Reactive Attachment Disorder in Young Adoptees

My oldest child (adopted at 11 years old in 2003) struggles with severe emotional issues. He was diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder while still in foster care and his inability to control his anger is leading him down a path that concerns me. When we adopted him, we knew he had issues to deal with [...]

Adoption Interviews

Here are the first two, in what will become a series of interviews with adoptive and waiting parents, that I did through e-mail and on our adoption forum. In an effort to show the many paths adoption can take, I’ll try and choose two that pursued adoption in different ways. If you’re interested in participating [...]

What Extended Family Can Mean To A Child That Was Adopted

Because my children were adopted at an older age (5, 8 and 11), family has extra special meaning to them, especially extended family. They enjoy meeting second and third cousins because it gives them a sense of connection to a whole other side of their family. They get a feeling of being part of something larger than just our [...]

Using Advertising and Facilitators in Adoptive Placements

Many people choose to adopt, and many birth parents choose to place their children for adoption, without the involvement of an agency. These placements are known as private placements or independent adoptions. Private placement is often preferred by people who want to adopt newborn infants from the United States and avoid the often years-long waiting [...]

Birthmother Scams

“If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
— Anonymous
Warning signs of potential birthparent scams:

One sign alone does not mean you are being scammed. It is the combination of several and your instincts that should make you leary.
A favorite ploy is for a scam artist is to fix you up with a “friend”. [...]

Study On Young Adoptees

UNCG RESEARCHERS FIND ADOPTED CHILDREN TO BE AS WELL-ADJUSTED AS THEIR PEERS
By Deborah Durkee
Dr. DiAnne Borders
Dr. Kay Pasley
GREENSBORO — Parenting is a tough job. One with many questions and no training manual, employing instead a sink-or-swim method of learning.
Add adoption to the mix, and the questions of parenting become more complicated, causing adoptive parents to [...]

International Adoption Video

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We’re Giving Comment Luv

One of the things I wanted to do when I moved this blog to wordpress was install the comment luv plug in. It’s in and working! What this little beauty does is find your latest blog post and insert a link to it after your comment.

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What To Do With Your Kid’s Art Work

One of our long time adoption forum members asked for suggestions on how to manage the ever growing collection of her child’s art work. Having three kids myself, I’ve had to come up with some creative ways to display their pictures, drawings and paintings over the years.

One of the things I do is line the [...]

Real Parents

Teaching This Equation at School and at Home
by Deborah McCurdy
“They’re not your real parents!”
The little girl’s words were not meant to hurt. At 8, she was struggling to understand her own adoption. But our adopted son was hearing these words for the first time, at the age of 5. And he was devastated.
For weeks, Mark [...]