Attaching in Adoption Practical Tools for Today’s Parents by Deborah Gray is in-depth guidebook for any adoptive parent but especially for parents who adopt an older child. As a clinical social worker, Gray has hands-on experience and offers child, family, and individual therapy specializing in attachment, grief and trauma. Gray continues to work in the field at the Northwest Attachment Center in Kirkland, Washington.
Attaching in Adoption provides adoptive parents and extended families a clear and understandable picture of how children and families adjust post placement and adoption. Gray details the issues families adopting older children most often face. Her attention to the issues of pre-teen and teenage children who have been abused or neglected, or who may have spent years in foster care have with attaching to their adoptive parents and families.
Attachment forms the template for an adopted child’s future adult relationships, and in this book, Gray teaches parents the importance of being patient with older adopted children and why creating a highly structured and nurturing environment can help attachment evolve.
Attaching in Adoption includes wonderful information for cross-cultural and interracial adoption, religious concerns as well as, other complications for children attaching with their adoptive families.
There is also a complete discussion about how issues such as ADHD and learning disabilities affect attachment. Gray includes a detailed exploration of developmental delays commonly seen in children who have been adopted later in life. Gray compassionately guides adoptive parents through the steps needed to form realistic expectations, and offers suggestions for families and children striving to form lasting, loving relationships.
Attaching in Adoption and Deborah Gray also provides balance to families fearing their adopted child may have attachment disorders by reminding parents that many children adopted from the foster care system enter their adoptive families as older kids and do not have attachment disorders. Because of their past traumatic experiences of neglect, abuse, and abandonment, these children do have trust and attachment issues that need to be addressed.
It’s important to remember symptoms of past traumatic stress disorder look very much like characteristics of reactive attachment disorder (RAD), attention disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, etc. Adoptive parents should not jump to conclusions about symptoms; check them out with a specialist like Deborah Gray.
Related Blogs:
- Side Effects of Attachment Disorders
- Toddler Adoption, The Weaver’s Craft.
- November is National Adoption Awareness Month
Special Needs and Adoption-Related Terms: Adoption terms and special needs words may vary from agency to agency. The terms used in this Special Needs Adoption-Related Glossary may be slightly different from one State to another.
A | B | C | D | E-F | G-H-I | J-K-L | M | N-O | P | Q-R | S | T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z
For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.
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