TCU Institute of Child Development

When adoptive parents came to us seven years ago asking for help with their adopted children, we had little idea of the exciting journey we were embarking upon. Neither did we understand at that time, the magnitude and importance of the research and intervention that would be born in the partnership between researchers in our lab and adoptive families. From our earliest work with adoptive families, we began to see the heartache in parents who had adopted children with histories of abuse, only to find after years of struggle, that the parents were still unable to reach them. Isolated by failed trust, these children often remained closed and alone while their parents watched helplessly. We began, at that time, an amazing journey of healing.

During the first year, we co-hosted an international adoption conference with the Gladney Center Adoption Agency for adoptive parents and the professionals that serve them, featuring international adoption experts from across the United States. The following summer, we developed and implemented a summer day camp for adopted children, Camp Celebration, which was hosted at the Child Study Center. It was during that time, parents of our little campers officially named the camp, Hope Connection®, and began to refer to it affectionately as Camp Hope. We had begun an adventure of enormous magnitude.

During that first summer camp, we documented dramatic positive changes in our little campers. Parents came to us with remarkable reports of behavioral changes. One mother of a five year old, adopted at eighteen months, remarked with tears in her eyes, "He let me rock him to sleep last night for the first time since we brought him home from Russia!" Another mother reported, "When I went to wake him for camp this morning, he smiled and lifted his little arms up and around my neck to hug me!" Although these are common occurrences for parents of "home grown" children, they are significant treasures for parent who adopts children who have been harmed and are afraid to trust.

As we observed renewed hope in the eyes and faces of both adoptive parents and their children, we were smitten with the possibility of learning ways to help injured children heal and become joyful members of their adoptive families. Our hearts and minds were set on this course of research. From that time until now, the Hope Connection has been the centerpiece of our work. It has provided a unique real-life laboratory in which parents, children, university students and researchers become journey-mates in an adventure of healing.

From that first camp until now, our project has continued to grow and develop under the rubric of The Adoption Project (TAP) and now as the Institute of Child Development. This project has amassed a significant body of research, which has great import for helping hurt children. It is possible that we have the most comprehensive research and intervention project in the United States. International experts in the field of adoption have become powerful advocates for our work, visiting camp each year at their own expense to share their insights about the children, and to learn from our insights.

In addition to the summer camp, which remains the centerpiece of our work, the project has multiple components, which include:

Parent and professional training seminars on Helping the Hurt Child, in which we disseminate our research findings and practical applications of the insights which have been garnered from our work.

Special Needs Adoption Course (SNAC), a university-credit course, which is taught during the spring semester in which students learn about the complex constellation of effects induced in children by abuse and neglect. An interdisciplinary course, SNAC is taught by specialists in various fields including language, social work, neurology, nursing and psychology. Students must not only learn academic information about the aftermath of abuse, but must also demonstrate mastery of pragmatic skills for interacting with these at-risk children. One of the greatest joys of our work is the knowledge that each spring we have an opportunity to teach 80 or 90 university students who will enter professions such as teaching, nursing, and psychology, and will have unique skills and insights into dealing with children.

Summer camp internships are available to about twenty students who have completed the SNAC course. Each of these university students is able to serve as a mentor/buddy to one child during the five-week summer camp. This unique opportunity has been described by many of the students as a life-changing experience.

Another major component of our work is dissemination of our findings through speaking to parent and professional organizations, and writing articles for parent magazines, journals and our current project, a book on adoption.

Our previous physiological testing of stress and anxiety through salivary cortisol measurement has yielded significant information about children with histories of abuse. For the past three years, we have gathered saliva from the children before and during camp (affectionately known as "spitting contests"). Through salivary cortisol assays we have documented a dramatic reduction in cortisol during the camp program. These physiological data parallel our behavioral data and confirm our insight that as the children feel less anxious and afraid in the context of the camp environment, they have dramatic positive changes in social and attachment behavior. A current goal of our work is teaching parents and educators to re-create the environment of "felt-safety" which we believe underlies the positive outcomes for our camp children.

At the current time, we are in the midst of a remarkable research exploration of the neurotransmitter levels of adopted children. Neurotransmitters are the "brain messengers" that support thought, movement and learning. In children who have been harmed or abused, these neurotransmitter levels have been negatively impacted. This summer and fall, we are testing the neurotransmitter levels of 100 adopted at-risk children, and 50 non-adopted, low-risk children. Although the final analyses will not be completed until late fall, data from the first 80 children is yielding dramatic information about the neurochemistry of children who have been harmed by abuse and neglect. Additionally, we are supervising a natural amino acid supplementation protocol. Re-testing of the at-risk children after two months of intervention will give us new information about how to intervene on the behalf of children who have been harmed.

This current neurotransmitter study is among the most exciting components of our seven years of research! It has applications for all children who have been harmed, abused or neglected. The vast numbers of injured children is overwhelming. Annually, Child Protective Services in the U.S. receives three million reports of child abuse! They only have the manpower to investigate a third of the reports, and half a million children are taken in to protective custody annually. Tragically, it is clear from research that many children who are abused experience life-long consequences from the early harm. Changes in their life trajectories include difficulties in trusting and difficulties in forming healthy relationships. In addition to these behavioral alterations, there are significant alterations in their brain chemistries. Our current research provides great hope for understanding some of those brain chemistry changes. In addition, the amino acid supplementation holds great promise for helping normalize the brain chemistry of these at-risk children and helping "right" the course of their lives.

Our journey to this point has been amazing and joyful; however, we feel that this year may be our most significant year since we began this endeavor. We are confident that our current research and intervention programs for the future will lead the way to important insights that will help parents heal the wounds of their adopted children.

David Cross, Ph.D.
Director: TCU Developmental Research

Karyn Purvis, Ph.D.
Director: TCU Institute of Child Development