What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know
Subtitle: Healing Your Child's Wounded Heart
Publisher: Mountain Ridge Publishing
Published: 2008
Place of publication: Bozeman, Montana, USA
Format: Perfect Paperback
Number of pages: 269
ISBN-13: 9780615188454
Description: What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know: Healing Your Child’s Wounded Heart

An Essential Resource for Adoptive Parents

As a young couple, Dan and Cassie Richards thought they had finally fulfilled their dream of having a family after adopting a beautiful little boy and girl. But they had unsuspectingly invited a Trojan horse into their hearts and home. While the children seemed happy on the outside, deep inside they were suffering from the hidden trauma that so many adopted children carry with them.
	This remarkable true-life story of raising two adopted children is a tale of hope and resilience, of two parents unprepared for their children’s psychological wounds that only time would reveal. Most importantly, it shows that profound healing is possible when adoptive families realize that traditional parenting is not enough.
	Because of the rejection, neglect, and abandonment they experience in the first few months of life, adopted children are imprinted with the subconscious belief that at their core they are unlovable and worthless, even if their new parents are nurturing and loving. They often decide that to depend on anyone who has the power to abandon them—including their new parents—is lethal. As a result, as they grow older they may develop attachment and identity issues, and their behaviors can become provocative and frightening to their parents.
	What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know offers adoptive parents and parents-to-be a solution. It shows that the journey to healing begins with moving beyond the misconception that the life of adopted children starts when they arrive in their new home. And it gives readers both the courage and information they need to create the breakthrough these children deserve.
	By following the threads of the Richards’ moving story, clarified by insightful
analysis and practical advice from family therapist Kate Cremer-Vogel, this compelling book reveals how the effects of childhood wounds can be transformed with therapeutic parenting techniques.
	Both parents and professionals will learn how to recognize the most common signs of abandonment, attachment, and identity issues in children—from behaviors such as lying, stealing, anger, and hatred expressed toward caregivers, to the inability to share joyfully in holidays, birthdays, and celebrations. Parents will learn how to reorient themselves to look at these behaviors not as reasons for punishment but as the child’s cries for help. As Cassie and Dan discovered, it is never too late to heal the wounded heart of a child with this powerful approach to parenting.
Table of contents: title: What Every Adoptive Parent Needs to Know: Healing Your Child's Wounded Heart; title: Part I: The Faces of Adoption; title: 1	Preparing to Add a New Family Member; title: 2	Imprinting: Parenting Begins in Childhood; title: 3	Attachment: Bonding With Your Adopted Child; title: 4	How Early Abandonment Affects Your Child; title: 5	Early Signs of Attachment Disorder; title: 6	Recognizing Core Shame; title: 7	Your Child's Need to Appear Perfect to Feel Safe; title: 8	Lying, Stealing, and Disruptive Behavior; title: 9	Handling Your Child's Need for Control; title: 10	Seeing Hurtful Behavior as a Cry for Security; title: 11	Hope, Help, and Support for Parents; title: 12	Therapeutic Parenting Brings Breakthroughs; title: 13	Finding Healing and Compassion; title: Part II: Finding Answers and Getting Help; title: 14	Coming to Terms With Your Past; title: 15	Finding Your Strengths and Facing Your Shortcomings; title: 16	Needing a Child's Approval Can Be a Parent's Achilles' Heel; title: 17	How to Know if Your Child Is Attached to You; title: 18	Recognizing Attachment Disorder in Your Child; title: 19	Understanding Your Child's Struggles With Identity, Shame, and the Need for Control; title: 20	Why Your Child Might Behave Well With Others but Not With You; title: 21	What Lying is Really About; title: 22	Deciphering the Message Behind Stealing; title: 23	Finding Compassion When Your Child is Being Hateful; title: 24	Why Challenging Children Need the Therapeutic Parenting Approach; title: 25	Keys to Therapeutic Parenting; title: 26	Learning From the Richards' Experience