Toddlers rescued from orphanages and placed in good foster homes
score dramatically higher on IQ tests years later than children who
were left behind, concludes a one-of-a-kind project in Romania that has
profound implications for child welfare around the globe.
The boost meant the difference between borderline retardation and
average intelligence for some youngsters.
Most important, children removed from orphanages before age 2 had
the biggest improvement - key new evidence of a so-called sensitive
period for brain development, the US research team found.
"The longer they stay in the institution, the worse their IQ," said
Dr Charles Nelson III of Harvard Medical School, who led the study.
"What we're really talking about is the importance of getting kids
out of bad environments and put into good environments."
Push for foster care systems
The research already is credited with influencing child-care reform
in Romania, and UNICEF has begun using the data to push numerous
countries that still depend on state-run orphanages to start shifting
to foster care-like systems.
"The research provides concrete scientific evidence on the long-term
impacts of the deprivation of quality care for children," said UNICEF
child protection specialist Aaron Greenberg. "The interesting part
about this is the one-on-one caring of a young child impacts ... cognitive and intellectual development."
It comes as no surprise that orphanages are not optimal for child
development. Earlier studies have found that thousands of children
adopted during the 1990s from squalid overseas orphanages in Eastern
Europe, China and other nations continued to face serious developmental
problems even after moving to affluent new homes with doting parents.
Other factors to consider
But there are simmering questions: Were those abandoned or orphaned
children who spent more time in orphanages less healthy to begin with?
Exactly how much damage does neglect and lack of stimulation in the
early months of life do, and how long does that damage last?
The new study is one of the first scientific investigations to pin
down answers, in a unique way: US researchers randomly assigned 136
young children in Bucharest's six orphanages to either keep living
there - or to go live with foster parents who were specially trained
and paid for by the study. (Romania had no foster-care system in 2000
when the research began.)
The team chose apparently healthy children, and repeatedly tested
brain development as they grew, including tracking those who ultimately
were adopted or reunited with family. For comparison, they also tested
the cognitive ability of similar children who were never
The results: By age 4½, youngsters in foster care were scoring
almost 10 points higher on IQ tests than the children left in the
Children who left the orphanages before age 2 saw an almost 15-point
Then Nelson compared the ages at which children were sent to foster
care. Every extra month spent in the orphanage, up to almost age 3,
meant roughly a half-point lower score on those later IQ tests.
Biological homes best
Children raised in their biological homes still fared the best, with
average test scores 10 to 20 points higher than the foster-care kids.
What does that mean as these children grow up?
IQ tests do not determine how successful people are in life, Nelson
stresses - and he has only now begun testing these children again as
they turn 7 and 8. It is possible he will find they have caught up.
"What a parent should expect is that the older the child is when
they leave the institution, the more likely that child may have some
developmental problems and the more difficult it may be to ameliorate
those problems," he said. "The message to parents is simply to go into
this with their eyes open, but not to give up." – (Sapa/AP)