14 jaar Leuvense AdoptieStudie! Een interview met Simon Fiore - Detail - Steunpunt Adoptie - 14 years of Leuven Adoption Study!

The Leuven Adoption Study is blowing out 14 candles this month. We spoke to Simon Fiore, child and adolescent psychologist and doctoral researcher at the LAS, about the study and some of the findings.

What is the LAS study and what is its purpose?

LAS stands for Leuven Adoption Study. It is the first large-scale long-term study in Flanders that follows about forty families with an adoption story.

The aim of the LAS is to better understand how families with an adoption story develop over time. I am talking about both adoptive parents and children and young people with an adoptive background.

Where does the question or interest in following these families through time come from?

While every adoption story from the child's perspective starts with the loss of the first parent, sometimes followed by a period of suboptimal care at the first place of residence, we know from research that most children and young people with an adoption background do not encounter major difficulties in adopting. to grow up.

The resilience, or the ability to overcome these first difficult experiences, is striking in this. We want to understand this better and we pay particular attention to the processes between adoptive parents and children.

In addition, there is a group whose development is more difficult than hoped. We also want to better understand these developmental paths in order to think about what children need to get back on a favorable developmental track.

How do you work?

We choose to deal with the families as personally as possible. Home visits take place every year during which our research staff, who are all clinical psychologists, visit the families. This is often a permanent research assistant per family, so that the families now know that person well and there is a relationship of trust.

During these home visits, interviews are conducted with the parents and recently also with the children themselves. Their adoptive parents once decided to participate, but now they are young adolescents whose experience we want to get to know about their adoption story and beyond. In addition, we ask that you complete validated questionnaires and participate in tasks all aimed at better understanding the development of families with an adoption story.

Within the LAS, the role of 'parental mentalizing' is being investigated. What is mentalizing?

Before talking about mentalizing, it is important to say that growing up cannot be separated from relationships. We need others to grow up. It stays that way even when we are adults.

Physical care for a child plays an important role in early development, but this too cannot be separated from a caregiver who is present and available and considers what a child might think or feel.

That's what parental mentalizing is about. It is about a parent's capacity to realize that a child has its own thoughts and feelings in order to try to understand the child's behavior from there and thus to deal with the child in an attuned and sensitive way. This is important, especially when a child cannot yet verbally express what he or she is feeling.

At the same time, parental mentalizing is about more than the ability to reflect on a child's inner world. It is also about the possibilities of parents to imagine their own inner world and to reflect on their own feelings in relation to their child.

Parental mentalizing is a kind of social compass that allows us to understand ourselves and our children and to respond sensitively and attuned.

Why is mentalizing important?

International studies have already shown that parental mentalizing plays an important role in child development. It teaches them to understand and communicate their own emotions, to self-regulate and it creates a secure bond between parent and child. These are important commands in early development.

Why is mentalizing important for adoptive parents?

Although children with an adoption story are above all children, developmental themes may take on a different color due to the special start of these children. As a result, the development may turn out differently than hoped or expected. Due to early negative life events, some children may have more unpredictable and difficult to understand behaviors and be more anxious, sad or angry, which can make it difficult for parents to understand what is going on in their child's mind.

We know that many adoptive parents have strong mentalizing skills. That's not easy. There is a lot of attention within the work field for preparation and screening, which means that it is ultimately the parents who adopt, but aftercare is also very important during adoption. The fact that parents can continue to think afterwards, alone or with the support of others, about what is happening and how they deal with challenging situations, plays an important protective role in the development of children with an adoption story.

Is mentalizing a skill you have or don't have?

We must be careful not to overemphasize parental mentalizing as a fixed skill. Although there are differences between parents, it is at least as important to realize that one day is not the same. One moment it works a little better than the other. Every parent will recognize that after a stressful and long day it is more difficult to reflect on a child's inner world and respond sensitively and attuned, compared to when he feels calmer. At the same time, parental mentalizing is related to the extent to which parents can regulate themselves at those times.

Saskia Malcorps completed her PhD within the Leuven Adoption Study and investigated the role of parental mentalizing in the development of children with a background of international adoption. What important results emerge from Saskia's research?

Saskia researched several things, but one of the things that emerged is that the ability of adoptive parents to mentalize, measured in the period before the child's arrival, was already predictive of the development of the precursors of mentalizing skills in children themselves. This is an important finding because we know that mentalizing plays an important role in child development and we also find evidence that parental mentalizing plays an important role.

Another important finding was that parental mentalizing sometimes crumbles. When parents are more stressed, their ability to mentalize is compromised and there are more negative assumptions and interpretations about what a child thinks or feels, which was an important predictor of socio-emotional difficulties 4 years after arrival .

The question here, of course, is that of the chicken or the egg. In addition to the effects that parents have on their children, the influence that a child can have on its parents also plays a major role. Children with a sturdy backpack may create challenges. Throughout the study, development as it happens for everyone and the possible specificity in the context of adoption, with children and parents influencing each other, are always present. To fully understand that, we need the long duration of the LAS. The later results of the study can teach us even more about this.

What research are you conducting for the LAS study?

Within the LAS I research the protective role of parental mentalizing in the development of children with an adoption story. In my PhD, I mainly focus on the development of early adolescents and processes at the family level. To do this, I make a home visit to each family to conduct an interview with each young person. In addition, I also focus on the early period after adoption, many years earlier. These are the same children but from a different time period.

You are still conducting interviews with young people, so it is still too early to share the results of your research into the development of early adolescents. What results have emerged in your research so far?

On the LAS day I presented some findings on the association between early negative life experiences and socio-emotional difficulties 4 years after arrival.

Four years after arrival is the moment that many children from the LAS made the transition from kindergarten to primary school. When the LAS started in 2009, the average age of children at arrival was 1 year, which is significantly younger than today's adoptions.

This study found that factors commonly associated with early negative life experiences, such as older age at arrival and being underweight, predicted the extent of behavioral and emotional difficulties 4 years after arrival.

At the same time it is important to add that most of the children had little or no difficulties 4 years after arrival, but that there was a smaller (more vulnerable) group for whom this was the case.

The main finding was that mentalizing, measured before arrival, exerted a protective role on the association between early negative life experiences and difficulties 4 years after arrival. This is important news, as it shows that a caring context can reduce the adverse effect of these early negative life experiences, although this may not be the case in every situation.

What implications do you think these have for (clinical) practice?

All LAS researchers are also employed in clinical practice as psychologists. The translation from and to practice is something that we consider important, but which we also believe comes with challenges.

We conduct our research at a group level, which yields important findings, but also makes us aware that in research we can rarely adequately address every unique story. That is why it is important to see research findings as something that can provide important direction for the dialogue within the adoption landscape about how we can deal with the period before adoption and the period after in a caring way.

First of all, it seems important to me to point out that most of the children in the study experience few socio-emotional difficulties 4 years after adoption, but that is the case for a subgroup. Since parental mentalizing seems to play an important protective role in children's development, it seems important to support parents in their parenting role and also to provide sufficient opportunities to claim help after adoption, when the family encounters difficulties.

In addition, it can be helpful for many parents to hear that many challenges are normal and that moments when you don't remember it all are also part of caring for a child with extra needs. The fact that parents can recognize in themselves when their mentalizing collapses, but also know how to deal with it, can be a possible contribution for adoptive parents.

Thirdly, it is important to bear in mind that the developmental tasks for children and young people with an adoptive background can take on a different colour. For example, it is possible that questions about who you are in adolescence proceed in a different way. In some cases, support can be helpful, although it is certainly not necessary. An offer that both parents and young people can use when they wish is therefore useful.

Finally, as the findings showed, a child's history need not be a one-way ticket to developmental outcomes. Yet these play a role, in conjunction with many other factors. To better understand that interplay, it is important for research to gain insight into the histories of children and young people to better understand both resilience and difficulties. In addition, this information is a question from some young people with an adoption story. This would argue for the best possible documentation of the early start of these children and young people.

Where can adoptive parents feel their mentalizing abilities are being tested?

If parents notice that their mentalizing capacity is collapsing and it is no longer possible to restore this, then I think that you - from the Adoption Support Center - and the wider adoption landscape already have an important offer. If necessary, parents can also turn to clinical help.

But even before professional help is available, a social network is extremely important to maintain mentalizing capacity. People who feel embedded and supported by their network are better able to stay within their own stress level.

Many adoptive parents are already mentalizing people from the start. Despite their strong mentalizing capacity, they sometimes get stuck in processes that temporarily prevent them from thinking about their child. This is quite normal given the context. A third, which is possible but does not have to be a professional, may then be necessary to restore what they are naturally very good at.

Final question: what does the future hold for the LAS?

We also get that question regularly from our families: where does this end? (laughs) There is a practical side, because we depend on the funds we get. If the financial resources and the commitment of families allow, we will continue. Development is not something that stops when a child reaches a certain age. We can keep investigating. Adolescence is the next phase, it only gets more exciting.

More information about the LAS can be found here .

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