'At Some Point, They Broke Me': Why Adopted Children Remain Abandoned

“You’re five years old. You’re hungry. You’re with two brothers and sisters in an unfamiliar room where your mother brought you. She sometimes comes to visit you at the orphanage, but never takes you with her.”

This is how 24-year-old Anastasia describes her childhood. Since age five, she has been a «state» child among orphans. The girl shared what it’s like to grow up in an orphanage and then in a foster family.

“My Mother Is a Huge Lesson for Me”

Anastasia was born into a family with five children: her, her twin brother, twin girls, and a younger brother. They were born into a complete family with a mother and father. They had no housing of their own, so they had to squeeze into a construction trailer. Money was tight, so the father decided to commit a crime and stole an aluminum pipe from the construction site where he worked. That landed him behind bars, leaving the family without a breadwinner.

Anastasia’s mother was left alone with five children. Food was scarce, and housing was a problem: they had to sleep at friends« places, in church—basically wherever they could. When it became too hard for the mother to raise and feed the children, she decided to put them in an orphanage. Anastasia doesn’t remember how her mother first brought them there. Her memory blocked out the traumatic recollections.

“I only remember that she came to visit us. This was already the second time she had placed us in the orphanage. It was hard for her with us: there were five of us. Imagine, in three years she gave birth three times—all close in age,” the interviewee for MSK1.RU explains. “As long as I can remember, she always came with bags of food, brought toys. And at first, she managed to take us back. Then, apparently, it became hard for her again.”

According to Anastasia’s memories, at times her mother managed to get back on her feet and take the children home. But not for long.

“The low point was when we spent one night sleeping in a kindergarten, in a gazebo outside. Apparently, there was nowhere to go. Then we were taken away. She came to visit us, but she was forbidden. The process to terminate her parental rights began. Plus, they started showing us to foster families. And it’s not in the guardianship’s interest for us to communicate with our parents. But we missed our birth mother. And of course, when strange men and women come to see us, we don’t want to go with them, we want to be with our birth mother.”

Anastasia never saw her mother again. The woman died in 2008. That same year, her father also died. She knows nothing about his final years, nor where he is buried. She only knows it was a mass grave.

Distant relatives, as far as Anastasia remembers, showed no attention to the family drowning in the system. They didn’t visit the children or try to take them in. Anastasia learned of their existence after coming of age. Her mother’s birth sister wrote to her on social media. They talked. Anastasia didn’t ask why they didn’t help. She only asked for a photo of her mother for a cemetery monument.

“She just appeared, said I have cousins. I can write to her sometimes, ask for some information about our mother,” Anastasia said. “Otherwise, we know they exist, where they live. And we don’t know any more than that.”

So, Anastasia, along with her brother and the other children, remained in the orphanage. Life there was no bed of roses. The kids were disciplined with a belt for any misdeed.

“I remember one woman. She was heavy-set, with short hair. She would beat us straight with a belt. There were about ten children in our group, and everyone was beaten,” Anastasia recalls. “We could be beaten there for not wanting to eat, for not being able to sleep. We weren’t used to the system yet then. And that moment of physical impact… I was afraid of her. Also, in childhood we all suffered from dystrophy. We had a constant feeling of hunger.”

The girls and boys had their hair cut short, since none of the caregivers cared about the children’s hair beauty. Moreover, when a lice epidemic appeared, it was easier to shave everyone’s heads than to treat them.

Among pleasant memories, Anastasia remembers that every morning in the orphanage they were awakened by Tanya Bulanova’s song “My Clear Light.” Back then, she recalls, all the caregivers were still pleasant and rested.

“Foster Parents Returned Me to the Orphanage Twice”

Only those who have completed foster parent school are allowed to foster or adopt. And then those interested choose children by photo or come to the orphanage to look at them, like vegetables at a market.

“Usually we’re playing, they don’t tell us anything, and suddenly parents come in. They observe and choose. Then you’re taken out of the group and introduced if they liked you. I was taken out with my twin brother,” Anastasia recalls. “My foster parents told me more than once that they chose based on appearance.”

Anastasia and her brother were taken and returned twice. These were large families where they stayed for about a month each. The girl remembers little about that period. One detail that stuck in her memory is the presence of many double beds in the apartments.

“I have no answer why we were returned. Probably if I talked to those people now, I’d understand,” the girl explains. “I was reproached with these returns in the foster family.”

“They Took Me as a Friend for Their Daughter”

The third family that came to see Anastasia and her brother at the orphanage ended up taking them in. Besides them, they were raising three birth children. As the girl says, they quickly started calling the foster parents mom and dad. In passing, she even admitted that her birth and foster mothers looked alike. Such quick adaptation even won over the new guardians.

“They had one girl in the family and two boys. And that girl was a very long-awaited and late child,” the heroine said. “Initially, the story was: the girl was bored with boys, and the parents decided to get her a friend.”

Interestingly, Anastasia never became that girl’s friend. They were like cats and dogs. The sister was always elevated above Anastasia, and she too wanted to be a beloved daughter.

The foster children lacked for nothing, but at the same time the mother allowed herself to punish them physically and emotionally. Once, out of resentment towards Anastasia, they didn’t even congratulate her on her birthday.

“For the first three or four years everything was fine. After age 10, they started treating us differently. The birth children didn’t consider us equals. But again, it all comes from the parents,” she recalls. “I’ve heard more than once in my life: ‘If you misbehave, they’ll take you back.’ We weren’t allowed some things, as if they didn’t trust us. For example, they didn’t let me go out to play often. Even in terms of cleaning, if in the first years it was equal, in the last 5 years only my brother and I did all of it. The same with the foster grandmother. We took care of her because everyone else was squeamish.”

Anastasia caught hell from her mother for many misdeeds. She was even told more than once that she was a “difficult child.” She doesn’t like to talk about it much, admitting that now she feels more gratitude towards these people than hatred.

“First, I was a rebel, I talked a lot. Later I had a frank conversation with my foster father. I told him: ‘You can’t hurt children. You can find an approach to everyone.’ I said that as someone with an education in teaching. To that he told me I was a difficult child and at age six I called my mother an idiot. That was the level of grievances,” Anastasia says bitterly. “In my foster home, I was often told that my mouth would get me into trouble.”

At some point, the rebellious spirit was beaten out of Anastasia in the foster family. She then decided not to argue and just apologize for everything to make the conflict die down faster. It was a defense mechanism.

When the twins finished 11th grade, they firmly decided to move to another city and stop communicating with the foster family. Anastasia says they literally burned all bridges and went to a big city with five thousand rubles (about $50 at current rates).

“We tried several times to revive communication on my initiative. I just grew to love these people very much. But it all started over again. Physical and emotional abuse is not normal. At the same time, I still justify them, find some explanation for them, but forget that no one felt sorry for me. And I was a defenseless child.”

Building relationships with the foster brothers and sister also didn’t work out. As Anastasia says, “they defend their mother.” And she accepts that.

“Nevertheless, we are very grateful to them. All 5 children grew up maximally talented. I, for example, now do sports and SMM. My brother is also successful in his field. He’s starting a family.”

Life in the orphanage and foster family instilled a lifelong complex in Anastasia. Our heroine couldn’t stop endlessly apologizing for conflict situations in relationships for a long time. Even when she was right.

Should the Adoption System Be Changed?

This traumatic experience could have been lived through much more smoothly. Our heroine says that when she shared her story in a blog, many such children came to her. Their lives are similar: people faced cruelty and violence. This at least indicates that the quality of personnel selection when working with children leaves much to be desired.

“Foster parent school should not be conducted formally, just for ticking a box. It determines an adult’s ability not to harm children. Those wishing to take a child should undergo testing with proper psychologists,” the girl lists. “Second—improving staff competence. Children don’t trust adults. The main problem is that relationships with the child need to be built. Orphanage staff sympathize with parents, not children. For example, guardianship came to us every six months. By age 10, I had memorized answers to psychological tests because they never changed. What’s the point of those tests?”

Moreover, as Anastasia notes, not all foster parents are really ready to take a child from the system.

“First of all, they are not ready for the fact that children from orphanages are never ‘simple.’ They come into a family with trauma, with experience of loss, violence, hunger, loneliness. And this pain doesn’t disappear the moment the child is taken home. He may be closed-off, fearful, overly obedient or, conversely, protesting. This is not a ‘difficult character,’ not ‘whims’ and not ‘ingratitude.’ These are survival mechanisms,” the girl shared.

Earlier, people with an incurable disease—neurofibromatosis type I—shared their life stories. Three generations told about attitudes towards the diagnosis, difficulties, and how the defect was treated at different times.