Reflecting on ATN’s 30th anniversary and my 16 years as Executive Director always leads me to the observation of how much has changed since the 1990s when it comes to our understanding of early childhood trauma, attachment disorders and what children and families need. Like many of my colleagues at ATN, I walked into this field through my family’s adoption and my quest to help our adopted child grow and thrive.
But a recent report from the UK produced by The Potato Group, tells me that for many adoptive families, perhaps not as much has changed as we’d hoped. This group, Parents of Traumatised Adopted Teenagers Organisation (POTATO) is an established peer-to-peer support group for the parents of adopted teens and young adults. The findings in their report aren’t surprising, but it is disappointing that in 2025 we still have adoptive families with significant struggles due to attachment trauma.
One thing that has definitely improved is the awareness that attachment disorders arise due to the earliest of childhood trauma…and for adopted children this means the loss of their primary caregiver, as well as often additional caregiver losses through out fostering. This reality is commonly understood by those in child welfare now, and that knowledge is passed along to foster care families and adoptive parents alike.
Yet this recent report highlighted that many of these teens and young adults, and their families continue to struggle due to this childhood trauma and that there are not many services or supports for these families during these years of transition. This report documented significant mental health challenges, including 25% of the teens/young adults attempting suicide, 59% self-harming and nearly all being reported as anxious or hypervigilant.
Fifty-six percent of the adoptees struggled with school exclusions and many had involvement with the justice system. Most parents (75%) reported child-to-parent violence or risk of sibling violence (66%). And 1 in 4 families in this study were “parenting from a distance”, meaning their adopted child was not residing with the family but was in treatment, hospitalized or otherwise living elsewhere. The report also documented the long-term impact on the parents and families including more than 1/3 of the parents’ need to stop working to provide care and that 82% of the families experienced reduced income.
While I’m not aware of any data in the US that could compare to this report, anecdotally, I have to agree that there are many adopted teens and young adults who continue to struggle and their families who have been impacted in similar ways to those cited in this study. Yet things are better than 30 years ago, and this report cites that too.
- Therapeutic Parenting is cited as the “must have” knowledge for adoptive parents. The understanding of how trauma impacts attachment and what helped to heal relational trauma through the steps of high structure-high nurture parenting has been an incredible tool for pre-adoptive and post-adoptive trainings everywhere. “Therapeutic Parenting” is the most searched term that leads people to ATN’s website.
- Interventions that truly help have been identified – Theraplay, DDP, EMDR and DBT to name a few. How easily these interventions are to access remains a challenge in many areas, but more and more professionals are using these tools.
- Awareness that teen years and young adult years are fraught with challenges. A deeper understanding of attachment and decades of observing adoptive families has brought a greater awareness that the emotional separation that happens during adolescence is particularly precarious for our adoptive children with trauma backgrounds.
The report cites several areas of improvement needed, but two stood out for me, because I know them to be true here in the US as well:
- The sheer lack of understanding about Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). Many of the adoptees in the study showed signs or had history of prenatal exposure, but had not be diagnosed and had not received interventions for the impacts of FASD. It remains under-identified and under-treated in this population.
- Lack of wrap-around support with access to practical resources, respite, family therapy and trained professionals. My take on this report was that POTATO is peer support for parents who need it the most – adoptive parents navigating some severe situations with their children who have been highly impacted by childhood trauma. These are the families most in need of the full complement of resources to enable them to support and care for their children during this important transition into adulthood.
