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!

Sisters.

My current dilemma: how to teach four little girls how to be good sisters when I have no idea what I’m doing?

I was an only child growing up. It was a very lonely, quiet childhood. I remember wishing for a sister, but knowing that with my single mom, it wasn’t going to happen. So, the sister thing is a big mystery to me. I’ve noticed (admittedly with some envy) adult sisters together and their inside jokes, shared history, language known only to each other.

I’ve read about sisters in books: the relationships between the four sisters in Little Women are both fascinating and intimidating. The rivalry between Jo and Amy, the tenderness that Meg has for her younger sisters, the sweetness between Jo and Beth. I simultaneously want to be one of those sisters, and also glad I’m not their mother.

Now I have two sons and four daughters. My sons seem to know how to be brothers without anyone telling them: they wrestle and burp and play video games together. They annoy each other, but quickly recover.

But these girls of mine have a lot of feelings and words — so many words! — and sisterhood seems a bit more complicated. (It involves a lot less burping, that’s for sure.)

But how do I make good sisters? I’ve asked a few friends who themselves are sisters and are also raising a few daughters, and they seem confused by the question, like the task was so intuitive it wasn’t even something they thought about.

After a frustrating scene one day when one daughter was complaining that another one was wearing her shirt, I decided to just start winging it right then and there. I made up a rule: “Sisters share clothes”. (I know this because I’ve seen it done in shows, so I’m assuming it’s something sisters do.) It worked. My little girls acted as though this new information was valid, and so they started sharing clothes. Just like that. It seemed way too easy.

I started looking around to see what other rules I could come up with that teach these little girls how to be sisters. “Sisters say kind things to each other” after one child was purposely annoying her sister by calling her “Katie Watie” over and over until she screamed. This is a phrase I do have to repeat a lot, but when I do it tends to help the sister in question change their actions.

A question I ask a lot is “Are you being a kind sister right now?” I could easily leave out the ‘sister’ part and just ask “Are you being kind?”, but I think that stressing the sister part of the equation is very important.

They play a game where they pretend they are sisters. The 4 year old says “Now, let’s pretend that we’re sisters, and Lucy put me in jail, and you come and save me…” The oldest sister will be the jailer and lock another sister in the slammer, and the now-incarcerated sister will call out until the Savior Sister comes to the rescue. The fact that they actually are sisters and then play pretend sister games is beyond adorable to me.

Another new rule: Sisters serve each other. My oldest daughter (almost 8) loves making herself tea. I suggested “See if your sisters want some too”. Of course they did, and now Sister Tea Time is a near-daily event that involves a lot of sugar and spilled milk, but also sweet memories.

I feel incredibly blessed to be able to watch the sisterhood relationship unfold between my four daughters. I am so grateful that they have each other. I know there will be fights and disagreements and their relationship won’t always be rosy. But when I picture my four daughters as adults, I see four women who are loving and loyal to each other. I pray that they end up something like the March sisters: sacrificing for each other, loving and serving each other, and always forgiving. And I know I’ll be reading Little Women a few more times over the years to get some tips from Marmee.

Screen-Free Week.

This past week was a week of No’s – no sugar for us parents, and no screens for the kids. Both were impulsive decisions late Sunday afternoon, and both were made as a result of overindulgence these past few months.

Going screen-free was painful the first day or so, but the kids figured out new things to do with their time. Instead of a show first thing in the morning, they went outside and checked on their garden and danced in the rain. Instead of asking for a show during quiet time (a bad habit I’ve slowly let them slip into), they used wooden blocks to make stalls for their horses and set up a “bookstore” to be patronized by siblings after quiet time.

There were a few rare exceptions to the screen-free week, like when Katie had a 3-hr long assessment via Zoom on a rainy day and older siblings’ availability to babysit was limited. Even then, the kids still spent a good part of the time outside.

What have I learned as a parent during this week? Not to underestimate the creativity and resourcefulness of children when given plenty of time to be bored. Most often it’s my lack of patience to deal with a little bit of front-end whining that leads me to turn on the TV, when what’s best for my children is to give them the gift of free time.