From the category archives:

Adoptive Parenting

Adoptive Parenting Needs: Entitlement

March 12, 2012

I’m closing in on close to two decades of parenting and I still hear it—“real”—used as a qualifier of relationships that our children have with their birth parents, siblings, and adoptive parents, as in who is real and who is not. The concept of “real” is confusing, intimidating, or can elicit emotional injury because, uttered [...]

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Adoptive Parenting Needs: Education

March 5, 2012

You have special needs as parents of children who have been adopted. More is required of you as parent because your child has certain emotional vulnerabilities due to adoption. You must prepare to address those and help your child with them. One of these tools at your disposal is education, knowledge. This should be ongoing [...]

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Adoption and the Movies

March 2, 2012

Thinking about seeing a movie with your kids this weekend? I know; there isn’t much out at this time of the year, however you can pop and butter some corn, sit down together on your cozy couch, and catch the recent first-run you’ve wanted to see, or watch an old favorite or two.
As wonderful as [...]

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In Support Of

February 27, 2012

Support. Who needs it? Well, everyone can use some from time to time.
Whether online or face-to-face, support, in the form of support groups, provides an environment in which all members of the adoption “constellation”—birth parents, adoptees (teens and adults), foster parents and pre- and post-adoptive parents can find encouragement and share experiences with others who [...]

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“Perfect” versus “Good Enough”

February 23, 2012

Parenting is considered to be one of the most wonderful albeit hardest “jobs” we adults will ever have. You welcome a child into your family and perhaps you don’t delve deeply into just how much things might change—elevating expectations as you adjust to being together, developing and adhering to schedules, rules and boundaries that work [...]

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Unconditionally

February 14, 2012

We use the word or a form of it often to qualify the concept of love, specifically how we expect to or do feel about our children. Unconditionally—without limitations, absolute.
We use “unconditionally” to express “pure” love, of that between members of our family, those who we are profoundly committed to, no matter what. Loving unconditionally comes from [...]

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