Adoption Issues: Gorging & Hoarding

The gorging on food is very typical for children who’ve been neglected, malnourished. In my experience, with young children, it is not even something they are aware they are doing, but two of my children, at one time or another, have each consumed more volume than Jock and I combined – and we are not small eaters. That’s not to say that they weren’t miserable afterwards – even at times to the point of vomiting because of being too full. However, from our experience, this is something we have to let them do. They will eventually learn that we always have enough food to eat, and they don’t need to worry about when they will get their next meal.

Hoarding toys, food, etc. is a similar issue to the food gorging. It has some to do with how little they have had (or perceived they had) in the past and how much they have access to now. It also has a LOT to do with the loss that they’ve experience in their lives. When you have lost so much, the hoarding is a way to hang on to something that you hold dear – no matter how trivial a little plastic puppy toy (or the like) seems to be.

When Elijah & Josephine first came home, their favorite "toy" was any bag or box filled with as many things as they could stuff inside. They would empty it, guard the contents, while looking things over, rearrange them, refill the bag, and continue walking around with it. With time and some patience over some of the fighting over contents, we have overcome this for the most part.

Sharing is occurring a lot more than it used to in our household – although we do still have certain toys that belong to just one child, rather than the family-shared toys. I think this definitely has helped them to have a sense that something belongs to them, and they don’t need to hoard any more. We do at times see this behavior re-emerge, but it is now more of a rivalry or a teasing of each other, and a possessive, “Mine!” attitude than anything else.