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

In my last post, Perceptions of Irresponsible Adult Adopted Child, I talked about how insulting it is to an irresponsible young adult to assume that he does not have the ability to learn how to make better choices. I promised to provide advice for how to teach an adult adopted child responsibility in this post. Here is my advice: Love your adult adopted child enough to allow him to make his... more

In case you missed it, the Reactive Attachment Disorder blog has a heated debate going about Nancy’s adult adopted child who is not making the most responsible choices. Nancy has made the decision to let her adult daughter make her own choices and either sink or swim without bailing her out. Some readers have accused Nancy of not being “loving” by making this choice. See the following posts and comments for more on this situation:

When our adopted child joined our home, we received a medical history for each birthparent. Even with all of the medical history we received, we still do not have a complete medical background for my son’s extended birth family. This can be a problem for many adoptive families, especially when the adopted child is exposed to allergens.

Last summer, my son experienced his first bee sting. He did not have an allergic reaction to the sting, which was to be expected because this was his first exposure to the potential allergen. In... more

As I posted in Protecting Adopted Child from the Media, I really dislike it when the media goes out of its way to point out that a child was adopted when the child’s adoption is irrelevant to the story. As an example, I pointed out how frequently the media reminds us that Tom and Nichole adopted their children. My son is just my son. Yes, he joined my family through adoption, but his adoption does not define who he is.

I happen... more

Get any group of mothers together, and the working mom versus stay-at-home mom debate is likely to rear its ugly head. Being adoptive parents only digs us more firmly into one “side” or the other. On one side, we have adoptive parents saying that they waited so long to be parents that they want one parent at home with the child. On the other side, we have adoptive parents who have either depleted their savings account or are knee deep in debt to pay for the adoption, so they say that both must... more

When I was waiting to adopt, I remember reading that adoptive parents should never use abandonment as a form of punishment for an adopted child. Unfortunately, I cannot remember where I read this, but I remember the author saying that an adopted child is more likely to react with a much stronger fear of abandonment than a child who was not adopted. Personally, I cannot imagine threatening to abandon my child, no matter how he joined my family, but I thought this observation was an interesting... more