The Dissolution Or Disruption Of An Adoption

Editors note: This is not a “feel good” topic, but it is the reality for many families. Adoption disruption is not an story to blog about, and it’s never an easy decision to make, but until things change, it will continue to become a reality for more families. Written by Linny If you keep an eye on adoption sites that feature children available for re-adoption, it would seem there are more and more...

Older Child Adoption: The Good, The Bad & The...

Older child adoption has give me more joy, more sadness, more fulfillment, more stress and more gray hairs than anything else in my life. We recently passed our five year adoption mark (we adopted three siblings) and sometimes it feels like five days, while other times it feels like five million years. The Good: My youngest child is now ten and we adopted her at the age of five. Lucky for her, and for us, she was removed...

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 and we have done more to help him than we even thought we had in us. I’ll write more about RAD in another post but...

Reactive Attachment Disorder

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Parents of Reactive Attachment Disordered Children by Jody Swarbrick Many foster and adoptive families of Reactive Attachment Disordered children live in a home that has become a battleground. In the beginning, the daily struggles can be expected, after all, we knew that problems would occur. Initially, stress can be so subtle that we lose sight of a war which others do not realize is...

Reactive Attachment Disorder

Last year, my 10 year old daughter and I had an interesting conversation. It started with my husband and I talking with her about how she tries to manipulate & control people. We were basically talking with her about how people want to be treated and that manipulating & controlling people, and situations is not a way to gain trust. So we asked her why she thinks she does it. She thought for a moment and said “I...

Children with Reactive Attachment Disorder

My husband, our son ‘C’ and our friends go to Daytona every year for the Rolex race. The friends they go with are my childrens former foster brother (who got adopted soon after them) and his father. ‘C’ always enjoy himself while he’s there. It’s when he comes back that there’s a problem. The day after we go anywhere, he’s usually very argumentative, short tempered and does a...