How do kids deal with loss? There are as many ways as there are children who’ve had loss! The most common method for the kids in my house is ANGER. I’m often asked if having so many children in one home makes things difficult for the children. Don’t they feed off of each other, increasing anger and poor behavior? In my family, this is not the case.

Kids who come to our house have not made a straight-line journey to get here. Rather, most have come from other adoptions that have been dissolved. For some... more

With many of my kids, in order to understand their loss, I must know as much as possible about it. With most of them, I must come to accept their birth parents as well. In a previous blog, I talked about accepting the birth parents of a couple who have voluntarily chosen adoption for their baby. But, what about accepting abusive birth parents of a child? What if their parents harmed them?? What if we have anger toward their birth parents for doing this to the child? Surely the child doesn’t want us to accept those parents also.

Instead,... more

Most of my children came to our family at older ages. In 24 adoption situations, we have never adopted a newborn. Our youngest adopted child was 3 and our oldest adopted child was 17. The rest of the children’s ages are in between the two.

Many of my children have not come to us as their first or even second adoptive family. We’ve adopted many children who have disrupted from their initial adoptions. With this, many of our children have very difficult behaviors and emotional disabilities when they arrive through our front door.

What... more

Given our focus today on this nation's tragedy of five years ago, I'd like to raise the question of the impact that the premature death of an adoptive parent may have on an adopted child. I have heard and read numerous statistics about the number of children who lost a parent in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The most consistent number I have seen is five thousand. It is almost impossible to fathom. Five thousand children lost a mother or father on that day. I am uncertain how many children lost both parents.

The loss of a parent... more