Yesterday, I talked about the topic of foster and adopted children who feel unwanted, particularly older adopted children who had to wait for homes. Today I would like to focus upon how experiencing child abuse and/or neglect can make these feelings of being “unwanted” even worse.

I was never separated from my birth parents, placed into a foster home, or forced to wait for adoptive parents to “choose” me, but I can relate very deeply to growing up feeling unwanted. In my case, these deep-seated feelings of being “unwanted” come from years of being abused as a child. When you are being parented by people who hurt you and/or enable others to hurt you, you do not feel valued or “wanted.” So, whenever I watch or read about adoptees feeling unwanted, their feelings resonate very deeply within me even though I am not an adoptee myself.

The reason I bring this up is because, if you are parenting a foster or adopted child who has been abused, you are dealing with a double-whammy, especially if the child had to wait for an adoptive home. The child first lived in a home in which he was not valued as a person, and he internalized the abuse or neglect as defining his worth as a person. Then, the child entered into a foster home or orphanage, where these feelings of being unwanted were fueled even further as he had to wait for someone to “choose” him. This reinforcement of a child’s deepest fears and pain is going to make healing these emotional wounds much harder to do.

I was fascinated to read Julia’s blog entry entitled Many Children Hear Voices Yet Remain Mentally Healthy. I was also fascinated by the article she referenced.

As someone recovering from dissociative identity disorder (DID – formerly known as multiple personality disorder), I always question whether these studies about “hearing voices” are accurate because there is a big difference between hearing auditory voices, as is experienced by some with schizophrenia, and “experiencing loud thoughts,” which is what those of us with DID experience. I am not sure that those conducting the study understand the difference, much less the seven- and eight-year-old subjects of the study.

From what I understand, those with schizophrenia hear audible voices. My mother has many symptoms of schizophrenia but has never chosen to be evaluated for it. One of her symptoms is “hearing God” talk to her. Especially when she is under enormous stress (such as after my father passed away suddenly), “God” will “talk” to my mother, and she claims to “hear” him as if a person was in the room with her. This is very different from what those with DID experience.

If you are parenting a foster or adopted child who was abused, you will likely have to deal with your child’s struggles with suicidal urges. Of course, this is not true of every single abused child, but the vast majority of child abuse survivors do at least consider suicide at some point in their lives, so you need to think about the issue of suicide if you are parenting an abused child.

In my opinion, society has given suicidal urges a bad rap. No, I am not proposing that we all go out and celebrate suicide, nor do I think suicide should be encouraged. What I am saying is that most abused children do struggle with suicidal urges – enough that I would say that considering suicide is a “normal” aftereffect of child abuse. Therefore, to tell an abused child that he is “sinning” and “wrong” to think about suicide is to heap additional guilt on someone who is already hurting very deeply. That very guilt could be what puts some traumatized children over the edge, causing the suicidal urges to move from thoughts into deeds.

Here is a depressing thought to consider at the close of the year – child abuse fatalities are on the rise. According to a report posted on the Every Child Matters website, 10,440 children died from child abuse and neglect from 2001 through 2007. That is a sobering statistic.

Here are more disturbing statistics from the same report: In 2001, 1,300 children died from child abuse or neglect in the United States. In 2007, the number rose to 1,760. Seventy five percent of the children were under age four, 13% were 4-7 years old, and 11% were 8 or older.

It gets worse. In thousands of these cases, people had contacted child protective services because they were concerned about the children being in danger. Unfortunately, thanks to tight budgets and staff that is stretched too thin, these children’s lives were not saved.

According to this report, these numbers might actually be low. The report states: