Adopting The Hurt Child

Without avoiding the grim statistics, this book reveals the real hope that hurting children can be healed through adoptive and foster parents, social workers, and others who care. Includes information on foreign adoptions.

The world is full of hurt children, and bringing one into your home can quickly derail the easy family life you once knew. Get effective suggestions, wisdom, and advice to parent the hurt child in your life. The best hope for tragedy prevention is knowledge! Updated and revised.

Originally published in 1993, this classic piece of literature on adoption has revolutionised the way people think about adopted children. Nancy Verrier examines the life-long consequences of the 'primal wound' - the wound that is caused when a child is separated from its mother - for adopted people. Her argument is supported by thorough research in pre- and perinatal psychology, attachment, bonding and the effects of loss.

"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.

Caroline Archer sets out to provide adoptive and foster parents with an understanding of the complex range of difficulties with which their children may struggle as a result of their early experience of adversity. She presents strategies to help parents deal with their youngsters' troubling behaviour, in what seems to them a hostile world.

Offers advice for adoptive parents on attachment and developmental issues arising from separation, loss, and trauma in early childhood.

This classic text is a comprehensive guide for prospective and actual adoptive parents on how to understand and care for their adopted child and promote healthy attachment. It explains what attachment is and provides parenting techniques matched to children's emotional needs and stages to enhance children's happiness and emotional health.

Based on personal experiences, research, and interviews, the author presents "practical tips, advice, and real-life stories for anyone who is adopting, or hopes to adopt, an older child."--Cover.