Because I Said So!
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Because I Said So! is a podcast by John Rosemond. John is the nation’s leading parenting expert and provides common-sense advice for raising your children. John is a nationally syndicated columnist, author and public speaker. His audiences are left feeling empowered, educated and entertained.
A family psychologist by license, John points out to all his audiences that “psychology has caused more problems than it has solved for American parents.” John’s mission is to be a counter-weight to the psychological parenting paradigm that was sold to America in the late 1960s/early 1970s, restore commonsense to the raising of children, and give parents the guidance needed to raise happy, well-mannered children who will, as adults, contribute value to culture and society.
Because I Said So!
The Adoption Narrative Sham
Have you ever stopped to question the narratives spun by mental health professionals or the sensationalism surrounding adoption? This episode of 'Because I Said So' invites you to do just that. I'm challenging the idea that adoption is an inherently traumatic experience, laden with existential crises and psychological pitfalls. With the story of my friend Pat, who discovered he was adopted at 19 and reacted with nonchalance, I challenge this sensationalized narrative and question if it's a mere invention by mental health professionals to create a cash stream.
I also explore the adoption specialist cabal, who often push narratives leading adoptive parents to feel guilty and inadequate. These narratives, such as 'bonding' with a biological mother's heartbeat, can negatively impact a child's behavior and trigger parental anxiety. Hear about the Romanian orphans adopted by American parents who thrived against the odds and debunk the theory that bonding must occur at birth. Stay tuned as I conclude with an invitation to join my mission - sparking a retro revolution in child-rearing.
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Well, hello and welcome or welcome back, as the case may be to Because I Said so the only podcast on the entire World Wide Web where you will hear the truth about psychology and the mental health professions in general, children and child rearing. Today, our discussion will be about adoption and I'm going to tell a story about a friend of mine. I'll call him Pat, it's not his real name. When he was 19, pat was at a family reunion At my age. Today he's a retired professional and an all-around good guy. Anyway, when he was 19, pat was at a family reunion and he walked up to several relatives who were having conversation and one of them his uncle I think turned to him and said oh hey, pat, we're talking about the pros and cons of adoption. You were adopted, so we'd love to hear your opinion. Well, pat was momentarily stunned because up until that point in his life he had no idea he'd been adopted. No one had told him. He never suspected it. So he excused himself. He found his parents and he asked Uncle Bob says I was adopted, was I? And his father answered and said yes, pat, you were Just as matter of fact as you, please. Yes, pat, you were. Why didn't you tell me? Pat asked Without missing a beat. His father said and, by the way, pat has told me this story and this is exactly the way he tells it His father said what difference does it make how you came to us, pat? And instantly Pat realized that the love his mother and father had showered on him and the firm, loving discipline they had provided him during his childhood had been incomparable and that, because of them, his childhood had been a happy one and one that prepared him for success in life in every sense of the term. And so he answered his father by saying come to think of it, mom and dad, none, it makes no difference at all. Thank you both for a wonderful life. I intend to make you proud.
Speaker 1:Subsequently, pat learned that his adoption had been finalized before he was born, that his birth mother was 16 and healthy, that her family had been fairly prominent and that she refused to list a birth father. Pat has never felt the urge to know any more than that. He grew up, loved, he became a medical professional, he retired in his fifties and he's currently living overseas with his foreign bride. Both of his adoptive parents are now deceased. The only anger he feels in his life is toward the political elite of the cultural left who he feels are purposefully destroying America and everything it traditionally stands for. And if that's an indication of some adoption related anger displacement syndrome, then I was also adopted. Fancy that.
Speaker 1:So let me point out the key elements of Pat's story. First, his parents never told him he was adopted until he accidentally found out when he was 19 years old. I'm not saying 19 should be the standard. I'm simply pointing out one indication of adoption being no big deal back then. Today adoption is a big deal, or at the very least the mental health professions, those masters of making mountains out of molehills, have made it a big deal. They've even invented a new subsidiary Adoption Specialist to help people cope with issues and even traumas that, interestingly enough, didn't exist until mental health professionals said they existed. Isn't that fascinating? Said from a different perspective, the mental health professions have used the very natural, age-old process of adoption to create another cash stream for themselves and exert more influence in culture and a very toxic influence it is Mental health.
Speaker 1:Propaganda concerning things like adoption drives people crazy. We live in the age of irony. Second, pat has never obsessed about his adoption. He wasn't traumatized by the news he received when he was 19. He never assigned it any drama. He is a well-adjusted, happy human being. To Pat, being adopted is no more significant than the color of his hair.
Speaker 1:That was the state of adoption in the 1950s. And then along came Oprah. In the early days of her celebrity, oprah would stage tearful adoption renewals on stage In front of moist-eyed audiences. The gullible public interpreted this soap opera to be. An adoption was full of existential meaning and psychological pitfall that needed deep investigation and resolution. This narrative was not confirmed by historical fact or common sense. Nonetheless, pushed by influencers like Oprah, it became the adoption narrative the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This is the general modus operandi of psychology and the mental health professions in general. They invent narratives and then they market these narratives to an unsuspecting public, thus turning narratives into income-generating products. The fact that the narratives in question are not supported by historical fact, medical fact, scientific fact or even common sense is completely irrelevant. The narratives generate income for people with capital letters after their names. Pardon my Clark Gable paraphrase, but the motto of the mental health professions should be Truth be Damned. So we're pat to be adopted today.
Speaker 1:His adoptive parents would be told all sorts of lies, beginning with a lie that all adopted children are afflicted with a deep psychological disturbance called reactive attachment disorder, or more commonly rad. The truth is that reactive attachment disorder, like all psychological diagnoses, has no objective reality. It's a concept, a construct, nothing more. Keep in mind that psychologists and other mental health professionals sell diagnoses like Tommy Bahama sells tropical clothing. If they don't give a diagnosis to a client, they can't get paid by an insurance company. So they diagnose Reactive attachment disorder. I'll tell you what it is it's a scam period.
Speaker 1:A child who is adopted begins to throw tantrums or he's defiant, aggressive, moody, mercurial, shy, impulsive, wets the bed, refuses to use the toilet, property purposefully breaks things or cries at the drop of a hat. The psychologist, or a so-called adoption specialist, will give the child a $3,000 battery of meaningless tests in order to create the illusion that he's doing something scientific and then, regardless of the actual test results, he will tell the parents the child has reactive attachment disorder. Never mind that kids the same age let's say the child is three years old, children who were not adopted, age three, throat, hand trumps are defiant, aggressive, mercurial and so on. The child in question, because he was adopted, has some disturbance inside of him that those other kids don't have. Okay, so that's line number one.
Speaker 1:But before I leave this reactive attachment disorder business, let me share with you the results of a study done a number of years ago by a research team that followed a group of children who, from birth, had been confined to cribs, often living in their own filth for days at a time, alone, lacking in human contact or speech. That was the state of orphanages in pre-democratic Romania during the Seziascu era. When the people of Romania revolted in 1989 and established a free society, the orphanages were liberated and the infants housed in them were adopted, many to American parents. Three years after their adoptions, children who had spent the earliest days and even years of their existences in the most horrifying of circumstances could not be accurately picked out of play groups of same-age children. Let me say that again. I want this to really hit home Three years after the adoption of children who had spent the earliest days and even years of their existences in horrifying circumstances that most people can't even imagine could not be accurately picked out of play groups of same-age American children. In three years, these kids had gone from suffering the effects of severe deprivation, neglect etc. To acting in a perfectly normal fashion. For children, their age, in other words folks, adoption is curative. It's not something bad. Okay, line number two Parents of adopted children are told that a child bonds to his biological mother's heartbeat while in utero and that even a day-old infant knows that the heartbeat of his adoptive mother cue the violins, please which he hears and feels when she holds him close, is not his real mother's heartbeat, and that this discrepancy causes confusion and anger and depression in all manner of psychological distress.
Speaker 1:Whatever odd or naughty thing the child in question is doing, it's because he hasn't bonded properly to his adoptive mother. If he's throwing tantrums, he's expressing the anger he feels at having a fake mother. If he's prone to fits of crying, he's grieving for the loss of his real mother. Defiance, he's refusing to cooperate in the adoption charade. Why is the psychologist or the adoption specialist telling the mother something that can't be verified, that is nothing but part of a narrative that's been invented Back from the whole class, pulled out of thin air by the adoption professional cabal? Because that's how the adoption specialist persuades the adoptive mother to pay for allowing him to take the child into some form of play or talk therapy.
Speaker 1:Why am I singling out the mother. Why am I not saying the mother and the father? Well, because the decision to seek professional advice concerning a child, adopted or not, is almost always I'd say 98% of the time made by the mother. The father is usually he's just along for the ride. To tell you the truth, I was in private practice for 10 years. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. The therapist knows this, so he makes his pitch to the mother.
Speaker 1:The narrative the adoption specialist feeds to the adoptive mother often causes her to end up feeling like a complete and utter failure. She feels guilty, she feels inadequate, she feels like every attempt on her part to bond with her child isn't working. And the more she feels like a failure, the more anxious she becomes. And the child senses her anxiety. Folks, even an infant, can sense parental anxiety. The child senses the mother's anxiety and reacts to it by crying inconsolably, with drawing, developing autistic symptoms and so on. In other words, adoption isn't causing the child's problems.
Speaker 1:The adoption specialist's narrative, none of which is provable, is causing the child's problems. So then this adoption specialist, after making the adoptive mother guilty as hell and anxious as hell, tells her that the child needs to go into play therapy. Another lie that, folks, when the research has been done by scientists who adhere to proper research methods, there is zero research-based evidence to the effect that play therapy works at any reliable level. None, zero, nada, ah. But that opens the door for the next lie, because when the child now in play therapy once a week doesn't get any better and probably even gets worse, the adoption specialist tells the mother that the child's reactive attachment disorder which, remember, doesn't even exist at an objective level is highly resistant, that the child's reactive attachment disorder is like an internal demon that won't let go of him, and that the child needs play therapy sessions, not just once a week but two or three times a week. And the mother, believing that adoption specialists must know what they're talking about they're specialists, right Children's coughing up for two or three worthless play therapy sessions a week. Stop right there, john. You're going over the top here. No, I am not.
Speaker 1:I have spoken to people who worked in the adoption industry and they have told me that what I have just told you is the truth of the industry, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So when the people in question my whistleblowers, if you will came to their senses, they got out of the adoption industry and became realtors or teachers or physicians, assistants or whatever. But back to the inevitable progression as the adoptive mother's anxiety increases, the child's behavior problems get worse. And as the child's behavior problems worsen, the mother's guilt goes through the roof. She becomes a basket case. And, folks, the truth is that a mother who's a basket case because she thinks she's raising a basket case is not going to be able to communicate authority with confidence and has her ability to communicate her authority to her child goes down the tubes. The child's mental health goes down the tubes and the only person. What is set up here is what psychologists call a self-fulfilling prophecy. As her authority goes down the tubes, the child's mental health goes down the tubes, and the only person profiting from all this is you got it the adoption specialist.
Speaker 1:I was doing a workshop once for a small group of about 20 people and I explained all of this to them. In the middle of my explanation, a woman in the audience began sobbing uncontrollably. So I mean, her body was just being racked with sobs so uncontrollably that I had to stop. Her husband had his arms around her trying to comfort her and he looked up at me and he said, my wife's crying because our adoption specialist has told her everything you just said. You are the first person we've ever heard who gives us any hope, john. I stayed in touch with them for a couple of years, during which they unplugged themselves completely from the toxic adoption industry, began disciplining their three-year-old adopted child with consistency and authority, and within two years, the child had transformed from a basket case into a normal, happy kid and the mother had also transformed herself from a basket case into a happy, self-confident mom who was, for the first time, enjoying being a mother, and all of God's children sang hallelujah.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, ladies and gentlemen, the truth will set you free. So I got some very good news recently. After only five months since our inception, this podcast has enjoyed 25,000 downloads 25,000, most of which have occurred in the last couple of months, as the word has successfully spread. That doesn't compare with Joe Rogan, who, by the way, should have me on his show, but given my competition, it's pretty darn good. As we say here in eastern North Carolina, pretty darn good. That means 25,000 downloads means lots and lots of people are listening to it for the first time every week. In other words, the new listener curve is accelerating.
Speaker 1:So for you new listeners, an explanation of my mission. My mission is threefold. First, it is to expose the deceptive business practices a legal way of saying lies engaged in by psychology and the mental health professions in general. And let me remind or announce, inform, whatever the case may be. I am a psychologist. That's my dog barking in the background. Pay no attention to the dog behind the curtain. I am a psychologist. I am licensed by the state of North Carolina to practice psychology. And so let me say what the first part of my mission is. My mission is to expose the deceptive business practices engaged in by my profession and the mental health professions in general. They tell one mistruth after another. They lie about the tests they give, they lie about their diagnoses, they lie about their so-called therapies, they lie about the medications they recommend and dispense. The mental health professions should be investigated by every state's attorney general, as well as the attorney general of the United States, and if any of those folks want to know where to start said investigations, I offer my services gladly.
Speaker 1:Second, my mission is to tell the truth about children and their need for firm authority in their little precious lives. Unconditional love and firm authority in equal measure, ladies. Please stop the gentle parenting. Okay, ask yourselves, ladies, is gentle parenting something you feel completely natural about doing? No, it's not. If it was natural, you wouldn't need to go to these workshops and you wouldn't need to get together with other women and talk about it and talk about how to do it and refine it. No, it's forced, it's unnatural. Admit it. You're doing it because of peer pressure, which men have no concept. The typical husband in America has no concept of the peer pressure that his wife is laboring under as she tries to raise a child. Stop the gentle parenting. It's an aberration.
Speaker 1:Third, my mission is to provoke a retro revolution in child rearing in America and in any other country out there that's followed our lead into a parenting train wreck. I now understand that quite a few people, in fact, are listening to me in Australia down under. Yes, where the raising of children is concerned, I want to help turn the clock back 50 years to when child and teen mental health was 10 times better than it has been since we collectively began listening to mental health professionals tell us how to raise kids. I told you we live in the age of irony. I hope you've enjoyed this episode because I said so and that you'll join us next week when I will tell the story of my son, eric, who is 50,. What is he? 50, four years old. Who is the person responsible for my career?
Speaker 1:In 1979, eric's very professional, composed, calm third grade teacher, out of great concern for him, told my wife and myself 1979, that Eric was the worst behaved child she had seen in 20 years of teaching my son. That's the point to which believing in psychology had brought my wife and myself. At the time, eric qualified for four psychological diagnoses ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder of childhood and a learning disability, all scale one to 10, 10. It was a wake up call and we answered it. Three months later, the same teacher told us she felt as if she had witnessed a miracle. I'll tell you the whole story next week. Folks, stay tuned, and in the meantime, you can help move the mission along by telling your friends, your relatives and your coworkers about us. And remember also that I write a weekly sub stack that is equally incendiary. You can find it at substackcom. Lastly, as always, keep on rocking in the free world. So, folks, if we don't rock it, we may lose it.