From Torey Hayden, the number one Sunday Times bestselling author of One Child comes The Invisible Girl, a deeply moving true account of a young teen with a troubling obsession and an extraordinary educational psychologist's sympathy and determination to help. Eloise is a vibrant and charming young teen with a deeply caring nature, but she also struggles with a worrying delusion. She's been moved from home to home, and her social workers have difficulty dealing with her habit of running away. After experiencing violence, neglect and sexual abuse from people she should have been able to trust, Eloise has developed complex behavioural needs. She struggles to separate fact from fiction, leading to confusion for the social workers trying to help her. After Torey learns of Eloise's background she hopes that some gentle care and attention can help Eloise gain some sense of security in her life. Can Torey and the other social workers provide the loving attention that has so far been missing in Eloise's life, or will she run away from them too?

Adoption is the right option for many more types of parents and children than we imagined a few decades ago. However, it is not the right choice for everyone. Is Adoption for You? is a guide to thinking through the issues.--from the Foreword by Jerri Ann Jenista, M.D.
Would adopting a child be a good choice for you? Would you want to adopt an infant or an older child? What about a child from another country? A child of another race? Would you be willing to adopt a child with medical problems? Could you agree to involvement and openness with the birthmother? Would you be better off working with an agency or an attorney? Do you have to be married? How much does it really cost?
Before you decide, make sure you have all the facts. In this warm, straightforward new book, adoption expert--and adoptive parent--Christine Adamec gives you the information you need to make this important decision. From financial considerations to the myriad emotional issues involved, there are numerous questions to explore. Adamec's expert guidance, drawn from personal stories, clinical studies, and academic research, helps you find the answers that are right for you.

Birthdays may be difficult for me.
I want you to take the initiative in opening conversations about my birth family.
When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me.
I am afraid you will abandon me.
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.
With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love--that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future--that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be--and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.
Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child--and within the adoptive home.

"From the Trade Paperback edition."

Therapeutic parenting is not your usual parenting style. It's a special, specific way to raise kids who have experienced trauma in their past, and requires a lot of commitment and determination - this is about far more than love and care. But where do you start? This book is the ideal first step for anyone who wants to understand how therapeutic parenting works. It offers simple summaries of the key ideas behind it, fully illustrated throughout with informative cartoons and graphics. Over 40 different issues are covered, from dysregulation and fear, to setting boundaries and parenting in the midst of trauma. The perfect introduction for new therapeutic parents, family members, teachers or other adults who need to help support you and your child, this Quick Guide will also be a source of inspiration for more experienced parents.

This is the go-to guide for practitioners, parents and carers who want to expand their understanding and skills for therapeutic parenting - a deeply nurturing parenting style particularly effective for children who have experienced trauma or adversity. It provides an easy to understand explanation of the latest theory and research in trauma and neuroscience, and explains how these relate to everyday parenting strategies. It provides clarity on complex areas, such as early developmental trauma in children, and insights into key challenges, including managing transitions, sibling relationships, challenging behaviour, the teenage years, and how to find time and space for self-care. With experience, professional expertise, and text features to aid learning throughout, this book is the one-stop shop for everyone wanting to truly understand every aspect of therapeutic parenting and trauma.

How do you create an adoption portfolio that will show prospective birth families why you are the perfect adoptive parent for their child? Do you know which pictures to include and which to leave out? Do you really understand what prospective birth parents care about? This is a step-by-step guide to creating a portfolio which will reflect your personality, make a strong positive impact and encourage the right birth family to choose you. Madeleine Melcher shares the secrets she has discovered over years of creating successful portfolios, profiles and prospective birth parent letters. She combines simple and effective design ideas and tips for writing and layout with a deep understanding of how portfolios work. Importantly, this book also draws extensively on the experiences of birth mothers and the professionals who support them to examine what they are really looking for, featuring questions which prospective birth mothers will want to see answered in your portfolio. From text to design, this guide will give you the confidence to create a portfolio that sets you apart. It is essential reading for prospective adoptive parents, as well as adoption attorneys and adoption agencies advising those hoping to adopt.

Capturing the warmth and fun of forming close relationships with children, this book offers simple advice to parents of children who find it difficult to attach and bond - whether following adoption, divorce or other difficult experiences. Attachment therapist Deborah D. Gray describes how to use the latest thinking on attachment in your daily parenting. She reveals sensory techniques which have proven to help children bond - straightforward activities like keeping close eye contact or stroking a child's feet or cheeks - and explains why routines like mealtimes and play time are so important in helping children to attach. The book offers positive ideas for responding to immediate crises like difficult behaviour and meltdowns, but importantly also offers longer-term strategies to help children to develop the skills they need to cope as they grow up - the ability to plan, concentrate and be in control of their emotions. Offering fascinating insights into how children who struggle to attach can be helped, this book is full of easy-to-use ideas which will help you to enjoy the many pleasures of bonding and attaching with your child.

Is transracial adoption a positive choice for kids? How can children gain their new families without losing their birth heritage? How can parents best support their children after placement? Inside Transracial Adoption is an authoritative guide to navigating the challenges and issues that parents face in the USA when they adopt a child of a different race and/or from a different culture. Filled with real-life examples and strategies for success, this book explores in depth the realities of raising a child transracially, whether in a multicultural or a predominantly white community. Readers will learn how to help children adopted transracially or transnationally build a strong sense of identity, so that they will feel at home both in their new family and in their racial group or culture of origin. This second edition incorporates the latest research on positive racial identity and multicultural families, and reflects recent developments and trends in adoption. Drawing on research, decades of experience as adoption professionals, and their own personal experience of adopting transracially, Beth Hall and Gail Steinberg offer insights for all transracial adoptive parents - from prospective first-time adopters to experienced veterans - and those who support them.

A child is coming - whether you approve or not it's time to get with the program! If someone you care about - a family member, co-worker, or close friend - has recently announced that their family will be growing through adoption, you may have questions. After all, unless you have personally experienced adoption, you may know very little about how adoption works and what it means. Are you worried that your loved one may face disappointment? Do you find yourself wondering exactly what your role is going to be in the child's life? Does the term "open adoption" confuse and concern you? Just what are the privacy boundaries for families built by adoption: what is it okay to ask about? Adoption Is a Family Affair! will answer all of these questions and more, offering you information about who can adopt, why people consider adopting, how kids understand adoption as they grow up, and more. This short book is crammed full of the 'need to know' information for friends and families that will help to encourage informed, happy and healthy family relationships.

Attaching in Adoption is a comprehensive guide for prospective and actual adoptive parents on how to understand and care for their adopted child and promote healthy attachment. This classic text provides practical parenting strategies designed to enhance children's happiness and emotional health. It explains what attachment is, how grief and trauma can affect children's emotional development, and how to improve attachment, respect, cooperation and trust. Parenting techniques are matched to children's emotional needs and stages, and checklists are included to help parents assess how their child is doing at each developmental stage. The book covers a wide range of issues including international adoption, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and learning disabilities, and combines sound theory and direct advice with case examples throughout. This book is a must read for anyone interested in adoption and for all adoptive families. It will also be a valuable resource for adoption professionals.

We're born with a hunger for roots and a desire to pass on a legacy. The past two decades have seen a boom in family history services that combine genealogy with DNA testing, though this is less a sign of a robust connection to past generations than of its absence. Everywhere we see a pervasive rootlessness coupled with a cult of youth that thinks there is little to learn from our elders. The nursing home tragedies of the Covid-19 pandemic laid bare this devaluing of the old. But it's not only the elderly who are negatively affected when the links between generations break down; the young lose out too. When the hollowing-out of intergenerational connections deprives youth of the sense of belonging to a story beyond themselves, other sources of identity, from trivial to noxious, will fill the void. Yet however important biological kinship is, the New Testament tells us it is less important than the family called into being by God's promises. "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" Jesus asks a crowd of listeners, then answers: "Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother." In this great intergenerational family, we are linked by a bond of brotherhood and sisterhood to believers from every era of the human story, past, present, and yet to be born. To be sure, our biological families and inheritances still matter, but heredity and blood kinship are no longer the primary source of our identity. Here is a cure for rootlessness. On this theme: - Matthew Lee Anderson argues that even in an age of IVF no one has a right to have a child. - Emmanuel Katongole describes how African Christians are responding to ecological degradation by returning to their roots. - Louise Perry worries that young environmentalist don't want kids. - Helmuth Eiwen asks what we can do about the ongoing effects of the sins of our ancestors. - Terence Sweeney misses an absent father who left him nothing. - Wendy Kiyomi gives personal insight into the challenges of adopting children with trauma in their past. - Alastair Roberts decodes that long list of "begats" in Matthew's Gospel. - Rhys Laverty explains why his hometown, Chessington, UK, is still a family-friendly neighborhood. - Springs Toledo recounts, for the first time, a buried family story of crime and forgiveness. - Monica Pelliccia profiles three generations of women who feed migrants riding the trains north. Also in the issue: - A new Christmas story by Oscar Esquivias, translated from the Spanish - Original poetry by Aaron Poochigian - Reviews of Kim Haines-Eitzen's Sonorous Desert, Matthew P. Schneider's God Loves the Autistic Mind, Adam Nicolson's Life between the Tides, and Ash Davidson's Damnation Spring. - An appreciation for Augustine's mother, Monica - Short sketches by Clarice Lispector of her father and son Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

Investigates social parents – people who function as parents but who may not be recognized as such in the eyes of the law What makes a person a parent? Around the world, same-sex couples are raising children; parents are separating and re-partnering, creating blended families; and children are living with grandparents, family friends, and other caregivers. In these situations, there is often an adult who acts like a parent but who is unconnected to the child through biogenetics, marriage, or adoption—the common paths for establishing legal parenthood. In many countries, this person is called a “social parent.” Psychologically, and especially from a child’s point of view, a social parent is a parent. But the legal status of a social parent is hotly debated. Social Parenthood in Comparative Perspective considers how the law does—and how it should—recognize social parenthood. The book begins with a psychological account of social parenthood, establishing the importance of a relationship between a child and a social parent and the harms of not protecting this relationship. It then turns to social scientists to identify and explore some circumstances when a child may have a social parent. And to compare legal responses to social parenthood, the book draws on the expertise of legal scholars in nine countries in North America and Europe. The legal contributors describe the existing laws governing social parents, critique their efficacy, and offer new insights. Though almost all of the countries analyzed have adapted to the new reality of family life by recognizing social parents in some manner, the nature and extent of the recognition varies widely. The volume concludes by discussing some of the issues flowing from the decision to recognize social parents, including whether social parents should have the same legal rights and responsibilities as other legal parents, whether all social parents must be treated identically, whether the law should limit a child to two parents, and much more. Families are changing, and the law must adapt accordingly. Social Parenthood in Comparative Perspective charts a way forward by offering solutions to help policymakers consider options for addressing social parenthood.

When life looks radically different than the plan we have for ourselves, it's the lucky few that recognize God's plan is best. That's what adoptive mom Heather Avis learned, and that's the invitation of this book. As the mother of three adopted children - two with Down syndrome - Heather Avis has learned that it's truly the lucky few who get to live a life like hers, who actually recognize that God's plans are best, even when they seem so radically different from the plans we have for ourselves. When Heather started her journey into parenthood she never thought it would look like this, never planned to have three adopted children, and certainly never imagined that two of them would have Down syndrome. But like most things God does, once she stepped into the craziness and confusion that comes with the unknown and the unplanned, she realized that they were indeed among the lucky few. Discover in this book what 70,000+ followers of Heather's hit Instagram account @macymakesmyday already know: the power of faith and family can help us stay strong in the toughest times. This book will also be especially touching to those with adopted family members or children with Down syndrome in their lives.

Innocent is the shocking true story of little Molly and Kit, siblings, aged 3 years and 18 months, who are brought into care as an emergency after suffering non-accidental injuries. Aneta and Filip, the children's parents, are distraught when their children are taken into care. Aneta maintains she is innocent of harming them, while Filip appears bewildered and out of his depth. It's true the family has never come to the attention of the social services before and little Kit and Molly appear to have been well looked after, but Kit has a broken arm and bruises on his face. Could it be they were a result of a genuine accident as Aneta is claiming? Both children become sick with a mysterious illness while, experienced foster carer, Cathy, is looking after them. Very worried, she asks for more hospital tests to be done. They've already had a lot. When Cathy's daughter, Lucy, becomes ill too she believes she has found the cause of Kit and Molly's illness and the parents aren't to blame. However, nothing could be further from the truth and what comes to light is far more sinister and shocking.

This book presents a committed quest to unravel and document the postwar adoption networks that placed more than 3,000 Greek children in the United States, in a movement accelerated by the aftermath of the Greek Civil War and by the new conditions of the global Cold War. Greek-to-American adoptions and, regrettably, also their transactions and transgressions, provided the blueprint for the first large-scale international adoptions, well before these became a mass phenomenon typically associated with Asian children. The story of these Greek postwar and Cold War adoptions, whose procedures ranged from legal to highly irregular, has never been told or analyzed before. Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece answers the important questions: How did these adoptions from Greece happen? Was there any money involved? Humanitarian rescue or kid pro quo? Or both? With sympathy and perseverance, Gonda Van Steen has filled a decades-long gap in our understanding, and provided essential information to the hundreds of adoptees and their descendants whose lives are still affected today.

A Sunday Times bestseller, Terrified is the first book from well-loved foster carer Angela Hart. It tells the emotionally devastating but ultimately uplifting true story of Vicky, a little girl who arrives on Angela's doorstep unwanted and unloved after suffering years of emotional abuse at the hands of her mother. Desperate never to return home, Vicky is haunted by many demons and waking nightmares. This book tells the moving story of Angela's determination to set Vicky free. 'A no holds barred insight into the reality of looking after someone else's children. A remarkable story from a remarkable woman, it brought back a lot of memories for me.' - Casey Watson, author of A Dark Secret. 'A moving story that testifies to the redemptive power of love. I hope Angela Hart inspires many others to foster.' - Torey Hayden, author of Lost Child.

Trauma can have a significant impact on the stability of a child's development and can put additional pressures on the education staff working with them. Showing you how you can best support children who have experienced adverse childhood experiences, this guide is full of practical guidance on how you can adapt your teaching with this group. Covering a range of issues a child may have, such as foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, pathological demand avoidance, attachment difficulties and many more, this book provides the trauma-informed tools you need to care for these children and to give the best possible opportunities from their education. It also addresses the difference children may experience in learning, how they behave, how teachers can ensure home--school cooperation, and how teachers can act in a trauma-informed manner.

Adopted at birth, Andrea Ross grew up inhabiting two ecosystems: one was her tangible, adoptive family, the other her birth family, whose mysterious landscape was hidden from her. In this coming-of-age memoir, Ross narrates how in her early twenties, while working as a ranger in Grand Canyon National Park, she embarked on a journey to discover where she came from and, ultimately, who she was. After many missteps and dead ends, Ross uncovered her heartbreaking and inspiring origin story and began navigating the complicated turns of reuniting with her birth parents and their new families. Through backcountry travel in the American West, she also came to understand her place in the world, realizing that her true identity lay not in a choice between adopted or biological parents, but in an expansion of the concept of family.

A pause. 'Ah, Herr Fergusson. It's Frau Schwenk.' Our social worker, I now understood. 'Thank you for getting back to me. I'm calling because we have a little boy, four weeks old, who needs a family.' In 2018, after the introduction of marriage equality in Germany, Ben Fergusson and his German husband Tom became one of the first same-sex married couples to adopt in the country. In Tales from the Fatherland Fergusson reflects on his long journey to fatherhood and the social changes that enabled it. He uses his outsider status as both a gay father and a parent adopting in a foreign country to explore the history and sociology of fatherhood and motherhood around the world, queer parenting and adoption and, ultimately, the meaning of family and love. Tales from the Fatherland makes an impassioned case for the value of diversity in family life, arguing that diverse families are good for all families and that misogyny lies at the heart of many of the struggles of straight and queer families alike.

International adoptions have decreased dramatically in the last decade, despite robust evidence of the tremendous benefits that early placement in adoptive families can confer upon children who are not able to remain with birth families. This book integrates evidence from a range of disciplines in the social and biological sciences- including psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, sociology, anthropology, and social work - to provide a ringing endorsement of international adoption as a viable child welfare option. The author interweaves narrative accounts of her own adoption journey, which involved visiting a Kazakhstani orphanage daily for nearly a year, to illustrate the complexities and implications of the research evidence. Topics include the effects of institutionalization on children's developing brains, cognitive abilities, and socio-emotional functioning; the challenges of navigating issues of identity when adopting across national, cultural, and racial lines; how strong emotional bonds form even without genetic relatedness; and how adoptive families can address the special needs of children who experienced early neglect and deprivation, providing a supportive environment in which those children can flourish. Striving to attain a balanced, evidence-based perspective on controversial issues, the book argues that international adoption must be maintained and supported as a vital means of promoting international child welfare.