As an adoptive parent, do you sometimes question which of your child's behaviors stem from your child's adoption and which are simply your child's personality? I find myself wondering this sometimes because I want to be sensitive to helping my child work through any adoption-related issues.

For example, my seven-year-old son is a very confident little guy. He has no problem with going to a new camp at a new location in which he does not know a soul. It does not phase him in the least. By the time I pick him up on the first day, he not only has several... more

My six-year-old son is in the process of being evaluated for the extent to which his Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is affecting his ability to succeed in school. It is looking like we will need to medicate him in order for him to succeed. He is such a bright kid, but his inability to focus is impeding his ability to stay on task and complete assignments. Even his IQ testing (as part of this assessment) did not fully capture his intelligence because the... more

I am a big fan of the book, Parenting with Love and Logic, by Foster Cline and Jim Fay. The theory behind the book is that we need to enable our children to think for themselves. Children learn responsibility as they are given the freedom to fail and then later succeed. I also like some of Dr. Phil's advice about helping children to think for themselves. He suggests having conversations with your children that help them think... more

We have all heard the phrase, "a face that only a mother could love." Not every person on the planet is physically attractive. In fact, if you looked at Hollywood's standard, 95% of the population could probably be described as unattractive. The same holds true for adopted children: Not every adopted child has the physical appearance necessary to appear on the cover of a magazine.

When a less than attractive child is raised by his biological parents, the entire family generally shares some of the same traits. However, when the child joins a family through... more

One issue that adoptive parents face is whether or not to tell the teacher about the child's adoption. I went into the pros and cons in my post, Telling the Teacher about Child’s Adoption.

This year, I decided not to tell my son's teacher until later in the year. I did not want the fact that he was adopted to influence her opinion of my son. Also, I already met with her to discuss his asthma... more

In my last post, Parenting an Adopted Child who Self-Injures, I stated that one way to help an adopted child to stop self-injuring is to teach him more positive coping skills. Teaching a child how to cope with emotional pain is the responsibility of all parents. If we do not teach our children how to handle emotional pain in a positive way, they are more likely to use negative coping strategies when they experience pain.

As adoptive parents, we know... more

Throughout my series on resilience, I have been primarily focusing on the resilience of abused adopted children. Now let’s talk about the resilience of adopted children who were never abused. They, too, need resilience as they face their adoption histories.

I was quite disturbed when I first learned about the book The Primal Wound by Nancy Newton Verrier. In a nutshell, the author asserts that... more

In my last post, Is Resilience in Abused Adopted Child a Genetic Trait?, I stated that I do not believe that resilience is a genetic trait. I make this assertion based upon my experience in talking with hundreds of adult abuse survivors from all walks of life who reacted to the abuse very differently. Whether an abuse survivor has become very successful professionally or struggles each month to pay the... more

In my last post, Resiliency and the Adopted Child, I kicked off this series about resilience. I shared that a reader named Fenyimom and I had a discussion going on Perceptions of Irresponsible Adult Adopted Child about whether all adopted children who had suffered abuse had the ability to lead productive... more

On my post, Perceptions of Irresponsible Adult Adopted Child, a reader named Fenyimom and I discussed our differing views on the ability of adult survivors of trauma to be able to succeed as adults. I take the position that all trauma survivors who have maintained their sanity have the ability to make good choices and heal. Fenyimom disagrees. (I recognize that those whose sanity snapped will... more