Nurturing Adoptions

Adoption.

Attaching in Adoption is a comprehensive guide for prospective and actual adoptive parents on how to understand and care for their adopted child and promote healthy attachment. This classic text provides practical parenting strategies designed to enhance children's happiness and emotional health. It explains what attachment is, how grief and trauma can affect children's emotional development, and how to improve attachment, respect, cooperation and trust. Parenting techniques are matched to children's emotional needs and stages, and checklists are included to help parents assess how their child is doing at each developmental stage. The book covers a wide range of issues including international adoption, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and learning disabilities, and combines sound theory and direct advice with case examples throughout. This book is a must read for anyone interested in adoption and for all adoptive families. It will also be a valuable resource for adoption professionals.

Nurturing Attachments combines the experience and wisdom of parents and carers with that of professionals to provide support and practical guidance for foster and adoptive parents looking after children with insecure attachment relationships. It gives an overview of attachment theory and a step-by-step model of parenting which provides the reader with a tried-and-tested framework for developing resilience and emotional growth. Featuring throughout are the stories of Catherine, Zoe, Marcus and Luke, four fictional children in foster care or adoptive homes, who are used to illustrate the ideas and strategies described. The book offers sound advice and provides exercises for parents and their children, as well as useful tools that supervising social workers can use both in individual support of carers as well as in training exercises. This is an essential guide for adoptive and foster parents, professionals including health and social care practitioners, clinical psychologists, child care professionals, and lecturers and students in this field.

RECOVER WHAT TRAUMA HAS STOLEN FROM YOUR CHILD Children from traumatic backgrounds (including foster and adoptive children) have often been asked to give up pretend, play, and childhood in order to survive in an adult world. This is unfortunate as we tend to learn crucial lessons about the world and ourselves within the confines of childhood play. While children might be removed from the cause of chronic trauma, the concept of play will not come naturally for them. This book (along with the complimentary parent activity guide) will help you and your child to discover a world of pretend where your child can also conquer issues in relationship.

Do I have what it takes to be a successful adoptive parent? Does my child consider me a successful parent? Will I ever hear my rebellious teen say, “I love you”? What tools do I need to succeed? In her groundbreaking first book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, Sherrie Eldridge gave voice to the very real concerns of adopted children, whose unique perspectives offered unprecedented insight. In this all-new companion volume, Eldridge goes beyond those insights and shifts her focus to parents, offering them much-needed encouragement and hope. Speaking from her own experience as an adoptee and an expert in the field of adoption, Eldridge shares proven strategies and the moving narratives of nearly one hundred adoptive families, helping parents gain a deeper understanding of what is normal, both for their children and themselves. By first strengthening yourself as a parent, you’ll be able to truly listen to your child, and to connect with him on every level, by opening the channels of communication and keeping them open forever. Then you and your child can grow closer through the practical exercises at the end of every chapter. Discover how to • be confident that your role in your child’s life is vital and irreplaceable • pass on the legacy of healthy self-care by assessing and regulating your stress • communicate unconditional love to your child • talk candidly with your child about her adoption and her birth family • teach your family how to respond positively to insensitive remarks about adoption • connect with other adoptive families–and build a support network • plus learn to become a “warrior” parent…settle the “real parent” question…cope with emotional triggers–what to do when you “lose it” . . . celebrate the miracle of your family…and much more

The ideal first book for prospective adopters. When you decide to adopt a child, you might assume that all the important work begins when the child comes to live with you. In fact the preparation stage before is crucial in ensuring that the adopted child will arrive to a safe and secure family. Preparing for Adoption provides clear advice on how to prepare for you adoptive child and create a strong foundation for a healthy and loving relationship. Julia Davis explains how many different factors can shape preparations for adoption, such as finding out about your child's history and using this information to establish a family environment which will meet your child's specific attachment needs. There is also advice on how to prepare your home to create a sense of safety for your child and how to prepare your family to support you as adoptive parents. Primarily for adopters, foster carers and professionals supporting adopters, this book offers ideas and strategies to help parents prepare a happy and settled home for children before their arrival and ways to parent them in the early days of becoming a family that addresses their attachment needs.

Offers insights and examples and sturdy, practical, proven tools for helping newly configured families prepare, accept, react, and mobilize to become a new and different family meeting the practical, physical and emotional needs of all its members. These well prepared and supported families are the ones who thrive!

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.