BALTIMORE – Most internationally adopted children become well-adjusted adolescents, Femmie Juffer, Ph.D, said at a meeting sponsored by the Society for Research on Adolescence.
But internationally adopted teens do have more behavior problems than their nonadopted peers–predominantly externalizing problems, said Dr. Juffer of the center for child and family studies, Leiden (the Netherlands) University.
In a poster presentation, she reported the results of a study of 172 adolescents (81 boys and 91 girls) adopted at younger than 5 months from Sri Lanka, South Korea, and Colombia. Data from a comparison group of 2,068 adolescents, aged 12–18 years, were also used in this longitudinal study.
Study results showed that most children with behavioral problems at age 7 years still had those problems at age 14. The boys reported fewer internalizing, externalizing, and total problems, compared with reports from mothers and teachers.