Product Description

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!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48672 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 520 pages

Review
A beautiful patchwork of wisdom from life experiences and adoption experts. Engaging and extremely practical, it's highly recommended!" -- Sherrie Eldridge, author Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew

Adoption Parenting is indeed a useful toolbox, but it is more. It's a roadmap toward an increasingly successful future. -- Adam Pertman, Executive Director The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute

Featuring over 100 contributors overseen by EMK Press writer-editors MacLeod and Macrae, this book is a virtual one-stop shop for adoption information for readers at any knowledge level. Divided into chapters like "Sleep," "Claiming," "Language," and "Food," it touches upon major issues in brief essays written by adoptive parents, adoptees, and therapists. For instance, in the chapters dealing with learning issues,educators and adoptive parents discuss the intricacies of forming effective individual education plans tailored to special-needs adoptees, while in the section on therapy, there are essays about selecting an appropriate therapist and about treating attachment disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder. This is a welcome companion to another excellent resource, Laura Beauvais-Godwin and Raymond Godwin's The Complete Adoption Book: Everything You Need To Know To Adopt a Child. Strongly recommended for all public libraries and for large university social science collections. By Lynne C. Maxwell ©2007 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --Library Journal

Wonderful addition to the books for adoptive families; highly recommended. I wish it was available when I was adopting. -- Sharon Kaplan Roszia MS, Co-author “Seven Core Issues in Adoption”

From the Publisher
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections is a fabulous compilation of parenting advice for adoptive families that has never before been in one book. As an adoptive parent myself, I have been amazed at the sharing of wisdom and helpful advice that this book encompasses. This is the book I wish I had when I adopted my children. Every contributor is either an adoptive parent, an expert in the field of adoption, an adoptee, or a birth parent and I have learned so much of value for my own family by publishing this book. My hope is that this book will help many families navigate their own journey of adoptive parenting.

Carrie Kitze Publisher

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Foreword by Adam Pertman:

Tools and Connections The Key to Adoption’s Changing World By Adam Pertman

For far too long, we adoptive parents lived in a world of make believe. To be fair, it wasn’t a world of our own creation; that monumental task was accomplished by a culture that decided there was only one right road to family formation–and it wasn’t the one we traveled to form our families. But we all lived in that world and we generally played by its rules: Don’t talk about infertility or birthparents or any other ‘personal’ subject and, most of all, just proceed with your lives as though you’d become moms and dads the old-fashioned way.

Lots of wonderful families were formed during the decades in which we played out that fantasy, and many people–parents and their kids–felt (and were) blessed. We paid a high price for the benefits we received, however, and we pay it to this day. Some of us lied to our own sons and daughters about their pasts, and they are mightily ticked off as a result. We relegated untold thousands of birthmothers to the role of baby-making machines, and they are deeply wounded as a result. We barely whispered about the way we formed our families, and too many of us remain insecure about them as a result; and, because it’s very hard to shape thoughtful attitudes or practices about secrets, all sorts of laws and policies in our society are antiquated, misinformed, and even detrimental as a result.

Fortunately for everyone concerned, our world is being transformed. In most ways, it is becoming more honest about and more respectful of everyone involved in the adoption process, and it is recognizing that many different paths can lead to the formation of a whole, loving, normal family. I’m also confident that the changes occurring all around us are becoming so entrenched that, as is so often the case with social progress, legislators and policy-makers will ultimately catch up with the altered reality on the ground.

Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections probably would have languished on a dusty shelf in the old world; it simply tells too many stark truths. It is premised on the understanding that adoption isn’t the revelatory ‘win-win’ solution we used to pretend it was. But that doesn’t mean this book portrays adoption as a downer or inferior or inherently problematic or anything of the sort. Quite the opposite; we can truly honor an institution that provides homes for kids who need them, gives adults the opportunity to revel in the joys of parenthood, and does those things in an honest, respectful way. Recognizing that there are unique challenges in ‘nontraditional’ families–whether led by single parents, step-parents, divorced parents, grandparents, gay parents, adoptive parents, or any other sort of parents– doesn’t diminish those families. It just recognizes the differences within them, and that’s a very good thing because parents generally do a better job when they understand their children’s (and their own) realities and needs. And those realities and needs are especially important to address when the family has so many layers of complexity because it is multinational, multicultural, and/or multiracial and was formed through adoption.

In our new, improving world, Adoption Parenting deserves to be front and center. It deserves to be in the hands of parents, would-be parents, adoption practitioners and others (let’s start with teachers, doctors, and mental-health professionals, shall we?) who profoundly affect our families. Its thoughtful, accessible approach is not about wallowing in problems and challenges, but about sharing knowledge, making connections, overcoming obstacles, and doing a better job for the sake of our kids. In our new, improving world, Adoption Parenting is indeed a useful toolbox, but it is far more. It is a celebration of how far we have come, and it is a roadmap toward an increasingly successful future.

Adam Pertman is the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute, the pre-eminent research, policy and education organization in its field. He also is the adoptive father of two (Zack and Emmy) and the author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America, which has been reviewed as "the most important book ever written on the subject." Pertman has received numerous awards for his work, lectures and writes internationally about adoption and children’s issues, and has appeared on programs including "Oprah," the "Today" show and "Nightline’.

Customer Reviews

Inclusive, Open-minded parenting guide for all parents of adopted children
This is a wonderful, encyclopedic guide for all parents of adopted children. Whether your child is young or old, new to you or has been with your family for a long time, you will learn something by reading this book. It's like having an on-line support group on your table top!

What I like best about this book is that it is not a `one-size-fits-all' manual. Because the editors have assembled multiple essays for each section, they're able to present multiple viewpoints on the same topic. Here's an example: sleep. Conventional wisdom about adoption parenting suggests sleeping with or very near your newly adopted child to promote attachment. Children adopted from institutions, especially, need this closeness at night as they are used to sleeping in the same room as many other children and sleeping alone will be unnatural and unnerving. That's the advice I took to heart before my husband and I adopted a 15-month old from Russia...and consequently we had two weeks of horrible sleep before we realized that what our child needed in order to get a good night's sleep was to sleep by himself. Our presence in his room, rocking, soothing, singing, did not relax him; it stimulated him. He was too excited by his new family to fall asleep with us present.

Having had an experience so contrary to popular adoptive parenting opinion, the first section I flipped to the section on sleep. What did I find? Plenty on co-sleeping and attachment parenting (including a lengthy contribution by the attachment-parenting guru himself, Dr. William Sears) but also a lovely little nugget by Jill Lampman, an adoptive mom. Jill writes about her daughter, adopted from Romania, who was more than thrilled to sleep by herself. Having her own room, her own bed, and her own toys, made her very happy after years of sharing meager resources. Her second daughter,however, adopted from China, slept best right next to her mom. Because Jill was open to differing ideas about sleep she was able to best meet the needs of her family. Because this book is open to the idea that all children are different (although they may have certain issues in common), it's an invaluable resource for adoptive parents.

Without Exception: The best Adoption Book Available Today
For ten years I have reviewed adoption books. As the editor of the largest online international adoption website, I receive as many as 5 requests for reviews a week. This is my rare `two thumbs up'. It is both the `Dr. Spock' and the `Parenting with Love and Logic' of the adoption world. In short, Adoption Parenting is required reading.

The format, essays by experts, parents, and fellow life-travelers, is inviting. You can skip around; you can focus on certain issues. Perhaps your child is hoarding food. Perhaps you haven't slept for 2 weeks, or your child's kindergarten cannot understand that a `family tree' project is not a comfortable subject for every child in the classroom. Or maybe you've walked that road already and need a little support in the teenage years. You'll find it all here, gift wrapped with a lovely bow on top.

What makes it worth every penny is the personalization. You'll cry, laugh and rejoice. You'll pick it up like a medical-reference book in 5 years. And even more wonderfully, each writer comes across as so incredibly human. You will feel your own feet firmly planted next to those who have walked before you. Though I did not write one word in this book, I am embarrassingly proud of it as both an adoptee and an adoptive mom. Well done, my friends. You created something we can all benefit from! -Martha Osborne

Great resource!
As an adoptive mom, I definitely recommend this book for ALL adoptive families. The book is a compilation of articles by many experienced adoptive parents and adoption experts. The topics include sleep, food issues, learning difficulties, discipline, language development, and racism. I especially appreciate the approach that there is no one-size-fits-all answer for every family. The book provides a variety of ideas and suggestions for meeting the unique challenges of adoption. The editors also included lists of resources, as well as lists of signs that outside help may be needed.