Finding the Real Child

Fort Worth, TX

5/1/2006

By Allison Fisher Speer ‘91

The breaking point for Stacie came when her 4-year-old adopted daughter, Kristen, shoved her 2-year-old sister down a flight of stairs, then ran down and repeatedly stomped on her.

“I called my husband and told him to meet me at the psych ward of Children’s Hospital (in Dallas),” Stacie remembers. “I was afraid of what I would do, and I knew I could not handle Kristen anymore.”

Less than five years earlier, Stacie and husband Carl had adopted two Russian babies, 8-month-old Kristen and 23-month-old Caleb, after giving up on having children of their own. The couple knew that children from foreign countries often came with emotional baggage, but they felt capable of handling any problems that arose. So capable that they adopted another girl, Ava, from Russia a year later.

From the beginning, baby Kristen would arch her back when rocked or held. She disliked snuggling, and only seemed happy when put down in her bed. Soon after the toddler years, “handling” Kristen meant surviving outbursts of kicking, screaming and growling. It meant never leaving her alone with other children, not even her two siblings. Entertaining dreams of rocking the child to sleep was a waste of time. Stacie accepted that her daughter was a statistic — the one in five adopted children diagnosed with behavioral disorders each year.

There are thousands of families like the Stacie’s — loving couples who just want to be successful parents to their adopted kids. And increasingly, these parents are passing the limits of their abilities.

The fortunate ones are finding TCU’s Institute for Child Development (ICD). Started in 1999 as a research project called Hope Connection by psychology Professor David Cross and then-graduate candidate Karyn Purvis ’97 (MS ’01, PhD ’03), the ICD is discovering groundbreaking answers to why children who suffer severe abuse and neglect in their earliest years have so much trouble developing normally.

It’s turning those answers into a therapeutic model that is drawing excited child development professionals worldwide to the small office suite in Winton Scott Hall where Purvis, now ICD director, and Cross are quietly creating miracles.

To say the miracles started with the right connection is no cliché. A serendipitous meeting in 1998 between Purvis, Cross and an adoptive mom resulted in Camp Hope, a three-week day camp that focused on the special needs of behaviorally at-risk children. With a small grant from Fort Worth’s Child Study Center, the first camp was held in 1999.

What happened astonished everyone. On the fifth morning, one mother arrived with tears streaming down her face, reporting newfound eye contact from her child. Another said her daughter asked to be held — a first.

“There was this amazing thing going on that was, at the same time, terrifying,” Purvis says. “I didn’t understand what happened and didn’t know how to keep it alive.” She consulted with experts at Harvard and other child psychology specialists. No one could explain what happened. “What we believe now is in this attachment-rich environment, the kids have brain chemistry changes, and with that, their language and behavior changes.”

In this real-life laboratory, Cross and Purvis were able to impact most of the kids, though many regressed when camp was over. For Cross, director of TCU’s Developmental Research Lab, this was the catalyst for providing more learning opportunities for parents.

“Our work has confirmed that these children’s aggressive behaviors are fear-based. We see the fear, the mental illness and anger disappear when they use words [instead of physical violence and anger] to deal with the pain and fear,” Purvis explained. “We think the greatest thing we can do is create an environment where they feel safe.”

In 2004, Gottfried Kellerman, director of Wisconsin-based NeuroScience, Inc., read the TCU findings. He furrowed his brow at the off-kilter levels of neurotransmitters such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin and histamine — all crucial to brain development.

“I checked the neurotransmitters at random. I had no idea they were related to behavioral issues,” he said. “But I thought if a correlation to the behavior and the neurotransmitter levels could be confirmed, we might be able to facilitate the change of certain behaviors on a more permanent level.”

Depending on the severity of a child’s behavior, the concentration of neurochemicals cannot always be altered. But Kellerman is sold on the combination of supplements and behavioral therapy as a prescription for families who have lost hope.

Enter Gottfrield Kellerman, a Wisconsin-based neuroscientist who was already studying neurotransmitters such as epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, serotonin and histamine — all crucial to brain development – in children. Purvis found Kellerman’s work so promising that camp was closed for the 2004 and 2005 sessions; priority No.1 became the neurotransmitter study — yet another project untouched by any known psychologists thus far.

“These improvements,” according to the study summary, “suggest that TAAT has promise as an intervention for behaviorally disordered children.”

Families from all corners of the world are now tracking down the ICD’s phone number and begging for help. “We get maybe 200, 300 requests a month, and it’s just David and me,” Purvis noted.

Early last summer, her three-year post as director of the ICD was made official as part of TCU’s Vision in Action initiative. It provides for Purvis’ and a research coordinator’s salaries, and Purvis hopes to add a couple of full-time professional positions so they can provide more training to this troubled population of adoptive families.

In November, Kristen answered the door of her home wearing a huge inquisitive smile and plastic buckets on her feet, then she clomped away, giggling. Her mom emerged from the kitchen with a piece of paper covered with colorful drawings and stamps. She flipped it to the back, where the formerly tormented child had scrawled in hot pink marker, Hi Mommy, I am so glad that you are my mom. I love you, Kristen.

“She brought this to me the other night,” Stacie said. “A year ago I never, never thought I would ever see anything like this. This is the real girl.”

For the full story, go to www.magazine.tcu.edu. For more information on ICD, go to www.child.tcu.edu, or e-mail child@tcu.edu.

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