Summary

Finally, a comprehensive parenting book for adoptive families! 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.

Our adopted children come to us from loss–loss of a birthfamily, perhaps a culture, and sometimes language. There are helpful things that we can do to address these issues, and Adoption Parenting helps you to create an awareness to do just that. We also look at stumbling blocks to good parenting, and standard parenting practices that aren’t the best solution for adopted children.

We look at the core issues all members of the adoption triad face, and look at how that affects standard parenting challenges like sleeping through the night, discipline and attachment. We cover specific challenges families have faced: FASD, trauma and PTSD, sensory integration, speech and language delays, learning issues, food issues, racial differences, and at ways to effectively parent a post-institutionalized child.

We also look at how each of us has been parented and how that affects the parenting choices we make for our children. There is a section which includes articles on Post Adoption Depression, the importance of support networks (both for your children and for yourself) and when and how to find therapists if that is warranted. The book is filled with resources and links to help find more information on a specific topic as your parenting or your child needs.

The contributors to this book include professionals in their respective fields like Dan Hughes, PhD; Arthur Becker-Weidman, PhD; Beth O'Malley,MEd; Adam Pertman; Ellen Singer, LCSW-C; Laurie Miller, MD; Mary Beth Williams, PhD, LCSW, CTS; Barbara Elleman, MHS, OTR/L, BCP; Marcy Axness, PhD; Christopher J. Alexander, PhD; Sharon Glennen, PhD, CCC-SLP; Doris Landry, MS, LLC.

Contributors also include parents who have had to learn to parent the children who have come to them. Many of these parents have become experts as well! The advice and the wisdom they have to share is honest and heartening. Adoptees who are now adults have shared experiences on their growing up that are interwoven in the book and there are contributions from birth mothers as well.

Each person comes to parenting from a different place and the needs their children have are unique. Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections allows the reader to choose which tools are helpful for their particular situation and which are not. This isn't a book about what you have to do to parent, but about perspective, awareness, and understanding that overlays how you parent. This book is designed to help each of us become the best parents for our children and to offer support and connections for families on the journey of adoption parenting!