Search Results for: blog talkikng about tough issues abandonment

More Issues to Think About

My last several blogs have been inspired by my reading Waiting Child: How the Faith and Love of One Orphan Saved the Life of Another. While the heart of the story is four-year-old Jaclyn’s campaign to get the toddler boy she’d cared for in the orphanage into a family as well, many other issues are raised. I’ve discussed the question of “required donations” and the needs of children who have been forced into caretaker roles while still very young. Other issues which came up in the book included the author’s daughter asking her how children were chosen for adoption, why … 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 →

Parent Training 2

When you are going through the training you will learn about first aid, child proofing, how to discipline and it will also cover the sensitive issues that you may not think about. Some of the children in foster care have been physically, mentally or sexually abused. Part of the parent training will cover how to identify and help the children through the abuse. The stories you will hear and the pictures you will see are sure to tear at your heart, I mean how can you not be affected? When you see pictures of a sweet innocent child malnourished, with … Continue reading →

Book Review: a Koala for Katie

A Mother for Choco and A Koala for Katie are both books emphasizing that, while it is sad that first parents sometimes cannot care for children, the children can be happy with other parents. Parenting is a matter of how one cares for the child, not whether a parent looks like the child or is the child’s first parent. While A Mother for Choco talks about a child searching for a mother nad whether a mother has to look like her child, A Koala for Katie is about a girl who processes her own adoption story “adopting” a stuffed animal, … Continue reading →

“Nightmare on My Street”

I’ve written recently about my daughter Regina’s transition to kindergarten and about some extra issues that can come up for adopted children as they enter school. Now there’s a new wrinkle: Regina seems much happier at school and has mostly stopped having toileting troubles and long tantrums. However, now Meg is waking up every night with nightmares. Sometimes she is literally shaking when she wakes up. For her it has been Halloween every night for the past two weeks, it seems. She tries to snuggle into bed with us. One night I said I really wanted her to stay in … Continue reading →

Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away from You (and Neither Can Dentists)

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Only now do I realize that a visit to the pediatric dentist was much more of an ordeal for my mother than it was for me. Anticipating the protests, torn between comforting the child and ensuring that the necessary things happened, not wanting the dentist to be cast as the bad guy lest we be even more fearful, she took most of the blame herself. She always seemed so sure of herself and of what had to be done. It wasn’t until years later that I realized she hadn’t felt as sure as she seemed. Mom had once asked me … Continue reading →

When Adopted Kids Grow Up: Worst-Case Scenarios

My last blog spoke of research on adoptees’ adjustment. I mentioned David Kirschner’s book of worst-case case studies. It is a pain-filled and painful book of adoptees who became criminals. But adoptive parents need not panic. Kirschner makes no claim that most adoptees will be violent or that adoption is bad, or even that all adoptees will be maladjusted. He believes that looking for a pattern in the court cases he has worked on might illuminate things that don’t work to help adoptees. He believes that his experiences can not only help adoptees, parents and therapists to avoid horrible outcomes, … Continue reading →