A recent Guardian article brought to light the harrowing circumstances of parents of adopted children who were left to confront major behavioral problems and violence without adequate institutional support.
In the article, Matthew Clore and his wife reluctantly admitted failure when their adopted child was put back into care after they struggled for eight years to deal with his increasingly aggressive behavior. They had feared for their own psychological and physical well being. It’s possible that early abuse had changed their adopted child, epigenetically. Research has suggested that, in some children, a strongly negative environment may “switch off” genes involved in the development of empathy.
Related on the SLP
Read the full, original story here: Abuse, Adoption and Epigenetics
