Product Description

All families, no matter how they are brought together, struggle against enormous odds to thrive. However, for adoptive families, where the history is not a shared one, the rites and traditions commonly relied upon to negotiate transitions and to withstand internal or external stressors do not exist. This is where Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges comes in.

The authors, a single mother with two adopted children and a social worker specializing in adoption, have joined forces to create a rich and vital resource to help adoptive families better cope with the day-to-day changes and challenges of life together. Carefully written to reach out to the range of families - two-parent, single-parent, foster-parent, as well as families with gay or lesbian parents and those of multiracial, multiethnic, or multicultural origin - the ceremonies presented here cover the spectrum of life-cycle phases, from preadoptive to moving in, from adjustment to reinforcement and beyond.

Among the ceremonies: "Forever Family," "Getting Ready for a New Person in the Family," "End of the School Year," "There Is a Place for Both of Us," "Rejection and Abandonment," "Monsters and Nightmares," "The Day We Met," "You Are Safe Here." Used verbatim or customized to address a similar situation or a specific interactive style, the scripts will help family members move toward fresh, energized perspectives. They can be used again and again to provide short-term resolutions to particular problems and to reflect a long-term commitment to the family's well-being.

An appropriate way to say "welcome home" -- or to say "goodbye." A means to express painful feelings. A bridge between differing perspectives. A helping hand to a youngster in trouble. A commitment to hope. Another milestone. For the professionals who work with adoptive families - for the families themselves - Creating Ceremonies extends and enriches the vocabulary of caring.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #722688 in Books
• Published on: 1998-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 141 pages

Review
A gem ... well written, badly needed. A self-empowering, highly useful book that is very sensitive to needs. -- Sharon Roszia, Kinship Center of California, Coauthor of The Open Adoption Experience

About the Author
Cheryl A. Lieberman, Ph.D., is a single adoptive parent. Her sons, Eric and Christopher, both from the same birth family, came to live with her when they were seven years old and six years old respectively. They have an open adoption arrangement.

Dr. Lieberman holds a Master's in Social Work and City Planning and a Ph.D. in Organizational Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. She is Founder and President of Cornerstone Consulting Group, Cambridge, Mass., which provides strategic performance enhancement and training services to numerous profit and nonprofit organizations.

Rhea K. Bufferd, LICSW, has been an adoption social worker since 1974, when she joined the Massachusetts Department of Social Service. She went on to work with Cambridge Family and Children's Services and is currently an adoption consultant to the Adoption Resources Program at Jewish Family and Children's Service.

Ms. Bufferd earned her MSW at Boston University School of Social Work and did post-graduate work in family therapy at the Institute at Newton.

Customer Reviews

Important Resource
Written by Cheryl A. Lieberman and Rhea K. Bufferd, Creating Ceremonies: Innovative Ways to Meet Adoption Challenges is an important resource for helping adoptive families cope with developmental challenges and life transitions. Each chapter includes actual scripts of rituals and ceremonies that have been used by the authors to help adopted children, parents, and professionals cope with various life-cycle phases from preadoption to leaving home. In chapter five, for example, the scripts address issues of loss and detachment. The ceremony "What is Going to Happen Now?" is a ritual designed to help young adopted children deal with an impending divorce. In this narrative, the parents announce their decision to divorce, encourage the child's expression of painful feelings, and make clear that the child is not at fault for the divorce. The remaining chapters address many other issues such as bolstering self-esteem, celebrating anniversaries, and ackowledging fears.

I strongly recommend Creating Ceremonies for clinicians interested in working with adoptive families. Since the scripts are applicable to challenges facing families in general, this book also serves as a helpful resource for all family therapists. The scripts can be modified during sessions to fit clients' unique situations and, also, can be used as a self-help resource for adoptive families.

Not just for adopted children
A friend told me how helpful this book was and I decided to buy it. I have 3 children -- none of them adopted. The ceremonies have been EXTREMELY HELPFUL to me and my family. Even my husband likes them. We have used their ideas to help with nightmeres, death of a pet, anger, feelings, and tricky transitions. This book is very practical and has helped us be more creative and less frustrated with our children. Buy this for your family and your friends. It is a great gift for anyone with kids. I wish we had purchased it sooner.

One of the Best Gifts We Ever Gave Ourselves
I bought this book on the recommendation of a friend and it started to help us immediately. We had to move a year ago and our kids (5 & 8) were a mess. This time we did ceremonies for moving, saying goodbye to the old house and hello to the new, and saying hello to our new neighborhood and neighbors. This move was a breeze for our kids. They loved what we did and so did we. My wife and I would never have thought about doing these ceremonies on our own. We would have braced ourselves for another horrible experience with our son and daughter. This book would be a great gift to any parents whether they have adopted kids or not. We consider it one of the best gifts we ever gave our family.