Authors Jayne E. Schooler and Thomas C. Atwood share insights into every aspect of adoption. This powerful resource addresses the needs and concerns facing adoptive parents, while offering encouragement for the journey ahead.

Why doesn't our child return our love? What are we failing to understand? What are we failing to do? These questions can fill the minds of adoptive parents caring for wounded, traumatized children. Families often enter into this experience with high expectations for their child and for themselves but are broadsided by shattered assumptions. This book addresses the reality of those unmet expectations and offers validation and solutions for the challenges of parenting deeply traumat...

Why doesn't he act his age? Why does she behave so impulsively? Why does he have meltdowns so often?There is always meaning behind behavior in all of us. It might be a behavioral reaction from something as simple as hunger or exhaustion. Or something far more serious – a triggered reaction to a traumatic, frightening experience.Children who have experienced early childhood neglect or trauma are often greatly impacted in developmental ways. Children in foster...

Why doesn’t he act his age? Why does she behave so impulsively? Why does he have meltdowns so often?There is always meaning behind behavior in all of us. It might be a behavioral reaction from something as simple as hunger or exhaustion. Or something far more serious – a triggered reaction to a traumatic, frightening experience.Children who have experienced early childhood neglect or trauma are often greatly impacted in developmental ways. Children in foster care or who are ...

In On It is the book for the grandparents and best friends, colleagues and neighbors, aunts and uncles, teachers and caregivers of contemporary adoptive families. It offers advice, information and insights into contemporary adoption -- especially for readers who are not themselves adoptive parents. In On It explains the decision-making processes that lead parents to adopt, the adoption process itself, and the important roles of loss and grief in adoption. It offers sugges...

A stirring call to Christian families and churches to be a people who care for orphans, not just in word, but in deed.The gospel of Jesus Christ-the good news that through Jesus we have been adopted as sons and daughters into God's family-means that Christians ought to be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans in North America and around the world.Russell D. Moore does not shy away from this call in Adopted for Life, a popular-level, practical manifes...

"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 sho...

Our quest for origin and, by extension, identity is universal to the human experience. For the twenty-five contributors to Somebody’s Child, the topic of adoption is not—and perhaps never can be—a neutral issue. With unique courage, each of them discusses their experience of the adoption process. Some share stories of heartbreak; others have discovered joy; some have searched for closure. Somebody’s Child captures the many unforgettable faces and voices of adoption.

In What Babies Say Before They Can Talk, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Paul C. Holinger, M.D., M.P.H., a explains how infants communicate with us, and we with them, and outlines the nine easily identifiable signals that will help you to decode your baby’s needs and feelings.Dr. Holinger decodes the nine easily identifiable signals—interest, enjoyment, surprise, distress, anger, fear, shame, disgust (a reaction to bad tastes), and dissmell (a reaction to b...

**BOOKS FOR A BETTER LIFE AWARD WINNER • An enlightening guide to how infants, toddlers, and children learn and why play is the key to enhancing your child’s development—now revised and updated with a new chapter on the impacts of screen time“An authoritative, up-to-date playbook on why we should raise our children to be learn-it-alls, not know-it-alls—plus practical advice on how parents can do that!”—Angela Duckworth, New York Times bestselling author of Grit

Without avoiding the grim statistics, this book reveals the real hope that hurting children can be healed through adoptive and foster parents, social workers, and others who care. Includes information on foreign adoptions.

Lessons from the personal experience and reflections of a therapist.The difficulty and cost of training psychotherapists properly is well known. It is far easier to provide a series of classes while ignoring the more challenging personal components of training. Despite the fact that the therapist's self-insight, emotional maturity, and calm centeredness are critical for successful psychotherapy, rote knowledge and technical skills are the focus of most training programs. As a resul...