Top Three Resources for Adoptive Parents

So you’ve decided to jump into the world of adoption.

Maybe you’re still wading through your paperwork pregnancy. Perhaps you’re waiting on a match. Or maybe you’ve already brought your new child home.

You’re probably dreaming of what life will be like with your new addition. If you’re anything like me, you may have one or two bio kids and think you’ve got this parenting thing down. Your kids may be (generally) well behaved, sleeping through the night, and hitting their milestones on time. How hard can it be?

You need to know that parenting children from adoption is different from parenting biological children. Adoption always involves trauma. Please read that again and let it sink in. Adoption always involves trauma.

Why is there trauma? Because even in the very best case, where a healthy birth mother has a stress-free pregnancy and makes an adoption plan that includes her child being transferred to their adoptive parents at birth, there is separation. The baby knows his mother’s unique voice and heartbeat. It is a jarring transition when he is removed from that familiar environment.

If you’re adopting from foster care, there is likely some combination of abuse, neglect, exposure to domestic violence, and in-uterine drug and alcohol exposure in the child’s history. Getting even a young infant doesn’t mean they are trauma-free. One of our daughters came to us at six months old and already had been exposed prenatally to drugs and alcohol, and had experienced periods of neglect. This is all trauma.

If you are adopting internationally, the child has likely experienced periods of neglect, parental loss, and possibly stressful medical care. These experiences cause permanent changes in the brain, leading to verbal/auditory processing issues, sensory problems, executive function challenges, and even learning disabilities later in childhood.

This means that we need to parent differently than conventional parenting books suggest. For example, we may use time-outs as a tool for changing behavior with a typical child. A toddler hits a sibling, and so we put him in the time-out chair for a few minutes. For a child with trauma in their background, this may trigger feelings of abandonment, compound the problem, and cause even more behavior challenges. We need to parent with brain science in mind. Here are the best resources I have found for this job.

Resources

1. The Connected Child by Karyn Purvis, Ph.D. and David Cross Ph.D. –

This book is invaluable to any adoptive parent, even if you’ve had your child home for years. The basis is Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), a way of relating to children based on meeting their physical and attachment needs and learning ways to calm fear-based behaviors.

The authors cover the brain science behind our children’s behaviors and offer practical advice for handling it. As the title suggests, it places a significant emphasis on connection, believing that a child wants to do well and will do their best when they feel safe and securely attached to their parent.

It covers concepts like felt safety, the IDEAL response, and re-dos. It has suggestions for supporting the child’s sensory needs to (support) cooperative behavior. It emphasizes mutual respect: speaking to your child with respect and teaching them how to communicate with others with respect.

2.The Connected Parent by Karyn Purvis, Ph.D. and Lisa Qualls

This book is similar to The Connected Child in that it uses the same TBRI principles, but the emphasis is on walking the techniques out on a day-to-day basis. It is co-authored by Lisa Qualls, a foster parent and mom to twelve children by birth and adoption. She has lived these principles out with her children for the past fifteen years, so she understands how hard it can be. One of the best aspects of this book is the idea of using scripts with our kids, which are short phrases aimed at redirecting children to better behavior. They really work every time we use them.

What struck me most about this resource is that the authors don’t just give advice for the kids but also offer grace for the parent. They remind us that this journey of parenting adopted children is a marathon, not a sprint. If we are to parent well, we need to keep our needs in mind and even seek professional help if we need it.

3. What Happened to You? by Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D., and Oprah Winfrey

The longer I parent, the more I realize how my upbringing affects my parenting instincts and decisions. Sometimes we don’t realize how our adverse experiences unconsciously inform how we parent. This book dives deep into the brain science behind behavior and offers wisdom for dealing with our own and our children’s issues.

I listened to the audiobook version and enjoyed the back and forth conversation between Perry and Winfrey. But I also got the hardcover version to take notes and mark it up. It is so full of valuable information!

Trauma and a Waffle.

Many people think that when you adopt a child as a young baby and give them lots of love and attention and do all the right things to form a healthy attachment, that it’s enough to cover any problems.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that problems begin before the child even breathes their first breath. A mother’s stress hormones during pregnancy affect her child’s brain development immensely. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy physically damages the brain and creates an injury that lasts a lifetime.

This innocent waffle caused an hour-long rage before school this morning because it wasn’t the right color or texture.

My child has a difficult time regulating her emotions and so very small things become VERY BIG THINGS. It’s tempting to assume “Oh, they’re just being a brat” or that their behavior is a result of some failing on my part as a parent.

The more I learn about trauma and brain science, the more compassion I can have for my child and the more I can show her patience. It’s not easy and I’m always learning more.

“The Connected Parent” by Karyn Purvis and Lisa Qualls has been an amazing resource, as well as watching TBRI videos on YouTube.

October Books

The Connected Parent by Karyn Purvis PhD and Lisa Qualls — This is the follow-up book to The Connected Child, also by Karyn Purvis, released about 13 years before, which had become the basic handbook for adoptive parents. This new update has much of the information as the first book, but with the added benefit being co-written by a mom who has lived through years of the experience of raising challenging adopted children. It’s a book that I read about twice a year and always come back to when I’m at my wit’s end and need encouragement. An absolute must-read for foster and adoptive parents.

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell — I totally judged this book by its cover, and thought it was about something along the lines of “how to talk to people you don’t have much in common with.” It turned out to be much more fascinating than that, and in the months since I’ve read it has actually been valuable. Gladwell explores concepts like truth default, why we believe liars, and how knowing more about someone doesn’t mean you are a good judge of character. In fact, it’s more likely that the more you know someone, the less reliably you’re able to judge their character. Here’s a quote: “You believe someone not because you have no doubts about them. Belief is not the absence of doubt. You believe someone because you don’t have enough doubts about them.” I listened to this on audiobook and it was a great listening experience.

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown — From my favorite genre of narrative nonfiction, this book is about the US Olympic Rowing team that went to the 1936 Olympics. It was a fascinating look at the courage it takes to be a champion rower, and also the politics of WWI and WWII.

The Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen — I saw this recommended by a favorite author, Lore Wilbert. This book is a result of Nouwen trying to share God’s love and grace to a friend who didn’t believe in God. It’s full of reminders and encouragement for those of us who do believe.

Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly — A book of “52 micro-memoirs”. It was a funny and very enjoyable read.

Try Softer by Aundi Kolber — This was recommended by two of my favorite people- Lisa Qualls (author of The Connected Parent) and Kendra Adachi, author of The Lazy Genius Way. I listened to it on Audible, and it was like having a therapist in my ear. I think everyone needs to read Try Softer. It’s basically a how-to for being gentle with yourself, especially if you have trauma in your background. A Christian, trauma-informed therapist is an amazing resource, but if that isn’t possible, this book is the next best thing. I will probably be revisiting it annually.

August Books

August was an interesting month of reading. Even though it was a crazy month, with getting five kids ready for a new school year and also moving my elderly mom out from Connecticut to Idaho. Even so, I had huge portions of time to read (like two 8-hour long flights!)

The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs — This was a random thrift store find. It’s about a man who decides to live according to the Bible – as literally as possible – for a year. I had low expectations, figuring at best t was a lighthearted poke at the hard-to-understand parts of the Bible. But I found parts of it pretty fascinating. I learned about many Jewish rules in the Bible that people still follow today, like the admonition to not mix linen and wool (there is actually an expert in the field who travels to people’s homes and examines their garments to make sure there aren’t any offending fibers.) It was humorous, but also interesting.

The Caregiving Season by Jane Daly — A very encouraging book for anyone finding themselves suddenly thrown into the roll of caregiving for a parent. One of the best I’ve read so far.

The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn — The follow-up memoir to The Salt Path, which I loved. I found myself losing interest in this book. Like a hiker without a destination, it was more of a ramble without a clear objective.

Trying Differently Rather Than Harder by Diane Malbin — A book about the symptoms and strategies for managing behavior of people with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Disorder. We learned just recently that it’s very likely that our 3 adopted children have FASD (and likely my mother as well). I read this book to try to fit in more pieces to puzzle of how to deal with behaviors that don’t respond to typical parenting. Highly recommended for any parent with a child on the FASD spectrum.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir — I almost never read sci-fi, but this one caught my attention because it came highly recommended by someone who also never reads sci-fi. It’s about a man who wakes up from a coma on a spaceship and slowly unravels memory to find his mission objective. There is a type of (space fungus? energy? matter?) that is sapping our sun’s energy, but not Tau Ceti’s, a star which is not being affected by the space fungus and is 12 light years away. He needs to figure it out and send the information back to earth before everyone on the planet dies in a planet-wide ice age. It reminded me of my high school days when I found theoretical physics discussions endlessly fascinating, dreaming of what possibilities lay ahead of us.

Mother Daughter Me by Katie Hafner — I love memoirs. I love learning about other people’s lives and the lessons they’ve taken away from their hard experiences. Since I’m going through my own journey with my mom, I found this memoir especially relevent. Katie’s book is about the year that she, her 16 year old daughter, and her elderly mother move into the same apartment. I was reassured by her description of having to confront her own emotions about her neglectful upbringing. There are so many up and down emotions involved with mothers and daughters, and this book was like chatting with a good friend going through a similar situation as myself.

Baby Turns One.

Our youngest child turned one yesterday. She’s not really ours yet, though. She is our foster baby, currently waiting in a legal limbo, for courts to open up again so she can be legally freed from her birth parents, and then the county’s plan is for us to adopt her.

It is very strange to be in this place of being joyful over a child’s milestone, and yet realize that she’s not technically mine. We’re not yet guaranteed a future together. And so we take each day, each milestone as its own special gift. I try to hold off on thinking about the future too much.

Baby E came to our home when she was just a few days old. I picked her up at a hospital in our nearby city, a hospital well-known for its substance-abuse births. There was some discharge paperwork holdup, so we ended up having a few hours to ourselves to get to know each other.

Looking back, I am thankful for that time of waiting together. I snuggled her newborn little body. I fed her a bottle. Changed her tiny diaper. Snuggled some more. She was so peaceful, content to just look towards the window or into my face. In many ways she is the same baby a year later… happy and content. She doesn’t realize the legal events going on around her.

Caring for children in foster care and adoption is a reminder that even my birth and adopted children aren’t really mine. They are with me only for today, and I’m not guaranteed a future with any of them. They could be stricken with cancer next week, or get hit by a car (both these are real possibilities, that have happened moms in my circle of aquaintaces).

My God-given task is to love them today, and teach them about their Maker. Lord, help me to really be with them all today, to really see them and hear them, and point them towards their God who loves them so much more than I ever can.