Casey Journalism Center shares scary (and discouraging) news about child development

Love's limited in helping foster kids
By Leanne Kleinmann

It's been a couple of weeks since I saw the pictures, and they're still burned into my mind.
I was at a conference in Maryland sponsored by the Casey Journalism Center to learn about the latest research and trends on children and families. The first presenter was a Harvard pediatrician who'd done fascinating research on brain development in babies and small children. His pictures showed a fetus' brain at various stages of development.

At 25 weeks, the brain was smooth as an egg. Just two weeks later, at 27 weeks, the distinctive folds and crinkles of higher-level development were clear, even to my untrained eyes.

It wasn't too hard to imagine what might happen to a fetus -- and later a child -- whose brain was bathed in alcohol, cocaine or other drugs during that critical stage of brain development. Or whose mom was not sleeping, not eating well, fending off physical abuse, depression or worse. Judgment, impulse control, higher level thinking and decision-making; all are developing around that time.

Next up was a social worker and psychologist whose work focused on children in the foster care system, some of the most at-risk children in the country, not only because of their unstable original families, but because of the sometimes deplorable foster care conditions they face in their early lives. But what really caught my attention was that she vetted parents for potential foster care adoptions, and had adopted two foster children of her own.

Even this nationally recognized expert was struggling with the challenges her two kids presented her. What shocked me most, though, was how clear she was about the limits of the progress that kids who have had so many early problems can make. Brain deficiencies can be finite, and their results devastating.

She was also quite blunt about how difficult it is to adopt these kids, and how unwilling some families, especially affluent families, are to acknowledge the limits of their resources and efforts.

"Love is not enough," she kept saying, over and over.

What a sad fact to have to acknowledge. But what a clear mandate it proposes: That we strengthen the support, both public and private, for every pregnant mom. Prenatal care, nutrition counseling and substance abuse treatment, the promise of quality child care. All of these factors might -- might -- help during those critical brain development times.

Because love is not enough.