A NY Times article on"三岁半的男孩哭闹，求解"# Parenting - 为人父母
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Summary: Chinese American kids who have been sent back to live with kin/
relatives abroad came back with severe trauma and exhibit symptom similar to
those of Autism.Their mental and developmental issues were caused by
repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members.Many of the kids
recovered after bonding workshops or intensive therapy.
Link to full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24chinese.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
######################################
Chinese-American Children Sent to Live With Kin Abroad Face a Tough Return
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Winnie Liu’s son Gordon, 7, with his brother Kyle, 4, had developmental
problems after living temporarily with his grandparents in China.
Gordon, 3, would not look his parents in the eyes, and refused to call them
Mom and Dad. He erupted in tantrums and sometimes cried nonstop for half an
hour.
“We did not know why,” said his mother, Winnie Liu, recalling the
desperation that sent them to a neurologist to check Gordon for autism, and
to a hospital that referred them to Butterflies, a mental health program for
very young children on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Finally they learned the reason for their child’s distress — and the
reason social service agencies that help families from China are facing a
sharp rise in such developmental problems.
Like thousands of other Chinese immigrants responding to financial and
cultural pressures, Ms. Liu and her husband, Tim Fang, had sent Gordon to
live with his grandparents, thousands of miles away in Fujian Province, a
few months after his birth in New York. Working long hours in the restaurant
business, they had not brought him back to the United States until he was
old enough to attend all-day public preschool.
And now he saw them as strangers who had stolen him away to a strange land.
“The children that have that experience come back with tremendous needs,”
said Nina Piros, director of early childhood programs at University
Settlement, a nonprofit agency that estimates that 400 of the 1,000 children
served by its Butterflies program are returnees from China. “They come
here and they’re totally traumatized.”
Some act out in frightening and confusing ways, she said, banging their
heads on walls, refusing to speak, or wandering aimlessly in the classroom.
These signs of extreme trauma have often been misunderstood as symptoms of
autism. But they are the marks of the emotional dislocations these young
children have endured.
Less severely affected youngsters are helped through supportive workshops
for their teachers and parents. But about two dozen in the Butterflies
program need the kind of intensive therapy that eventually helped Gordon and
his parents bond, said Andrea D. Bennett, director of Butterflies, which
was started three years ago with money from the City Council.
The phenomenon of American-born children who spend their infancy in China
has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and
worrying. About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New York last year,
so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-
American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant
to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find
alternatives.
But no one tracks the numbers, and the issue has only recently seized the
attention of early-childhood researchers like Yvonne Bohr, a clinical
psychologist at York University in Toronto, who calls such children “
satellite babies.”
Their repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members “could potentially
add up to a mental health crisis for some immigrant communities,” Dr. Bohr
wrote in an article in May in The Infant Mental Health Journal. She cited
classic research like the work of Anna Freud, who found that young children
evacuated during the London blitz were so damaged by separation from their
parents that they would have been better off at home, in danger of falling
bombs.
Dr. Bohr, who is undertaking a longitudinal study of families with satellite
babies, cautions that the older research was shaped by Western values and
expectations. Chinese parents, including university-educated professionals
she has studied, are often influenced by cultural traditions: an emphasis on
self-sacrifice for the good of the family, a belief that grandparents are
the best caretakers, and a desire to ground children in their heritage.
Sending babies back to grandparents is also done in some South Asian
communities, she said.
But Amanda Peck, a spokeswoman for University Settlement, which has been
serving newcomers to the Lower East Side since 1886, said that while family
separations are a feature of migration in many ethnic groups, the satellite-
baby phenomenon seems rare outside the Chinese community.
Some children are better able to adapt, whether because of natural
resilience, more supportive parenting or the age at which disruptions
occurred. Even in severe cases like Gordon’s, the Butterflies program has
had success in overcoming the worst consequences of separation with
therapeutic play and support for parent and child, said Victoria Chiu, its
bilingual therapist.
But for many children, new separations are in store even after they return
to the United States. In one typical case, parents migrated to work in a
Chinese restaurant in South Carolina, taking a school-age child along, but
leaving a baby in China and a 3-year-old with grandparents in New York.
“The 3-year-old, he wouldn’t even smile,” Ms. Chiu said. “When he sat in
circle time, his whole little body was just slumped.”
Gordon, now 7, keeps up with his second-grade classmates and has learned to
control his temper, said his parents, who own Wild Ginger, a restaurant on
Broome Street. In imperfect but fluent English, his mother recounted the
hard climb to that happy resolution, and revisited the scene of major
turning points: a tiny playroom under the eaves of the old settlement house,
where a dollhouse and a big plush dog played a role in healing her son.
Dressed as a superhero, Gordon would often rescue the dog from a pretend
fire in the dollhouse, saving him from “the bad guys,” as Ms. Chiu and his
mother played along.
“I was the bad lady,” Gordon’s mother, 31, recalled ruefully. “Then the
play changed, and he tried to save Mom from the bad guy.”
The therapist explained: “He was trying to find mastery over things he had
no control over. We started introducing scenarios to help him develop trust
in his parents’ authority over his life.”
Ms. Liu, who was 17 when she immigrated to New York on a green card
sponsored by her father, pressed a hand to her heart. “This wonderful
therapist, this program, help us read the child’s mind,” she said. “Now
he hug me, and he say ‘Mommy’ sometimes.”
Still, Gordon remains more withdrawn than typical 7-year-olds. Ms. Liu said
she struggles with guilt and regret.
“I advise all Chinese families, do not send your kids away, no matter how
hard, because that loss cannot be made up,” she said. “Money is not so
important. Nothing can make up for the sensation of love between parents and
children.”
The shuttling of babies first caught public attention in New York a decade
ago, when women workers from Fujian Province, deep in debt to the “
snakeheads” who had smuggled them into the country, had little choice but
to send their infants back to their extended families.
Typically, such children returned at school age. Their tough adjustment to
the change in language, customs and parental discipline was generally
likened to the problems of other immigrant children, who must often cope
with long-delayed reunions after being left behind for years.
Now, however, because of the expansion of free full-day preschool in recent
years, satellite babies return and start classes as young as 2 years, 9
months.
Their parents, including many lawful permanent residents and citizens like
Gordon’s mother, assume that the children will adjust more easily because
they are so young. But early childhood is the crucial time for learning to
form attachments and feel empathy, and serious disruptions carry lifelong
consequences, psychologists say, including higher rates of depression and
dysfunction.
Many families are unaware of the potential psychological damage, said Hong
Shing Lee, chief operating officer of the Asian-American Federation of New
York.
That was the case for the family of Alisa Chen, now 4. Alisa was 6 months
old when her mother, Qiao Yuni Chen, a waitress unable to afford day care,
took her to her grandmother in China. When Mrs. Chen returned more than a
year later to visit — and to leave Alisa’s baby sister, Angie — she was
heartbroken by Alisa’s rejection. Only in the last two weeks of a three-
month stay was Alisa willing to sleep at her mother’s side.
Alisa started preschool at University Settlement in August, only a week
after arriving in New York; two months later, teachers referred her to
Butterflies.
“She seemed kind of lost, not picking up English, withdrawing from her
peers,” Ms. Chiu recalled. “She seemed anxious that her mom wouldn’t pick
her up.” Another problem was the mother’s expectations: The only toy in
their home was a letter board more appropriate for a 6-year-old than for a
child turning 4.
Mrs. Chen, whose husband is now in the Army in South Carolina, threw herself
into becoming a more supportive parent, Ms. Chiu said. Though she spoke
little English, she phonetically memorized songs like “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
At a 99-cent store, the therapist helped her pick playthings that would
allow her daughter to express herself.
The payoff was obvious when the preschooler returned from a class trip to
the Bronx Zoo one recent afternoon. Pigtails bouncing, her smile electric
with joy, Alisa threw herself into her mother’s arms. Ms. Chiu beamed.
Next month, Alisa’s little sister arrives from China to begin Head Start.
relatives abroad came back with severe trauma and exhibit symptom similar to
those of Autism.Their mental and developmental issues were caused by
repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members.Many of the kids
recovered after bonding workshops or intensive therapy.
Link to full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/nyregion/24chinese.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
######################################
Chinese-American Children Sent to Live With Kin Abroad Face a Tough Return
Librado Romero/The New York Times
Winnie Liu’s son Gordon, 7, with his brother Kyle, 4, had developmental
problems after living temporarily with his grandparents in China.
Gordon, 3, would not look his parents in the eyes, and refused to call them
Mom and Dad. He erupted in tantrums and sometimes cried nonstop for half an
hour.
“We did not know why,” said his mother, Winnie Liu, recalling the
desperation that sent them to a neurologist to check Gordon for autism, and
to a hospital that referred them to Butterflies, a mental health program for
very young children on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Finally they learned the reason for their child’s distress — and the
reason social service agencies that help families from China are facing a
sharp rise in such developmental problems.
Like thousands of other Chinese immigrants responding to financial and
cultural pressures, Ms. Liu and her husband, Tim Fang, had sent Gordon to
live with his grandparents, thousands of miles away in Fujian Province, a
few months after his birth in New York. Working long hours in the restaurant
business, they had not brought him back to the United States until he was
old enough to attend all-day public preschool.
And now he saw them as strangers who had stolen him away to a strange land.
“The children that have that experience come back with tremendous needs,”
said Nina Piros, director of early childhood programs at University
Settlement, a nonprofit agency that estimates that 400 of the 1,000 children
served by its Butterflies program are returnees from China. “They come
here and they’re totally traumatized.”
Some act out in frightening and confusing ways, she said, banging their
heads on walls, refusing to speak, or wandering aimlessly in the classroom.
These signs of extreme trauma have often been misunderstood as symptoms of
autism. But they are the marks of the emotional dislocations these young
children have endured.
Less severely affected youngsters are helped through supportive workshops
for their teachers and parents. But about two dozen in the Butterflies
program need the kind of intensive therapy that eventually helped Gordon and
his parents bond, said Andrea D. Bennett, director of Butterflies, which
was started three years ago with money from the City Council.
The phenomenon of American-born children who spend their infancy in China
has been known for years to social workers, who say it is widespread and
worrying. About 8,000 Chinese-born women gave birth in New York last year,
so the number of children at risk is substantial, according to the Chinese-
American Planning Council, a social service agency that hopes to get a grant
to educate parents about the pitfalls of the practice and help them find
alternatives.
But no one tracks the numbers, and the issue has only recently seized the
attention of early-childhood researchers like Yvonne Bohr, a clinical
psychologist at York University in Toronto, who calls such children “
satellite babies.”
Their repeatedly disrupted attachments to family members “could potentially
add up to a mental health crisis for some immigrant communities,” Dr. Bohr
wrote in an article in May in The Infant Mental Health Journal. She cited
classic research like the work of Anna Freud, who found that young children
evacuated during the London blitz were so damaged by separation from their
parents that they would have been better off at home, in danger of falling
bombs.
Dr. Bohr, who is undertaking a longitudinal study of families with satellite
babies, cautions that the older research was shaped by Western values and
expectations. Chinese parents, including university-educated professionals
she has studied, are often influenced by cultural traditions: an emphasis on
self-sacrifice for the good of the family, a belief that grandparents are
the best caretakers, and a desire to ground children in their heritage.
Sending babies back to grandparents is also done in some South Asian
communities, she said.
But Amanda Peck, a spokeswoman for University Settlement, which has been
serving newcomers to the Lower East Side since 1886, said that while family
separations are a feature of migration in many ethnic groups, the satellite-
baby phenomenon seems rare outside the Chinese community.
Some children are better able to adapt, whether because of natural
resilience, more supportive parenting or the age at which disruptions
occurred. Even in severe cases like Gordon’s, the Butterflies program has
had success in overcoming the worst consequences of separation with
therapeutic play and support for parent and child, said Victoria Chiu, its
bilingual therapist.
But for many children, new separations are in store even after they return
to the United States. In one typical case, parents migrated to work in a
Chinese restaurant in South Carolina, taking a school-age child along, but
leaving a baby in China and a 3-year-old with grandparents in New York.
“The 3-year-old, he wouldn’t even smile,” Ms. Chiu said. “When he sat in
circle time, his whole little body was just slumped.”
Gordon, now 7, keeps up with his second-grade classmates and has learned to
control his temper, said his parents, who own Wild Ginger, a restaurant on
Broome Street. In imperfect but fluent English, his mother recounted the
hard climb to that happy resolution, and revisited the scene of major
turning points: a tiny playroom under the eaves of the old settlement house,
where a dollhouse and a big plush dog played a role in healing her son.
Dressed as a superhero, Gordon would often rescue the dog from a pretend
fire in the dollhouse, saving him from “the bad guys,” as Ms. Chiu and his
mother played along.
“I was the bad lady,” Gordon’s mother, 31, recalled ruefully. “Then the
play changed, and he tried to save Mom from the bad guy.”
The therapist explained: “He was trying to find mastery over things he had
no control over. We started introducing scenarios to help him develop trust
in his parents’ authority over his life.”
Ms. Liu, who was 17 when she immigrated to New York on a green card
sponsored by her father, pressed a hand to her heart. “This wonderful
therapist, this program, help us read the child’s mind,” she said. “Now
he hug me, and he say ‘Mommy’ sometimes.”
Still, Gordon remains more withdrawn than typical 7-year-olds. Ms. Liu said
she struggles with guilt and regret.
“I advise all Chinese families, do not send your kids away, no matter how
hard, because that loss cannot be made up,” she said. “Money is not so
important. Nothing can make up for the sensation of love between parents and
children.”
The shuttling of babies first caught public attention in New York a decade
ago, when women workers from Fujian Province, deep in debt to the “
snakeheads” who had smuggled them into the country, had little choice but
to send their infants back to their extended families.
Typically, such children returned at school age. Their tough adjustment to
the change in language, customs and parental discipline was generally
likened to the problems of other immigrant children, who must often cope
with long-delayed reunions after being left behind for years.
Now, however, because of the expansion of free full-day preschool in recent
years, satellite babies return and start classes as young as 2 years, 9
months.
Their parents, including many lawful permanent residents and citizens like
Gordon’s mother, assume that the children will adjust more easily because
they are so young. But early childhood is the crucial time for learning to
form attachments and feel empathy, and serious disruptions carry lifelong
consequences, psychologists say, including higher rates of depression and
dysfunction.
Many families are unaware of the potential psychological damage, said Hong
Shing Lee, chief operating officer of the Asian-American Federation of New
York.
That was the case for the family of Alisa Chen, now 4. Alisa was 6 months
old when her mother, Qiao Yuni Chen, a waitress unable to afford day care,
took her to her grandmother in China. When Mrs. Chen returned more than a
year later to visit — and to leave Alisa’s baby sister, Angie — she was
heartbroken by Alisa’s rejection. Only in the last two weeks of a three-
month stay was Alisa willing to sleep at her mother’s side.
Alisa started preschool at University Settlement in August, only a week
after arriving in New York; two months later, teachers referred her to
Butterflies.
“She seemed kind of lost, not picking up English, withdrawing from her
peers,” Ms. Chiu recalled. “She seemed anxious that her mom wouldn’t pick
her up.” Another problem was the mother’s expectations: The only toy in
their home was a letter board more appropriate for a 6-year-old than for a
child turning 4.
Mrs. Chen, whose husband is now in the Army in South Carolina, threw herself
into becoming a more supportive parent, Ms. Chiu said. Though she spoke
little English, she phonetically memorized songs like “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
At a 99-cent store, the therapist helped her pick playthings that would
allow her daughter to express herself.
The payoff was obvious when the preschooler returned from a class trip to
the Bronx Zoo one recent afternoon. Pigtails bouncing, her smile electric
with joy, Alisa threw herself into her mother’s arms. Ms. Chiu beamed.
Next month, Alisa’s little sister arrives from China to begin Head Start.
