awful our first. Were that state to demand I maintain such a fantasy with my newly-assigned husband, I can only hope I’d be in a position to rebel. But children who rebel, children who grieve their loss in socially unacceptable ways, are charged with the title of “problem”, are described as “controlling”, and are sent back to care. It is sickening of them to use such language as resistance with the power they wield.

Sometimes as I potter about, I remember a cold scene from my childhood. I was watching in awe my adoptive sister, older by five years, drive out of the avenue on one of her first driving lessons. My adoptive mother turned and told me firmly, “Don’t get any ideas. You’ll never drive my car.” How would a problem child react in such a situation? Well, I slunk away upstairs and cried. I wish I’d smashed her prized stained glass windows. I wish I’d screamed loud enough for someone to come running. I wish I’d been more of a problem. Because it’s time for problem adoptees to be heard.