A Perfect Example How Adoption Can Work

My nephew was adopted from Russia. At one year old, when they all came off the plane, he weighed 11 pounds. I've never been so happy and so sad all at the same time. He was so sweet but a thin bag of bones - big eyes smiling up...not able to walk and not able to use his arms. In St. Petersburg it's cold....all the time and the babies are bundled all the time to keep them warm so they don't die. At the orphanage he was in they are not held much, there's not enough time...so these kids are literally bundled and in their cribs by themselves most of the time.

He was always fascinated with his toes - they were his only toys in the crib, if he could get his legs loose from the blanket. He held them up and wiggled them around - he even tried to hold his bottle with his feet. He only had watered down potato broth at the orphange and sometimes watered down milk and God knows what else...he was one and hadn't had any solid foods so that was a challenge. We knew at that point if he wouldn't have been brought here he would have died - when they were there the orphanage had asked my brother if they still wanted him....can you imagine? All they said was - "he's our son, we'll take him home".

Let me say at this point that his biological mother left him on the stairs at the orphange with a note. She had seven other children and no money or food....she loved him, she wanted to save his life....and she did.

By two it was presumed he had attachment disorder. The doctor's were pretty sure because of his neglect and lack of holding at the orphanage. He was treated for that until he was five when they changed his diagnosis to Asp*rger's . They had been doing all the wrongs things to treat him. He has some sociopath behavior from time to time that has worried us but for the most part he's just a kid with an IQ of about 195 who can't have a full conversation unless you talk about bugs. It's then he is in his world and really a wonder of information. I think he may be bi-polar now, i know he's starting puberty and that can make them go either way as far as behavior. He began to attack my brother, sister-in-law and niece. A few times they were on the highway - it was very dangerous. He has these outbursts of anger but you don't know when it's coming.

After $1800 worth of damage from an overflowed bathtub, $2,000 re-doing his room that he destroyed with urine, feces and his bare hands and $500 worth of damage to the newly landscaped yard (throwing things at windows to break them), he is in a children's home. He has structure, order and schooling. We all visit but it's just killing my sister-in-law and brother to have him there. I hope they can get him straightened out. They have tried a few times to bring him home but he just can't handle it - yet.

I went to see him Friday and we went into the community garden. He catches bees and wasps with a net and takes the stinger's out. He would open his hand and show me - 5-8 bumble bees all buzzing and wiggling around....it's quiet shocking if your not used to it. After so many years of handfuls of beetles and spiders I'm getting there. It's fascinating. He can tell you the name of everything, what they eat how they live, etc.

He brought over the largest wasp I've ever seen - He told me it was a Tarantula Hawk Wasp...a what? never heard of it. I got home and looked it up...it WAS what he said. It was amazing the gentleness and the expertise with which he handled these things. Most people run and scream and swat their hands and run away away from these things and he goes in wielding just a net and his bare hands. :o

I told him yesterday about the honey bee problem all over the US and all the trouble it's causing because they pollinate all the fruits and vegetables and without them we couldn't grow things. He looked at me and said, "i know what it is, i've seen a lot more Robber Flies last year and this year --a lot more - I bet it's the Robber Flies. They come down on the bees like a helecopter, grab them and inject poison into their heads to kill them". When I got home I looked it up:


Unlike most Flies, Robber Flies are neither pests, nor do They spread disease. Instead, Robber Flies eat Bees. They received their name from living around Honey Bee farms, and gobbling up the Bees when the Bees returned to their hives. Most Beekeepers regard Robber Flies as thieves.

Resembling a Wasp, Robber Fly is noted for voracious attacks on other Insects. Robber Fly waits in open sunlit areas where He can command a good view of passing Insects, then flies out to catch his prey. (The Fly's favorite food is small Bees and Wasps.) Once the prey is in his bristly legs, Robber Fly kills the unfortunate Insects with toxic saliva injected through his short proboscises.

What if the problem could be solved by listening to a twelve year old with Asp*rgers? This is a kid, that if we could get him "on track" could find new species, find cures for things, who knows....he could be a famous entomologist one day.

A kid who would have been dead or in an orphanage until he was kicked out at 18 into a cold world.

Everything is not all roses in his life but he is in a much better place than if he were to have stayed in Russia.