Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
Price: $10.20
“Birthdays may be difficult for me.”
“I want you to take the initiative in opening conversations about my birth family.”
“When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me.”
“I am afraid you will abandon me.”
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children’s unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.
With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love–that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future–that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be–and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.
Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child–and within the adoptive home.
Features
- ISBN13: 9780440508380
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
User Reviews
I am sure there is some merit to the author's claim that adoptees feel some kind of loss at times in their life, but this book makes such a blanket statement about how damaged adoptees turn out, that it's impossible to take seriously. She comes off as some kind of zealot and the opinions expressed in this book were downright offensive at times. -- Psychobabble
We are currently going through the adoption process. This book is providing us great information and advice! -- Great Information!
This book is obviously written by a very wounded adult. My husband and I have raised 29 foster children and an adopted child. I am a child psychologist and the head of a school for young children. I have some experience in this field.
This author begins her story reflecting on her poor relationship with her now deceased adopted parents. She says that they were wonderful people who never understood the tremendous depth of her grief over losing her birth mother at the age of 2 days. She goes on to make several suggestions to adopted parents about things that they can do to assist their adopted children in never experiencing the life-long agony she has experienced. Here are just two of her suggestions:
1. She suggests that it is most healthy and prudent to teach an adopted child early on that they have an ACTUAL HOLE in their middles that can only be filled with an arduous journey through the grief of losing a birth family. She actually suggests having your young child draw themselves to scale on a large piece of paper and then ACTUALLY DRAW a hole right in their middles. This hole is their loss. The adopted parents are to tell the child that the hole can only be filled by grieving their birth families.
2. She also goes on to compare the adopted child to an amputee. She suggests that parents raising an adopted child should see them as missing a limb- she uses an illustration of an amputee runner struggling and struggling to win a race against runners without prosthesis (this in and of itself is more disrespectful to the adopted child and the amputee than I can even state here) and treat them as though they are fundamentally unable to do OR be all that a biological child can do and become. This is wrong on so many levels. She suggests that parents of adopted children always look at their children through that lens and treat them as the lesser, broken selves that they are.
What in the world?
I suggest instead that the child always be a part of a conversation about their entire family- birth, adopted, chosen, whomever. There is loss and reward in all relationships. If a child is raised by people who see them as damaged and lacking and not-whole, grief will be a life-long experience. If instead the family see the child as whole and complete and the birth family as an extension and a hope for a future relationship, the child will likely see the same. Joy is completely lacking in this book. It is like the author sees the adopted child and adopted children as STUCK in this never quite right relationship. I am, quite frankly, sad for this author and her very warped world view.
I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I do however, recommend some additional counseling for the author. This book is destructive in my eyes. -- Very Destructive Book
Good information, some parts are hard to know as an adoptive parent but book does a great job in providing info. -- excellent condition
This is the first adoption book I've read as we begin to discuss adopting a child, and it was awful. I kept thinking that the kinds of things she recommends saying to a child could really start giving the child a victim complex! So many behaviors she describes are normal childish misbehavior that are easily corrected without convincing the child that he's got an incurable wound (special needs) from being adopted.
I asked my husband to read it so I could see if maybe I was wrong about it. He was adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam at 18 months of age, so I thought he'd have a different perspective. "Melodramatic," he said. He said that he felt very few of the things the book described, and only occasionally. He stopped reading it in the middle, because he said it felt like she was trying to convince him that he HAD to feel those things, and it was starting to make him feel really down.
I'd avoid this toxic book. -- Melodramatic with potential to be damaging
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