By Raisingkids' CEO and child psychologist Dr Pat Spungin Jan 2001

Pity the poor 'internet twins', bounced from home to home, and from country to country and all in their 'best interests'.

9 months old, 4 sets of parents and it's still not over. Next their return to the US and a new foster family and hopefully ...finally.. a permanent family and some stability for these little girls.

What is all this disruption doing to the emotional health of these poor babies? Will it influence them for the rest of their lifespan? Children need love and attention all their lives if they are to flourish, but in their first two years it is essential. If this warm and loving care is not available then there are long tern consequences, many of which can never be undone.

From six months onward, babies show strong signs of attachment to their main carers, usually but not necessarily their mother. After 18 months to capacity to become attached declines. Babies deprived of love grow up emotionally disturbed. Typical symptoms are disruptive behaviour, depression, an inability to trust others and difficulties in making relationships.

The last decade here and in the US has provided a laboratory experiment in what happens when children fail to attach by a certain age. Children were adopted from Romanian orphanages at widely differing ages. Some were only a few weeks or a few months old. Others were as old as five years. The horrible circumstances in which these children were kept meant there was no opportunity for them to become attached to any of their carers. The signs of emotional deprivation were all too clear; obsessive rocking, listlessness, vacant staring eyes, lack of responsivess and among older children a desperate clinging, over-friendliness.

How did these children react when they were brought into 'normal' homes and cared for in a warm and loving environment? To a large extent it depended on the age at which they were adopted. The older the child, the less likelihood there was of undoing the effects of the deprivation. Children adopted at under a year were able to bond normally with their adoptive parents. From two onwards the effects became more and more severe and in some cases adoptive parents of older children were unable to integrate them successfully into their families.

So where does that leave the internet twins? One slight ray of hope in this dismal episode is that at least they have each other. Parents of twins will tell you of their closeness and the extent to which they can support each other. Let's hope that the courts move fast to get these children settled. The sooner this happens the better but in the meantime at least they have each other.

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