Search Results for: blog insecurity in adopted children part 2

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 →

Adoptive Parenting Traits, Part 5

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This blog is number five in my series discussing the ideal traits that an adoptive parent will have to successfully adopt a special needs child. The individual will have compassion and sensitivity for the inconsistent emotions and sentiments of their adopted child. Sometimes an adopted child will say things that do not make sense from your perspective. Our oldest is the only one of our five boys who even knew their birth mother. The lady who was taking care of them when the state took custody of them was telling him that she was their mother and Lola was merely … Continue reading →

Adoptive Parenting Traits, Part 3

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This is the third blog in a series that discusses the traits that an adoptive parent of a special needs child must have. The parent must be mindful that recovery and restoration from the child’s past may not be immediate and that some damage may never be fixed. We all like to think that lots of love and the best that modern medicine can provide will make things right. The problem is that it just doesn’t always happen. We have adopted five maternal brothers. The oldest four came to our home about four years ago. One of the children is … 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 →

Gotcha Day #2

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One month after our first “gotcha day”, the phone rang and it was our state social worker. She was calling to say that Caleb’s older brother, Tommy, was immediately available to be moved into our home as a foster child. Tommy had been in a therapeutic home because of his health. The foster parent that had him called the state and demanded that they pick him up that day. Apparently, they could not handle him. We were well on our way in our planning to adopt all three of Caleb’s older brothers. We readily agreed to take Tommy that day. … 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 →