Education

What to Do When Your Adopted Child's Behavior Changes

Jul 17, 2026
By, Donna Pope

For the first few months after a placement, everything can look calm. The child settles in, school goes fine, and the whole family finally exhales. Then, sometimes with no warning at all, the behavior starts, and adoptive parents are left asking what they did wrong. That moment, the one that is full of love and genuinely hard at the same time, is exactly what Voices of Adoption exists for. Co-hosted by Nathan Gwilliam and Donna Pope, Executive Director of Heart To Heart Adoptions, the show gives birth parents, adoptees, and adoptive families a place to talk honestly about the parts of adoption that nobody warns you about, and Donna leads each conversation with warmth and decades of experience alongside families.

In this episode, Donna welcomes Cheryl Parkhurst, an education strategist and family advocate who has spent twenty-eight years supporting neurodivergent teenagers inside school systems. Cheryl is not an adoptive parent, but she has worked with many adopted children, and she carries a reframe that lifts the weight off worn-out parents: the behavior is not defiance, and it is not about you. It is communication. Once you can hear it that way, everything about how you respond begins to change.

Â Behavior Is a Form of CommunicationÂ

Most adopted children are thriving. National data show that about 85 percent of adopted children are in excellent or very good health, even though they are roughly twice as likely as other children to have special health care needs, 39 percent compared with 19 percent ( ASPE ). Cheryl's point is that those needs are not always visible right away. A family may enjoy a calm honeymoon period after a placement, only to watch new behavior surface months later, once a child finally feels safe enough to let it show. When that happens, she says, the behavior is not defiance. It is a message.

Part of reading that message is understanding what might sit underneath it. Some adopted children carry the effects of prenatal exposure, and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders are estimated to affect roughly 1 to 5 percent of United States first graders ( NIAAA ). Others may be living with attention differences, since about 1 in 9 children, or 11.4 percent, have ever been diagnosed with ADHD ( CDC ). Cheryl encourages families to collect information instead of guessing. Notice the patterns at home and at school, talk with a family doctor, and ask for the assessments that can turn a confusing situation into a clear plan of support.

Â Curiosity Opens a Better ConversationÂ

When a child is struggling, the instinct for many parents is to reach for rules, consequences, or a firmer boundary. Cheryl offers a gentler and more effective starting point: curiosity. She suggests picking a calm moment, maybe a car ride, when nobody is making eye contact, and opening with a soft, sincere question. I noticed that was really hard for you today. What is up with that. The exact words matter less than the spirit behind them. Said with genuine care, the question invites a child to explain. Said with frustration, it shuts the door, so she reminds parents to check their face, their tone, and their body language first.

Donna shared a story that shows why this approach matters. After a lovely afternoon in the park with his birth parent, a seven year old climbed into the car and began to sob, then scream, which was completely unlike him. His mother pulled over, sat beside him, and gently asked what had happened. He finally said the birth parent had told him she was his real mom. Rather than argue, his mother asked him what a mommy does, walking him through who reads to him, who teaches him, who tucks him in, until he understood that love, not a single label, is what makes a family. It was a hard moment met with patience instead of panic.

Â Support Builds Strength in Adopted ChildrenÂ

No parent should carry this alone. Cheryl is firm that families do better when they build a team: a family doctor, a school counselor, a special education resource teacher, and a social worker who all share what they notice. In schools, that often means understanding an Individualized Education Program, the written plan that turns a diagnosis into real classroom support. She also encourages parents to move from advocating for their child to advocating with their child, so that by the teen years a young person can sit at the table, understand their own needs, and learn to ask for what they have every right to ask for.

There is real strength on the other side of this work. Cheryl notes that a diagnosis does not define a child. It simply becomes a way to understand and support how they learn, the same way one child wears glasses and another needs to move in order to focus. Conditions like autism, now identified in about 1 in 31 eight year olds ( CDC ), look different in every child, so understanding beats assumptions every time. Children do better when they are allowed to feel and name what they have lived through rather than bury it. Donna sees this in her own son, whose ability to connect with people who feel different has become a quiet kind of superpower.

Â DefinitionsÂ

Neurodivergent. A term for people whose brains learn, process, or behave differently than what is considered typical, including conditions like ADHD and autism.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD). A group of conditions caused by alcohol exposure before birth that can affect learning, behavior, growth, and development.

ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). A common neurodevelopmental condition that affects attention, impulse control, and activity level.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). A developmental condition that shapes how a person communicates, relates to others, and experiences the world, and that looks different in every individual.

ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder). A condition marked by a lasting pattern of irritable mood and defiant behavior beyond typical childhood limits.

IEP (Individualized Education Program). A written plan created with a school that outlines the support and accommodations a student with a diagnosis will receive.

Adoption is a path full of love, and like any path, it has moments that ask more of us than we expected. Cheryl's message to every adoptive parent is the one Voices of Adoption returns to again and again: you are still in the game, and you are not alone. No matter where you are in your journey, you'll find people who understand.

Listen to the full conversation with Cheryl Parkhurst, then download your FREE Guide to Adoption at VoicesofAdoption.org and subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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