As background information, some of you might want to know that children
with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome often have extremely poor social boundaries.
THeir behavior is sometimes quite similar to children who have been
sexually abused.  And provocative behavior of this kind unfortunately
can put children at risk of abuse, esp with adults who themselves have
poor interpersonal boundaries.

I personally know nothing at all about Michael Dorris. I do know that
sadly his family is not the first or last adoptive family to be visited
by this kind of tragedy.  In American culture, we are firm belief that
"when there is smoke, there is fire", even a family where the parent is
eventually exonorated may be shunned, isolated and torn apart forever.

Here we are on a listserve devoted to helping children get OPTIMAL
postnatal nutrition. I think it is worth recognizing the  heartbreak of
there being so many children whose destinies are shaped by such
detrimental prenatal nutrition.  In adoptive famiies, one of the ongoing
realities is that one's children's lives are continually shaped not just
by the knowledge of rejection but by the fact the mother who would do
anything in the world for them did not have the privilege of eating
properly and monitoring every substance that went into her mouth during
their precious first nine months of life.  And this loss, which is quite
real and unrelated to lack of genetic linkage between parent and child,
is something that adoptive parents of drug and alcohol exposed children
experience over and over again at each stage of their children's
development.

I don't know if Louise Edrich was writing about her biological children
or her adopted ones in that lovely poem. I do know that all children can
be wild but the work to civilize some is made so much harder by alcohol
and drugs and the toll of families can be enormous and unending.

Judy Gelman
Washington, DC

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