Great Adoption Documentary on BBC

(27 Posts)
Lilka Thu 31-Oct-13 09:49:35

It's called 'The Dark Matter of Love', it was on BBC4 last night, so get it on iPlayer for the next week

It filmed an adoption throughout its first year, with a scientist and adoption therapist helping the family and assessing their relationships, their were clips of science experiments and scientists from the 20's onwards interspersed throughout, to show how understanding of parent-child love has changed over the years. I can't actually see the point of a few of those soundbites (the ducks for example) but I was fascinated seeing the footage of the monkey experiment because I read about it years ago.

What made it so powerful (for me) wasn't the science bit of love, it was the family themselves. They were an American couple with a 14 year old birth daughter, who went to Russia and adopted 3 children at once - Masha (11), Marcel and Vadim (5 year old twin brothers). Don't think Masha and the boys are biologically related.

It was raw and very emotional in parts. Didn't shy away from filming the early days, when the parents wondered if they had done the right thing, and were totally exhausted and overwhelmed. 14 year old was out of place, and felt she'd been 'usurped'. The boys and Masha have various difficulties with emotions/behaviour. There were very emotional scenes throughout, though it ended with the family in a better place than before, and moving forwards together

Watch it! But have some tissues handy

Kewcumber Sun 03-Nov-13 14:18:40

Sorry I see you worked that out!

I have used "holding" with DS when he was having uncontrollable meltdowns - its a version (in our house) of "time in" instead of time out. I used holding when he was being violent and physically holding him on my lap was the only way to calm him down. Leaving him to himself just lead to escalation. But I have discovered subsequently that DS is most likely sensory seeking so anchoring him physically to me worked well for us.

Not sure I would have done it very early on though.

It is difficult to compare UK vs US - they have such a different cultural approach to what is considered advisable re adoption. Sometimes what they do makes me wince but in the majority of cases it works out - unfortunately the minority of cases where it doesn;t work can be spectacularly awful. There is a much bigger adoption community on teh US to provide support though so maybe that helps.

Kewcumber Sun 03-Nov-13 14:19:37

I learnt Russian fairly dedicatedly for 3 years and was considered to be a pretty decent student and I wasn't even at the foothills of being fluent - I could just about get by without starving to death whilst I was out there.

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