Search Results for: blog insecurity in adopted children

Love You Forever–Reassuring Your Adopted Child

“I want to go bye-bye!” my four-year-old sobs. This has become her standard response to being reprimanded. I usually tell her she can go to her room. Then I make sure to add, “We’ll be here when you’re ready.” There is nothing particularly unusual about this, of course. It would be wrong to assume adoption is the primary cause of every emotion my daughters have. However, many adoptive parents and adoption professionals report that adopted children often experience insecurity and fear of abandonment. The last few times my daughter has wanted to go bye-bye, I tell her, “I would come … Continue reading →

Traits of Foster Children

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The foster / adopt training that we took informed and warned us about some of the behaviors and traits that we would see when we took foster children into our home. I am not a special needs expert, although I know a lot more now than I did then. Rather than try to analyze what we saw, I want to report it so that others who try fostering will not be surprised. In previous articles, I have discussed fits, rages, and insecurity. Children who have been hungry sometimes do peculiar things. Even though they were being fed regularly, the boys … Continue reading →

Insecurity in Adopted Children, Part 2

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In July, 2004, we found out that the birth mother of our four boys had given birth to yet another boy. I will write on that event soon. I want to now focus on a detail of what happened. We quickly informed the state authorities that we wanted him. As we were making arrangements to pick him up, they described him as a beautiful child that was definitely African American. The boys are racially mixed; four of our five boys have African American ancestry. They all are various shades of brown, but only one clearly has the typical features of … Continue reading →

Insecurity in Adopted Children

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Our adopted children occasionally struggle with feeling secure with their new family. Some of the behaviors are obvious and expected, while others are not. Tommy came to our home from a brief stay in a foster home which had followed a stay in an inner city shelter. He was 30 months old. He was prone to throwing rages. Many of them were triggered by insecurity issues. Tommy would become hysterical when either of us left the house. It was even triggered when he heard one of us discussing running an errand. The mere sight of a suitcase or a packed … Continue reading →

A Friend and Foe at Church

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I remember sitting in Relief Society one of my first weeks in my ward and spying one of the most beautiful children ever. Really, they’re a family of beautiful children, but my baby-loving eyes rested on the youngest of this tow-headed family. She had impressively white hair and the most beautiful big brown eyes, which stood out on her clear little face. I was sitting next to her mom that day, so I started making silly faces and trying to win her affection. It kind of worked, to her mom’s surprise. Of course, that won me over completely. This little … Continue reading →

Issues Illuminated in The Waiting Child

Last week I wrote about Cindy’s Champnella’s book The Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another, which tells the incredible story of her four-year-old daughter’s campaign to find a family for a toddler she had been assigned to take care of at her orphanage. In addition to the central story of trying to bring their daughter’s ill-nourished “baby” to the U.S., the book also deals with many aspects of adoption: the “voluntary donation” fees paid to orphanages, the deprivation some children have experienced in the orphanages, fears and insecurities in older children, … Continue reading →

Book Review: We Wanted You

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We Wanted You, by Liz Rosenberg, is a wonderful addition to a child’s library, especially the library of a child who came to his or her family through adoption. The book is simple enough to be understood by a three-year-old, yet the beautiful illustrations by Peter Catalanotto will appeal to younger and older readers, and the message of love will be reassuring to adoptees of any age. The words and pictures interact uniquely to tell the story of Enrique. The pictures begin with the present and go back to the past, while the words tell the adoptive parents’ story from … Continue reading →

He Still Wonders

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Sometimes I wonder what my adopted children are thinking. Every now and then, they will tell me something that is surprising. Every time that I start to think that a child is finally secure, I get a surprise. At least, that is how it has worked so far. Our oldest is eight years old and our only child that can really remember a day that he was not with us. I have already related how he recently had to ask if he was still going to be living with us when we tried to sneak him out of the house … Continue reading →

Foster Parents Will Have Emergencies

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Yesterday, I was in the car at a crowded intersection and an emergency vehicle had to go through in a very big hurry. I was glad that they were not coming for me. It made me think about the times that I have been in an emergency situation. I was involved in an accident on my motorcycle when I was in law school. I also needed emergency help more times than I like to admit when we received four badly traumatized little boys into our home. We had a close friend living nearby who had shown us over the years … Continue reading →

Just Like Dad

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Matthew Walter, our oldest adopted child, is the only one who remembers anything about his life before he was part of our family. He is very inquisitive about my family, particularly my father. The other boys rarely, if ever, show such an interest. I look for opportunities with him to interject something about my father as we go through the day. For instance, this morning I took Matthew to have his eyes examined by an optometrist. When I could see that the doctor was making a good impression on him, I told him that my father and my grandfather (maternal) … Continue reading →