Search Results for: blog dealing with your adopted childs special needs

Preparing for and Processing a Reunion: Expectations and Emotions

My last blogs talked about children’s experience of open adoption and possible advantages of a meeting between the child and birth family members. Counselors and social workers familiar with adoption issues can provide invaluable help in preparing for and dealing with such a reunion. Adoption workers may help birth and adoptive parents share and manage expectations, and help them process their own adoption issues so that they can be focused on the needs of the child. For one birthfather, these sessions covered the circumstances of his daughter’s birth and adoption, his feelings for her then and now, his relationship with … Continue reading →

Great Expectations

This is another blog about how my feelings didn’t quite match up to my beliefs when put to the test. Is it easier to accept that our adopted children have special needs than it is with our birth children? To be sure, knowing ahead of time helps. We adopted our first daughter knowing there was a 50-50 chance she’d need open heart surgery within two years. It was a common, “routine” operation, we were assured, and we glibly proceeded with plans. One day I stopped short and realized that if someone told me my birth son, then a toddler, would … Continue reading →

Adoption Blog Month in Review: August 2007

A major theme for this month in the adoption blog was discussions—especially discussions with your child, but also discussions with others. I began the month sharing my four-year-old daughter Regina’s questions about her droopy eyelid in Talking With Kids About Special Needs, and in Principles for Talking with Kids About Special Needs I discuss how I tried to use the same tenets for talking about her eye that I use when talking about adoption issues. Regina also figures prominently in the next blogs. She told me, “I Don’t Like My Skin”. I stumbled through a response, shared in I Don’t … Continue reading →

“I Don’t Like My Skin”

“I don’t like my skin. I want your skin.” Uh-oh. This is coming from my four-year-old daughter. On the one hand, I’m not surprised because I know that children often want to look like their parents. I know that at the preschool age kids become aware of differences. I know that my skin color is more similar to the “majority” of Americans’ skin color (although “white” won’t be a majority in another 20 or 30 years, demographers believe). On the other hand, I am surprised because we have always told the girls how beautiful their skin is. We’ve never shied … Continue reading →