Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men: A New Dimension in Family Diversity
David Brodzinsky and Adam Pertman (eds), 2011
This book explores the gamut of historical, legal, sociological, psychological, social casework, and personal issues related to adoption by sexual-minority individuals and couples. Leading experts in a variety of fields address–and often shatter–the controversies, myths, and misconceptions hindering efforts by these individuals to adopt and raise children. What makes this book all the more valuable is that it provides insights and specific recommendations for establishing empirically validated best practices for working with an important sector of our society, for treating all prospective and current parents fairly and equally, and, perhaps most importantly, for increasing a still largely untapped resource for providing families for children who need them.
Adoption: Choosing It, Living It, Loving It
Raymond Guarendi, 2009
Ray Guarendi, psychologist, husband and father of ten adopted children, considers the most commonly asked adoption questions with insight, humor and a heart for the adoptive family. His aim? To dispel unsettling misperceptions about adoption, to encourage others to think about and act on adoption, and to guide adoptive parents to a more relaxed, rewarding family life for all involved.
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
Jean MacLeod and Sheena Macrae (ed), 2006
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.
Adopting the Hurt Child: Hope for Families with Special Needs
Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky, 2009
The world is full of hurting kids who suffer from emotional trauma caused by someone they should have been able to trust. It’s a pain that lasts into adulthood if not healed and resolved. It is the new face of adoption. In this revised and updated guide to healing the emotional trauma of the adopted child, authors Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky provide a clear picture of what it’s like to hurt and what it means to heal. Through advice, tips, and success stories of those who have been there, you’ll find valuable insight and hope.
Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Children with Severe Behaviors, Volume I
Heather Forbes and Bryan Post, 2006
This book gives us the understanding to truly provide emotional safety for children with trauma histories. By revealing the connection between the body/mind system as it relates to trauma and stress, it challenges all of us to embrace a paradigm shift. It reveals our own fears, invites us to step into our child’s inner world, and demonstrates how to respond to them with love.
Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Children with Severe Behaviors, Volume II
Heather Forbes, 2008
This book is written in an easy to understand and easy to grasp format for anyone working with or parenting children with difficult or severe behaviors. The first six chapters discuss the principles of her love-based parenting paradigm. A new understanding of why traditional parenting techniques are ineffective with children with difficult behaviors is given, along with clear and concise explanations of the science behind trauma and negative early life experiences. The next seven chapters address specific behaviors, including poor social skills, homework battles, demanding behaviors, self-injury, defensive attitudes, no conscience, and chores. Each chapter gives specific examples of how to implement her parenting principles, empowering parents to make amazing and permanent changes in their homes. All the examples given throughout these chapters are true stories provided by parents who read and implemented her first book, Volume 1.
Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control: Toddlers, Five-to-Nine, Tweens, Teenagers (Audio CD)
Heather Forbes and Bryan Post, 2007
This 9-part audio CD set will bring you solutions and will bring you to a deeper understanding of the book Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control. The discussions hit the mark for children of all ages and put the concepts of this book into real life application. The authors answer questions submitted from parents around the world in a dynamic dialogue, empowering you to bring peace into your family. Remember, even if you don’t have a toddler in your home your tween or teenager can easily revert back to a two-year-old, so the entire set is applicable to any child!
Big Steps for Little People: Parenting Your Adopted Child
Celia Foster, 2008
A mother of two adopted children, Celia Foster has written Big Steps for Little People as a personal ‘insider’s guide’ to parenting adopted children. Drawing on the hard-won wisdom gained in her own family life, Celia offers a thoughtful account of life with adopted children and examines the issues that many adoptive families encounter, including the development of children with attachment problems and how to tackle behavioral difficulties. She combines real-life anecdotes with suggestions and strategies that other parents can put to use.
Brothers and Sisters in Adoption: Helping Children Navigate Relationships when New Kids Join the Family
Arleta James, 2009
The addition of a child with a history of neglect or trauma cannot be a seamless transition. The expectations of everyone involved – parents, new siblings, and, yes, the professionals facilitating the adoption – must be realistic, taking into account that the new child will need special attention that may take away time and attention from the already resident kids, that family life is likely to be turned topsy turvy until appropriate counseling and support are in place, that relationships will change; Arleta James 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.
Can’t You Sit Still? Adoption and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Randolph Severson, 1991
Experts state that the incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is four times greater among adopted children than in the general population. This book, written specifically for adoptive parents, offers eloquent but practical advice about ADHD. In addition to providing concrete, inventive advice about behavior management, medication, and diet, Can’t you Sit Still? provides a message of hope.
The Challenging Child: Understanding, Raising, and Enjoying the Five “Difficult” Types of Children
Stanley Greenspan, 1995
Most children fall into five basic personality types that stem from inborn physical characteristics: the sensitive child, the self-absorbed child, the defiant child, the inattentive child, and the active/aggressive child. Stanley Greenspan, M.D., is the first to show parents how to match their parenting to the challenges of their particular child. He identifies and vividly describes these five universal temperaments and then, with great empathy, shows parents how each of these children actually experiences the world and how to use daily childrearing to enhance an individual child’s strengths and talents.
The Colors of Grief: Understanding a Child’s Journey through Loss from Birth to Adulthood
Janis Di Ciacco, 2010
The Colors of Grief explores strategies for supporting a grieving child to ensure a healthy passage into adulthood. Drawing on the latest research in neurology and psychology, the author illustrates the child’s grieving process by describing their key stages of development, which range from preverbal infancy (0 to 2 years) through to early adulthood (about 25 years). She shows how a child’s progress through these stages can be impaired by an early encounter with loss, which can lead to cognitive, emotional and social difficulties. As well as explaining the connections between bereavement, attachment issues and social dysfunction, the author also suggests easy-to-use activities for intervention at each stage, including infant massage, aromatherapy and storytelling. This is a revealing and accessible book for both parents and professionals working with, or caring for, infants, children or young adults who have experienced loss.
The Connected Child
Karyn Purvis, David Cross and Wendy Sunshine, 2007
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 home – 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.
Creating Memories: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges
Cheryl Lieberman and Rhea Bufferd, 1999
All families, no matter how they are brought together, struggle against enormous odds to thrive. However, for adoptive families, where the history is not a shared one, the rites and traditions commonly relied upon to negotiate transitions and to withstand internal or external stressors do not yet exist. The ceremonies presented in this book cover the spectrum of life cycle phases, from preadoptive to moving in, from adjustment to reinforcement and beyond.
Creating Secure Attachments for Adopted Children (DVD)
Heather Forbes and Bryan Post, 2008
Adopting a child requires a parent to understand how the child’s past experiences influence the child’s ability to be in a secure relationship. This video explains issues of adoptive parenting and will empower you with effective parenting solutions.
Dare to Love: The Art of Merging Science and Love into Parenting Children with Difficult Behaviors
Heather T. Forbes, LCSW, 2009
Emerging science has helped us to understand children better from a neurological and behavioral standpoint. Yet all the academic research coupled with the best diagnoses for children can still leave parents feeling completely powerless. In her book, Dare to Love, Heather Forbes, L.C.S.W., describes in detail, through a series of questions and answers, how to merge science into everyday parenting. This book gives practical, effective, and loving solutions for any parent struggling with his or her child. It will leave you feeling empowered, hopeful, and excited to be a parent, again.
Dare to Love Yourself (Audio CD)
Heather T. Forbes, 2010
Music, Meditations and Affirmations for Emotional Wellness.
The Family of Adoption
Joyce Pavao, 2005
Full of wonderful stories that give insight into a wide variety of adoption issues, now revised in light of recent developments, The Family of Adoption is a powerful argument for the right kind of openness in adoption. Joyce Maguire Pavao uses her thirty years of experience as a family and adoption therapist to explain to adoptive parents, birthparents, adult adopted people, and extended family, as well as to those who work with children professionally the developmental stages and challenges one can expect in the life of the adopted person.
Gay Dads: Transitions to Adoptive Fatherhood
Abbie Goldberg, 2012
The author examines the ways in which gay fathers approach and negotiate parenthood when they adopt. Drawing on empirical data from her in-depth interviews with 70 gay men, Goldberg analyzes how gay dads interact with competing ideals of fatherhood and masculinity, alternately pioneering and accommodating heteronormative “parenthood culture.” The first study of gay men’s transitions to fatherhood, this work will appeal to a wide range of readers, from those in the social sciences to social work to legal studies, as well as to gay-adoptive parent families themselves.
The Healing Power of Family: An Illustrated Overview of Life with the Troubled Foster or Adopted Child
Richard J Delaney, 2000
Statistics about child abuse and neglect can overwhelm, yet somehow still fail to impart the very real damage done to children who are then placed in foster and adoptive homes with under-prepared, under-supported families. Emotional damage causes injured children to exhibit “survival behaviors” which can be disturbing and often damage the family environment despite the best intentions and interventions of foster and adoptive parents who wish to help the child heal. The author foresees the influence of these children on foster or adoptive families and offers strategies to transform the upsetting behavior and build positive interaction between the child and family.
Help for the Hopeless Child: A Guide for Families
Ronald Federici, Psy.D., 2003
Designed specifically for families that have struggled for many years with an unmanageable child, this book focuses on innovative and aggressive assessment and treatment strategies for the most difficult child who has not responded to previous mental health interventions. Specialized sections of this book focus on dealing with the complexities of the internationally adopted child who has survived years of institutionalization. Clear and specific treatment strategies for all families are outlined in a very practical approach.
Helping Children Cope with Separation and Loss
Claudia Jewett-Jarrett, 1994
All adopted children have suffered a loss- the loss of their birthparents. Some have also been separated from one or more foster parents. This book contains compassionate, step-by-step guidance for any concerned adult who wants to help a child talk about, cope with, and recover from a loss. It offers warm advice, specific techniques, and innovative ideas for helping children overcome the sadness, anger, and anxiety they feel during a difficult time.
Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption
Stephen Hicks and Janet McDermott (ed), 1999
It takes courage to decide to foster or adopt a child, knowing that your life will now be an open book; and if you are a lesbian or gay man, you face the additional hurdles of prejudice and legal obstacles. Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption presents a collection of personal accounts by those who have fostered or adopted children.
A Love Like No Other: Stories from Adoptive Parents
Pamela Kruger and Jill Smolowe (ed), 2005
A collection of stories from adoptive parents.
“Mom, Jason’s Breathing On Me!” The Solution to Sibling Bickering
Anthony E. Wolf, 2003
In a fresh, funny, and straightforward way, the author presents three essential rules for dealing with sibling arguments – rules that, if followed, completely remove the root causes of bickering.
Parenting Adopted Adolescents
Gregory Keck, 2009
Your adopted adolescent proclaims, “I can’t wait until I turn eighteen so I can leave!” And you celebrate your future liberation. If this scenario is too familiar, you’re not alone. And you’ve chosen the right resource for parenting strategies, tips, new suggestions, and insights to manage tough situations in your family. Dr. Gregory C. Keck – adoptive parent, psychologist, and adoption expert – helps you understand and appreciate the complicated journey that adopted adolescents face. And once you understand your role in the journey, you will be more effective in your role as a parent.
Parenting from the Inside Out
Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell, 2003
How many parents have found themselves thinking: I can’t believe I just said to my child the very thing my parents used to say to me! Am I just destined to repeat the mistakes of my parents? In Parenting from the Inside Out, child psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegel and early childhood expert Mary Hartzell explore the extent to which our childhood experiences shape the way that we parent. Drawing on stunning new findings in neurobiology and attachment research, they explain how interpersonal relationships directly affect the development of the brain, and offer parents a step-by-step approach to forming a deeper understanding of their own life stories that will help them raise compassionate and resilient children.
Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow
Gregory J. Keck, Ph.D. and Regina M. Kupecky, L.S.W., 2002
Some adoptees come to their new homes with hurts from the past that can affect an entire family. With time, patience, and informed parenting, your adopted child can heal, grow, and develop beyond what seems possible now. Parenting the Hurt Child explains how to raise your child with loving wisdom, resolve, and success, while preserving your stability and sanity.
Parenting with Love and Logic – Teaching Children Responsibility
Foster Cline and Jim Fay, 2006
As a parent, you only have a few years to prepare your children for a world that requires responsibility and maturity for survival. Responsibility is like anything else – it is learned through practice. If you want to raise children to be self-confident, motivated and ready for the real world, take advantage of the win-win approach to parenting. Your children will win because they’ll learn responsibility and the logic of life by solving their own problems. And you’ll win because you’ll establish healthy control – without resorting to anger, threats, nagging, or power struggles. Parenting with Love and Logic puts the fun back into parenting!
Parenting Teens with Love and Logic – Preparing Adolescents for Responsible Adulthood
Foster Cline and Jim Fay, 2006
When kids hit their teen years, parenting takes on a whole new dimension. As they struggle toward independence and autonomy, some dicey issues emerge. That’s where love and logic parenting comes in. Love means giving your teens opportunities to be responsible and empowering them to make their own decisions. Logic means allowing them to live with the natural consequences of their mistakes and showing empathy for the pain, disappointment, and frustration they’ll experience.
Raising Adopted Children
Lois Ruskai Melina, 1998
Raising Adopted Children is a parent’s guide to rearing children in an adoptive family. It covers circumstances important to all adoptive parents. Drawing from child development, psychology, sociology, medicine and also the experiences of adoptive parents, it examines the child’s physical, emotional, and psychological development at every age. In addition, there are chapters on special topics such as the multi-racial family, serious behavior problems and single parent adoption.
Raising Your Spirited Child: A Guide for Parents whose Child is More Intense, Sensitive, Perceptive, Persistent, and Energetic
Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, 2006
The spirited child – often called “difficult” or “strong-willed” – possesses traits we value in adults yet find challenging in children. Research shows that spirited kids are wired to be “more” – by temperament, they are more intense, sensitive, perceptive, persistent, and uncomfortable with change than the average child. In this revised addition, Kurcinka provides vivid examples and a refreshingly positive viewpoint.
Real Parents, Real Children: Parenting the Adopted Child
Holly van Gulden and Lisa M. Bartels-Rabb, 1993
If you’ve ever heard Holly van Gulden speak, you’ll know that a wealth of information awaits you in this book.Real Parents, Real Children offers insight into how adopted children commonly think and feel about being adopted. It explains why, and in what way, adopted children grieve for their birth parents and suggests ways that adoptive parents can help them to come to a healthy resolution of this grief.
Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid: A Survival Guide for Ordinary Parents of Special Children
Gina Gallagher and Patricia Konjoian, 2010
On a “perfection-preoccupied planet,” sisters Gina and Patty dare to speak up about the frustrations, sadness, and stigmas they face as parents of children with disabilities (one with Asperger’s syndrome, the other with bipolar disorder). This refreshingly frank book, filled with wise and funny advice, will alternately make you want to tear your hair out and laugh your head off.
Therapeutic Parenting: It’s a Matter of Attitude!
Deborah Hage, 2003
A practical guide to parenting children with attachment disorders, mood disorders, and oppositional defiant disorders. Deborah Hage, MSW shares tremendous wisdom in these 74 pages drawn from years as an adoptive parent and as a skilled therapist for emotionally disturbed children.
Trust-Based Parenting: Creating Lasting Changes in Your Child’s Behavior (DVD)
TCU Institute of Child Development, 2011
Dr. Purvis coined the phrase “children from hard places” to describe children who have experienced abuse, neglect, abandonment and/or trauma in early development. Their survival behaviors can be confusing, frustrating and difficult to manage even for the most patient and loving parents. This nearly four-hour video features Drs. Purvis and Cross coaching families through real-life, problem-solving scenarios. They demonstrate proven, practical skills and strategies for applying the Trust-Based Relational Intervention® model to everyday life to build a stronger parent-child connection, which leads to better behavior.
20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed: Discover the Unique Need of Your Adopted Child and Become the Best Parent you Can
Sherrie Eldridge, 2009
Most adoptive parents don’t know that their child has a different “heart language” than theirs. They need a translator, which Sherrie Eldridge becomes in this book.
Uncommon Voyage: Parenting a Special Needs Child
Laura Kramer, 2001
A memoir in which the author shares her experiences raising a special needs child.
The Ups and Downs of Raising a Bipolar Child: A Survival Guide for Parents
Judith Lederman and Candida Fink, M.D., 2003
Bipolar disorder has recently been identified as one of the most misunderstood and underdiagnosed conditions affecting children – and it is dramatically on the rise. This book gives parents sound advice and expert information they need to cope with this challenging diagnosis, and shows how to provide essential care and support for a bipolar child as well as for the rest of the family.
Welcoming a New Brother or Sister through Adoption
Arleta James, 2013
Adoption is a big step which can change the whole dynamics of the family. It is crucial that parents understand the impact it has when new sibling relationships are forged and an adoptee becomes a part of the family. This book is a comprehensive yet accessible guide that describes the adoption process and the impact of adoption on every member of the family, including the adopted child. It prepares families to have realistic expectations and equips them with knowledge to deal with a host of situations that may arise, addressing difficult questions head-on: “Did we make the right choice by adopting?”, “How is this affecting our ‘typical’ children?”, “Will our adopted son or daughter heal?” are explored and solutions discussed in detail. All this is accompanied with real life stories and direct quotes from children, which make it a realistic and insightful resource.
What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know
Kate Cremer-Vogel and Dan and Cassie Richards, 2008
This remarkable true-life story of raising two adopted children is a tale of hope and resilience, of two parents unprepared for their children’s psychological wounds that only time would reveal. Most importantly, it shows that profound healing is possible when adoptive families realize that traditional parenting is not enough.
The Whole Life Adoption Book: Realistic Advice for Building a Healthy Adoptive Family
Jayne Schooler and Thomas Atwood, 2008
This book is a practical resource for parents that will guide them from the point of considering adopting, to becoming an adoptive family and creating a nurturing family environment. Topics discussed include how to communicate about adoption from infancy through adulthood, adopting and parenting a child with special needs, understanding attachment and the impact of trauma, and when a child wants to search for birthparents.
Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families
Jayne Schooler, Betsy Keefer Smalley and Timothy Callahan, 2010
Why doesn’t our child return our love? What are we failing to understand? What are we failing to do? These questions can fill the minds of adoptive parents caring for wounded, traumatized children. Families often enter into this experience with high expectations for their child and for themselves but are broadsided by shattered assumptions. This book addresses the reality of those unmet expectations and offers validation and solutions for the challenges of parenting deeply traumatized and emotionally disturbed children.