ORANGES MCGEE WRITES

The first post in this series treated early adversity mostly as one exposure class: separation, unstable care, institutional rearing, and the timing and dose of what was missing. That was enough to set the map. It is not enough to read the map. Two children can both be adopted, both have an incomplete early record, and both show later trouble under interpersonal load, and still have arrived there by different routes. One route is built around harm. The other is built around a

Welcome to this series I am writing it as an adoptee with a Ph.D. in cognitive neuroscience and as a parent. I am not writing from a place of detached expertise. I am writing because the science of early brain development has helped me see patterns that used to be invisible. Some of those patterns are rooted in the circumstances of my adoption, some were added by the family that raised me, and some I'm determined not to hand down. The same training that taught me how attachme