Tag: adoptive parenting
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Ending the Unwanted War Between Adoptees and Their Moms
How I wish mom and I knew about what will be shared . We would have been freed from the war between us and enjoyed an intimate parent/child relationship that only comes from tough self-examination of both child and parent.
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The Unspoken Raw Realities All Adopted Kids Experience
For an adopted child, the dance floor is the first mother’s womb, for there the unborn child gains a sense of belonging, a sensation of safety in the warm sack of water, and a sense of rhythm from the mother’s beating heart. These dance floor elements are what every child expects after birth–a continuation and…
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How To Enter the World of Your Adopted Child
Just having found the paternal side of my first family, I know first-hand what it means to come from a painful history. My first father was a very broken man, now deceased, but leaving six children from six marriages in the wake. I am fairly convinced that my adoptive parents knew the back story, but…
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Please Bring Up My Birth Family for Me?
What comes to mind when you think about initiating a conversation with your child about his birth family? Do you feel defensive, like the birth family is the enemy to be avoided at all costs? Do you feel sad, and does your lip begin to quiver at the thought of their possible presence in your…
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What Happens When Adoptive Parents Reflect On the Miracle of Adoption
Without a doubt, you know that an absolute miracle transpired in your heart when you adopted your child. Trying to describe it would be impossible, for it is like a million emotions exploding simultaneously—like fireworks! Debbie describes it well: If I had to pick just one moment of absolute, unadulterated joy it would be the…
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Do you Want to Heal from Adoption Wounds? Here’s How.
Being a Lone Ranger doesn’t bring healing for those touched by adoption. When we are grieving deeply, we can’t see and even don’t want to see the pain of others. Pain twists our perspective. Sherrie Eldridge has been there and gives reason why striving for humble healing is essential…in the company of all that have…
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Parents Can Bypass Shame When Explaining Adoption Relinquishment
This photo of a child with a deer illustrates the world of the adopted and fostered child. Parents struggle big time to enter their child’s world when explaining relinquishment. Sherrie teaches how to communicate love vs. shame.
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Adoptive, Foster, and Birth Parents Long for This
Imagine standing at Tiffany’s jewelry showcase. Your eyes are drawn to a lustrous, huge. string of pearl, set in a simple, yet elegant setting. All of us would love having those pearls. However, there’s another pearl far more precious to adoptive and foster parents…a pearl you would travel to the ends of the earth to…
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How To Tell If You’ve Been Called to Parent Through Adoption or Foster Care
There aren’t enough positive things written about adoptive and foster parenting today. ..about the beauty of adoption. Yes, parents have an abundance of challenges, but at times, they need to reflect on how they became a family and celebrate. Sherrie Eldridge gives coaching tips on how to do this.
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Adoptees and Foster Kids MUST Honor Abusive Parents…Really?
What is an adoptee or foster kid, teen, or adult to do if parents are abusive? Adoptee Sherrie Eldridge had been taught that she was to “honor” them. In her mind, that meant, keeping the secret. That lie was blasted open when a trusted counselor taught her the true meaning of “honoring” her parents.
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Understanding Causes of Unplanned Pregnancies in Adopted and Foster Teens
Why is it so common for adopted and foster teens and 20-Somethings to experience an unplanned pregnancy? You will be surprised as the author reveals her experience and what she has learned to share with adoptive and foster parents. Parents are given tips on how to cope with this challenge.
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How Being A Foster and Adoptive Parent Changed My Life, by Mike Berry
Mike Berry, author of this guest . blog post struggled when young with wanting to be famous in sports. The answer came, not in the way he dreamed, but in the fostering of 20 children and adoption of eight special needs kids. The solution for him was far more rewarding than being a legend. It…
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do When Words Fail
What is a parent to do when his loving words hit the brick wall of their child’s wounded heart? This post provides information about connecting with one’s higher power.
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Relinquishment and Adoption Are Different, by Ron Nydam, Ph.D.
Language itself is often a problem in the field of adoption. Seldom is it simply a matter of semantics. For all too long the literature has failed to carefully distinguish between relinquishment and adoption as two separate, parallel processes which interface with each other in adoptive development. And the consequences of this unfortunate muddling of…
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do When Kids “Out-Stubborn” Them
What can adoptive and foster parents do when their kids consistently resist talking about adoption? Many times, the child will yell, “You don’t get it.” And, truth be told, parents don’t get it because adopted and foster kids see life in an entirely different way than their parents. Learn here how to enter their world….and…
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What Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Do If Short-Changed by Social Workers
It’s hard to believe in this day and age that social workers often hold back vital truth from adoptive and foster parents. Withheld truth that will surely sabotage both parenting and growing up adopted or fostered. What can a parent do when this happens? Sherrie Eldridge lists six steps to help parents get started.
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How Adoptees and Foster Kids Can Prepare for Birth Parent Reunions
An adoptee’s or foster kids’ reunion with birth family members can seem like a milion emotions all at once. It is easy for the reunited adoptee or foster child to feel overwhelmed, like a loser and a victim. Some say you can’t prepare for an adoption reunion, but adoptee veteran Sherrie Eldridge begs to differ.…
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Should Adopted and Foster Kids Keep Trying After Repeated Birth Parent Rejections?
Some therapists call it “repetition compulsion.” That means trying and trying with the same results. We adoptees and foster kids sometimes fall into this when we are rejected by a birth relative. We keep trying to make things better, but the birth relative keeps rejecting or abusing us verbally. What can adoptees and fostered kids…
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Why Adoptive and Foster Parents Must Resist Over-the-Top Giving
“Just get whatever you want.” Many of us believe this communicates love to adopted and foster children. As Sherrie Eldridge wrote this post, she identified a new area of overindulgence in her own life. Find out what overgiving really communicates to your child and the three forms of overgiving.
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Dear younger me…the upset adopted or fostered me…remember the jellybean
A childlike way to uncouple from chaos and crisis? This has helped the younger me calm myself. Perhaps it will help you, or your adopted or foster child.
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Sometimes Adoptees and Especially Foster Kids Feel Like A Burden
I took all my stuff to the downstairs bedroom, shut the door, and crawled into bed, pulling the covers over my head. It felt safer there. Perhaps, there, I could escape the message that pounded in my head relentlessly: “You are a bother.” It was the time of my second clinical depression and I felt…
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I Wish I Could Be Somebody Else
Adopted and foster kids often have no sense of self. They may pick out someone they admire and copy them…even down to hairstyles and clothes. That was the way it was for me. I was not only rejected by my birth mother, but even more painfully, rejected by my very own self.
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Adopted Kids Learn What They Live
It is absolutely essential for adopted kids to learn positive things from parents. Positive things that will fill holes of low self-worth, feelings of not belonging, and second chances when they make mistakes. So much of adoptee behavior depends on what is learned in the home.
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How To Explain Adoption to Your Adopted Child
There is an art to telling adopted children their story. It is a certain way that snuffs out toxic shame and helps us adoptees go on after a trauma or multiple traumas. It truly is an art. Without the right artful approach, your child may silently reaffirm the lie that “my life is a mistake.”…
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Most Popular Post of 2017: Why Are Many Adoptees and Foster Kids Clumsy?
Why do adoptees run into walls, drop dishes, and trip? Sherrie Eldridge discovered a possible cause and shares it with adoptees and those who love them.
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This Savvy Adoptive Mama Isn’t Shakin’ In Her Boots!
See this little chickie? Isn’t she the cutest thing ever? She’s happy as can be because her mama knows what kinds of feelings and thoughts are floating around in that precious little mind. Her mama is savvy because she’s read every adoption book she can get her hands on. She knows the right time and…