Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents
by Deborah D. Gray
from Perspectives Press (IN)
Proper attachment is the most fundamental issue in a successful adoption, but what exactly does the term mean? Attaching in Adoption answers that question thoroughly, and it provides solutions to a variety of specific attachment problems.
Along with technical explanations of challenges such as self-esteem, childhood grief, and limit-testing, the book includes a tremendous number of personal vignettes illustrating attachment-related situations. Parents who are convinced that only their child has ever behaved a certain way are sure to take comfort in these stories; not only do they include kids from all backgrounds and age groups, but each has an ultimately happy ending. The emotional health of the whole family is also paramount according to the book--with plenty of rest and "alone time," caregivers are more likely to be emotionally available when they are most needed.
Because Attaching in Adoption focuses on special needs, families who are coming together through foster programs, at later ages, or across cultural lines will find it especially helpful. Both psychologically detailed and straightforwardly helpful, it can be of equal benefit to counselors and parents alike. --Jill Lightner
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
by Sherrie Eldridge
from Delta
"Birthdays may be difficult for me."
"I want you to take the initiative in opening conversations about my birth family."
"When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me."
"I am afraid you will abandon me."
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.
With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love--that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future--that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be--and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.
Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child--and within the adoptive home.
Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment-Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors
by Heather T. Forbes
from Beyond Consequences Institute, LLC
Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control covers in detail the effects of trauma on the body-mind and how trauma alters children’s behavioral responses. The first four chapters help parents and professionals clearly understand the neurological research behind the basic model given in this book, deemed, “The Stress Model.” While scientifically based in research, it is written in an easy to understand and easy to grasp format for anyone working with or parenting children with severe behaviors. The next seven chapters are individually devoted to seven behaviors typically seen with attachment-challenged children. These include lying, stealing, hoarding and gorging, aggression, defiance, lack of eye contact, and yes, even a chapter that talks candidly about how parents appear hostile and angry when they work to simply maintain their families from reaching complete states of chaos. Each of these chapters talks in depth on these specific behaviors and gives vivid and contrasting examples of how this love-based approach works to foster healing and works to develop relationships, as opposed to the fear-based traditional attachment parenting approaches that are being advocated in today’s attachment field. The authors end with a Parenting Bonus Section. True testimonials from parents who have been able to make significant changes in their homes with this model of parenting, giving real-life examples of how they have been able to find the healing, peace, and love that they had been seeking prior to working through the techniques outlined in this book.
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
from EMK Press
Finally, a comprehensive parenting book for adoptive families! Over 100 contributors have helped EMK Press to weave a stunning tapestry of advice specifically for adoptive parents. Parenting adopted children requires parenting with an extra layer and this book helps you to understand where that extra layer falls. This 520 page book is a wealth of information for the newly arrived home family and the experienced family as well. This is "What to Expect" for the adoptive family. It is a book you won't read all at once, but come back to again and again as your child's awareness of who they are and how they came to join your family develops and your awareness of how to parent them evolves.
Our adopted children come to us from loss-loss of a birthfamily, perhaps a culture, and sometimes language. There are helpful things that we can do to address these issues, and Adoption Parenting helps you to create an awareness to do just that. We also look at stumbling blocks to good parenting, and standard parenting practices that aren't the best solution for adopted children.
We look at the core issues all members of the adoption triad face, and look at how that affects standard parenting challenges like sleeping through the night, discipline and attachment. We cover specific challenges families have faced: FASD, trauma and PTSD, sensory integration, speech and language delays, learning issues, food issues, racial differences, and at ways to effectively parent a post-institutionalized child.
We also look at how each of us has been parented and how that affects the parenting choices we make for our children. There is a section which includes articles on Post Adoption Depression, the importance of support networks (both for your children and for yourself) and when and how to find therapists if that is warranted. The book is filled with resources and links to help find more information on a specific topic as your parenting or your child needs.
The contributors to this book include professionals in their respective fields like Dan Hughes, PhD; Arthur Becker-Weidman, PhD; Beth O'Malley,MEd; Adam Pertman; Ellen Singer, LCSW-C; Laurie Miller, MD; Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS; Barbara Elleman, MHS, OTR/L, BCP; Marcy Axness, PhD; Christopher J. Alexander, PhD; Sharon Glennen, PhD, CCC-SLP; Doris Landry, MS, LLC.
Contributors also include parents who have had to learn to parent the children who have come to them. Many of these parents have become experts as well! The advice and the wisdom they have to share is honest and heartening. Adoptees who are now adults have shared experiences on their growing up that are interwoven in the book and there are contributions from birth mothers as well.
Each person comes to parenting from a different place and the needs their children have are unique. Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections allows the reader to choose which tools are helpful for their particular situation and which are not. This isn't a book about what you have to do to parent, but about perspective, awareness, and understanding that overlays how you parent. This book is designed to help each of us become the best parents for our children and to offer support and connections for families on the journey of adoption parenting!
Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft
by Mary Hopkins-Best
from Perspectives Press (IN)
The Connected Child: Bring hope and healing to your adoptive family
by Karyn B. Purvis
from McGraw-Hill
"An extremely useful parenting handbook... truly outstanding ... strongly recommended."
--Library Journal (starred review)
"A tremendous resource for parents and professionals alike."
--Thomas Atwood, president and CEO, National Council for Adoption
The adoption of a child is always a joyous moment in the life of a family. Some adoptions, though, present unique challenges. Welcoming these children into your family--and addressing their special needs--requires care, consideration, and compassion.
Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you:
- Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child
- Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders
- Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened
"A must-read not only for adoptive parents, but for all families striving to correct and connect with their children."
--Carol S. Kranowitz, author of The Out-of-Sync Child
"Drs. Purvis and Cross have thrown a life preserver not only to those just entering uncharted waters, but also to those struggling to stay afloat."
--Kathleen E. Morris, editor of S. I. Focus magazine
"Truly an exceptional, innovative work . . . compassionate, accessible, and founded on a breadth of scientific knowledge and clinical expertise."
--Susan Livingston Smith, program director, Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute
"The Connected Child is the literary equivalent of an airline oxygen mask and instructions: place the mask over your own face first, then over the nose of your child. This book first assists the parent, saying, in effect, 'Calm down, you're not the first mom or dad in the world to face this hurdle, breathe deeply, then follow these simple steps.' The sense of not facing these issues alone--the relief that your child's behavior is not off the charts--is hugely comforting. Other children have behaved this way; other parents have responded thusly; welcome to the community of therapeutic and joyful adoptive families."
--Melissa Fay Greene, author of There is No Me Without You: One Woman's Odyssey to Rescue Africa's Children
Parenting the Hurt Child : Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow
by Gregory Keck
from Pinon Press
Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky explain how to raise a hurting child with loving wisdom, resolve, and success.
LifeBooks : Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child
by Beth O'Malley
from Adoption-Works Press
From Alaska to Australia the word is spreading. Adoptive parents are discovering the enormous value of adoption lifebooks. But then the questions begin. Where do I start? What information should be included? Do I let my child bring it to school?
Beth O'Malley M.Ed. provides the answers to these and more. In her best selling book, LifeBooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child Beth guides you though the process, step-by-step and page by page as if she were right there with you.
Learn about the difference between a scrapbook or baby book and a lifebook. Or explaining tough truths, dealing with secrets and which pages are essential.
Newly revised 2002
Dozens of real life stories
Lists of hard-to-find lifebook resource websites
Sample pages for international and domestic
Special waiting parent section.
If you get really stuck, there are three full-length examples in the back section, including one for China adoptions.
Her life experiences as an adoptee combined with doing lifebook seminars with adoptive parents all over the country, gives Beth a special perspective on lifebooks. Most importantly, Beth has made countless lifebooks with children in her role as an adoption specialist in Massachusetts.
Beth O'Malley has helped thousands of adoptive families give their children the answers and security they crave.
This book is an indispensable guide to making your child's lifebook. You will refer to it for years to come!
The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child
by Nancy Verrier
from Nancy Verrier
Raising Adopted Children, Revised Edition: Practical Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent
by Lois Ruskai Melina
from Collins
"Some people may describe adoption as difficult; others simply describe it as different. I am inclined to think of it as complex," writes Lois Ruskai Melina in the updated, revised Raising Adopted Children: Practical, Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent.
Adoption practices have evolved considerably since this book's first publication in 1986, and the new version of the "Dr. Spock for adoptive parents" reflects the latest theories. Drawing on the findings and practices of pediatricians, social workers, scientists, and adoptive parents, Raising Adopted Children is carefully and thoroughly researched. Chapters on open adoption, international adoption, and transracial adoption are combined with advice on bonding and attachment, breast-feeding an adoptive infant (possible but complicated), dealing with schools, privacy issues, adopting a child with disabilities, adopting as a single parent, and the challenges of adolescence. While Melina's many years of professional and personal experience shape her advice, she remains very evenhanded. For example, she's a strong proponent of the "early telling" theory of adoption (being open about the adoption with the child from the beginning), but she also clearly presents other points of view, and, throughout the book, encourages parents to make decisions that feel right for them.
The text includes specific suggestions for explaining a child's birth circumstances, including common misconceptions, and a valuable discussion about whether adoptees are at greater risk for behavior problems or learning disabilities. She also provides suggestions for setting rules for contact with biological parents, easing grief, and acknowledging a child's history. A completely annotated list of selected references and resources rounds out this superior guide. --Ericka Lutz
In this completely revised and updated edition of Raising Adopted Children, Lois Melina, editor of Adopted Children newsletter and the mother of two children by adoption, draws on the latest research in psychology,sociology, and medicine to guide parents through all stages of their child's development. Melina addresses the pressing adoption issues of today, such as open adoption, international adoption, and transracial adoption, and answers parents' most frequently asked questions, such as:
- How will my child "bond" or form attachments to me?
- When and how should I tell my child that he was adopted?
- What should schools be told about my child?
- Will adoption make adolescent upheavals more complicated?
Up-to-date, sensitive, and clear, Raising Adopted Children is the definitive resource for all adoptive parents and concerned professionals.
"Raising Adopted Children is a comprehensive source of practical, reassuring advice and intelligent support for the adoptive parent. [It is also an] excellent professional resource for social workers, physicians, teachers, therapists, and others working with adopted children and their parents."
--North American Council on Adoptable Children"Melina, an adoptive parent, writes both sensibly and sensitively on many critical issues faced by parents and their adopted children from infancy through adolescence."
--Booklist
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