THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 2, 1996 TAG: 9607020288
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B10 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: FREDERICKSBURG LENGTH: 69 lines
Pavel Goska is a 9-year-old bundle of energy who thunders across the hardwood floors of his adoptive family's Stafford County home.
But his energy is not spent the way Catrine Goska had hoped. Pavel constantly defies his adoptive mother, she said, often cursing and kicking her.
Catrine Goska said she believes many of Pavel's problems are the result of spending the first six years of his life in a Moscow orphanage that provided him little affection or intellectual stimulation.
The fall of communism in the former Soviet Union and other parts of Eastern Europe has opened a new avenue of hope for couples who want to adopt. Last year, 2,500 children came to the United States from Romania and the former Soviet Union, according to State Department figures.
Some parents, like the Goskas, are finding their adopted children have more severe problems than they expected. Other couples say their children have had only minor difficulties.
Ronald Federici, an Alexandria neuropsychologist, said he has seen hundreds of Eastern Bloc children since the wave of such adoptions started around 1990. He estimates 40 percent have severe medical or psychological problems, and another 20 percent have mild disabilities.
Federici attributes most of them to environmental conditions, poor medical care and a lack of intellectual stimulation and education in orphanages.
``Institutional settings are very cold and stark,'' said Federici, who has visited Russian orphanages. ``It's kind of a warehouse situation.''
Federici said the most prevalent disabilities are developmental delays, attention deficit disorders and severe behavioral problems such as those Pavel exhibits.
Goska, 48, is frustrated by her son's extreme behavior. The smallest things can send Pavel into a rage. Other times, the boy curls up in his mother's arms with a loving look on his face.
The couple's other adopted Russian child, 5-year-old Elena, takes daily medication for epilepsy, hyperactivity and a rage disorder that drives her to bite and scratch her mother and classmates.
Ellen Perry, a volunteer with the Washington-area Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoptions, said there are bound to be problems with any adoption, particularly when children come from institutionalized and foreign settings.
``It takes a lot of time to overcome these problems. You're changing their language, their environment, their culture, their lives,'' she said.
Molly Gregory of Fredericksburg learned firsthand that parents need to do as much research as possible when adopting. She went to Siberia two years ago with a photograph of a young girl she hoped to bring home. She returned with a different child from the same orphanage.
``So many things didn't seem right,'' said Gregory, a nurse at Mary Washington Hospital. ``A lot of the information was wrong that I received on paper.''
She and her husband, Gary Stanton, were told the first child had minor developmental delays, she said. Upon meeting the child, she learned the problems were more severe.
She interviewed five other girls before adopting 6-year-old Elena. After overcoming the initial language barrier, Gregory said, Elena has adapted well.
Other adoptive parents said they haven't encountered the same problems. Gary and Stacia Norman of Milford turned to international adoptions about two years ago, after several attempts to adopt in the United States fell through.
Their adopted children, Galina and Roman, both 3, are from an orphanage in Murmansk, Russia.
``We've had nothing but a positive experience,'' Stacia Norman said.
Both children were behind in speech and physical development, she said, but are where they should be now.
KEYWORDS: ADOPTIONS by CNB