Conclusion

Summary

The recovery from an adverse childhood experience is contingent upon effective and focused scaffolding efforts from the “village” of parents, teachers, community helpers, and mental health professionals working as a team. The major idea of the book is that IA children need a comprehensive and systematic rehabilitation/remediation that is centered on addressing basic neurophysiological needs (sensory integration, self-regulation of emotional state, attention, and other high psychological functions along with effective techniques of relaxation) and proceeds with cognitive, language, and academic remediation to the higher forms of socialization and acculturation. The very diversity of the adoption outcomes points to the contribution of the children’s own biological and psychological characteristics and variation in the quality of their social//cultural rehabilitation, remediation, and support. The issue of methodology in rehabilitation and remediation is crucial at this stage of international adoption, where older (later-adopted) children constitute the majority. The desired outcome of research in the field of international adoption is to provide the proper means of scaffolding former institutional residents to the status of productive, self-sufficient, emotionally stable, and law-abiding members of our society.