The Strength of Mercy by Jan Beazley (An inspiring story of one woman's Romanian adoption, from start to finish. For me, I came into adoption because of Romanian orphanages so this book just had a special place in my heart.)
The Post Adoption Blues by Karen Foli and John Thompson (This was the first book I read after our foster care experience and it helped me to see how all of my emotions were really okay. It helped me to see what kinds of emotions adoptive parents dealt with.)
Attaching in Adoption by Deborah Gray, Toddler Adoption by Mary Hopkins Best, and Raising Adopted Children by Lois Ruskai Melina (I kept these as resource books. They explain attachment well, describe what potential attachment problems might look like and have good ideas on how to promote attachment.)
Attaching in Adoption is a bit technical; another adoptive mom just reminded me of this. But if you don't have any understanding of how a child learns to attach and how a child's brain physically is changed by trauma, the first few chapters explain it very well. If you have been in a class or read other materiel, you could probably skip the first half of the book. Chapter 8 walks through steps identified by the author as necessary for attachment. These steps, in my mind, are similar to developmental stages that all children go through. The last 4 chapters have strategies for specific attachment related problems like anxiety, the need for control, overstimulation, fairness amongst siblings, and inability to read social cues.)
Toddler Adoption is written by a psychologist who adopted her son as a toddler from Peru. Her book is a comprehensive combination of her experiences as a mom and her experiences as a family counselor. I know some people have read this and thought it was scary and talked too much about attachement disorders. I didn't feel that way. The author is simply sharing about the families she works with. And, in general, families who are not having major attachment issues don't seek professional help. So her book is only representative of a portion of toddler adoptions. And if you are adopting any child, you should have some type of picture in your head of the negative things that can arise. The book covers potential toddler behaviors and emotions as well as discussing how various parents have responded to these things and if those responses were successful. One of the things I appreciated most about this book was that the author discussed failed toddler adoptions and the reasons why they were not successful. For me, one of the aha moments was when she shared about parents who started out with an infant adoption but ended up with a toddler adoption due to delays in their process. That described us and made me realize that I needed to make a choice to accept that we were adopting a toddler not a baby, even though that wasn't how we initially thought things would look.
Raising Adopted Children is a book I kept even though it wasn't as useful as the other two. I kept it because I thought I might want to reference some of the chapters later like Talking about Adoption, Ethnic and Cultural Identity, and Family History. Generally, I only read bits and pieces from this book as much of it mirrored things I had already read/learned.
Books I hope to read are The Connected Child by Cross et al and After the Dream Comes True by Michelle Gardner.
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