So What if the Kid Just Doesn’t Like You?

I’ve just learned that Connell Watkins, the unlicensed “therapist” who, along with three other adults, killed eleven year old Candace Newmaker (born Candace Tiara Elmore) during an attachment therapy rebirthing session, has been released from prison into a halfway house. Watkins had been sentenced to 16 years in prison back after being found guilty of “reckless child abuse”. Apparently she is now “working” in her community, though, thankfully, not with kids and not administering “therapy”. Unfortunately, these restrictions came too late for Candace, who has become the poster child for alternative therapies (and adoptions) gone wrong.

Candace was separated from her parents, grandparents, and siblings when she was adopted by Jeane Newmaker, a well-regarded pediatric nurse practitioner. While teachers and neighbors described Candace as a likable girl, Newmaker felt that Candace had not appropriately “bonded” with her and sought professional help. The result was a hodge-podge of diagnoses and the “treatment” of Candace with psychiatric drugs. Finally Newmaker decided to explore the possibility of “attachment disorder”, a condition that, as journalist Christopher Caldwell once noted, is only diagnosed in the person who is NOT paying the bills.

Armed with her suspicion of “Attachment Disorder”, Newmaker sought attachment therapy for Candace. When the therapies failed to produce the desired results, Candace was taken to Colorado for more intensive treatment. While there, her hair was cut (against her will), and she was subjected to other bizarre “therapies”, not the least of which was having to lie under her “robust” adoptive mother while having her faced licked.

(When Candace, who seems to have had more sense than all of the adults involved in her “therapy” combined, was asked by Watkins why she was in Colorado, she said, “To be tortured.” When asked why this should be, Candace replied “Because you like to torture people”.)

Candace’s final therapy was “rebirthing” during which she was wrapped in a flannel sheet, surrounded by cushions, and pressed on by adults in an attempt to simulate the experience of a fetus during labor and delivery. The procedure was supposed to result in Candace being psychologically “born” to her adoptive mother. Instead, Candace died. The transcript of the rebirthing depicts Candace as being confused as to how the process was supposed to work, yet also trying to be cooperative. Eventually, however, Candace’s body rebelled: She vomits, loses control of her bowels, and eventually suffocates as a result of the torture. Despite the fact that she went silent and still, her tormentors did not unwrap her for fifty minutes after her last spoken word, and only after Watkins announces that they are going to “. . .talk to the twerp”.

It is significant that Jeane Newmaker, a woman who had spent her adult life caring for the medical needs of children, was present for much of the rebirthing, yet left the room after Candace responded “no” to Watkins’ asking her if she wanted to be reborn. While it is understandable that someone who had a strong love for children would want to be loved by and “bonded” to Candace, it is also obvious that Jeane Newmaker was willing to suppress her professional training and experience (as well as her common sense) in order to get the sort of daughter that she wanted: A child who would love her, forget her first family, and become her daughter.

Sadly, Candace’s story is not an isolated incident. There are numerous documented cases of children who have been tortured, even killed, in the name of “attachment therapy”. Naive adoptive parents, troubled by what they perceive as rejection, are particularly vulnerable to these snake-oil-therapists. Inherent in notion of “attachment” subscribed to by these therapists is the idea that there is something wrong with a child if s/he does not regard his/her adoptive parents as “parents” and/or expresses anger and frustration while in their care. What is usually overlooked is that these children almost always have families (parents, siblings, grandparents, etc) to whom they may well have strong attachments: They just can’t be with them.

These kids are expected to respond “appropriately” to the “needs” of their adoptive parents, which typically includes the expectation that the child will behave as if family intimacy and love exists, regardless of their attachment to, and feelings for, their first family. When the child can’t, or won’t, participate in this charade, and expresses his/her rage, frustration, and anger, the s/he ends up with a psychiatric diagnosis.

If I was doing home studies, particularly for those who have indicated that they would like to adopt an older child, there is one question that I would make sure to ask potential adoptive parents, not once, but several times throughout the process:

“So what if the kid just doesn’t like you?”

I’d pay a lot of attention to their answers.

See, the truth is that a lot of people just don’t like each other. This is true of humans at all stages of development, and in all sorts of family configurations. Families that have never even heard the word “adoption” can have conflicts that make the Hatfields and McCoys look like The Brady Bunch. So it doesn’t seem to be a huge stretch to imagine that, despite the best efforts of everyone involved, there are going to be adoptive placements where parents and kids don’t much like each other. I’d further argue that when the adoptive parents are insisting that a child ignore reality and become “instant family” to them, this dislike is going to be intensified.

So when I would ask parents what they would do and feel if their child didn’t like them, I’d want to hear them acknowledge that attachment is a two-way-street. That just as they would want a child to love and accept them “as they are”, they would want to love and accept a child “as they are”. They would acknowledge that while they have chosen to define themselves as parents, the child has a right of definition as well. They would accept that a child has a right to define his/her family relationships as s/he sees fit, not as social services, adoption agencies, judges, or the adoptive parents themselves wish.

They would also acknowledge that their commitment to the health and well-being of a child is not conditional on that child’s regarding them as parents. They would acknowledge that they are the adults, and that adults don’t transgress the boundaries of decency and common sense just because a child doesn’t respond to them as they would like. They would acknowledge that it is wrong to expect any sort of “return” on their investment in a child and that chasing their losses with desperate, inappropriate behavior is not acceptable.

Unfortunately for the kids, though, the “adults” hold all the cards, even if these adults don’t want to think and behave like adults: After all, it is the adults who get to select therapists and consultants and doctors who will meet their own needs, not the needs of the child. And as Candace learned, if you don’t respond in the way that these adults want you to, you are going to be tossed by your adoptive parents and their advocates into a downward spiral of unmet parental need:

First they will say that you are sick.

Then they will medicate you with strong drugs.

Then they will terrorize you in the form of “therapy” on a regular basis.

Then they will take you across the country and make you live with people who cut your hair, threaten to shave your scalp and tattoo it, yell at you, and call you names.

Then they will wrap you in a sheet and push on you.

And then they won’t let you have any air.

And then they will mock you when you begin to die.

And then after you are dead they will call you a twerp.

Rest in Peace, Candace.

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