Tag: foster kids
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The Little Pink Flower That Bloomed in the Winter
After the man planted Little Pink Flower in his white jar, he expected that it would bloom during the summer, but it didn’t. When December came, even though the plant had green leaves, there was no flower. But suddenly, a pink flower popped from the green leaves, delighting the man beyond belief. He tells the…
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Draining Shame from Adoptee Sensory Issues
For my whole life, I’ve believed that I’m clumsy. My.whole.life. I trip, fall, run into things, and go ballistic when I hear the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Just last week, I was working out at the gym with a friend. When we changed machines, she said with urgency, “Look out!” There was a machine…
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“I Push Myself to Be Perfect” Online Adoptee Bible Study
What are Super You and Real You? Super You is a false idealized image you think you have to be in order to be loved and accepted. Super You is an imaginary picture of yourself. Since you have been programmed to believe that no one will love you if he gets to know the real…
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“I DON’T FEEL LIKE I BELONG ANYWHERE”-Online Adoptee Bible Study
What name did he have in his birth family’s home? Surely it must have been a Hebrew name. But now he was to be called by another name–an Egyptian name. Little Moses felt all mixed up inside. If he were able to put his feelings into words he might have said, I don’t feel like…
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Announcing New Online Bible Study for Adoptive, Foster Parents, and Kids
Why do many of us see life through a lens of rejection? Why do unanswered phone calls, emails, and letters spell R-E-J-E-C-T-I-O-N to us? Will we ever get over it? Why is our self-esteem not low, but non-existent? Why do we try to be like others instead of being ourselves? Do we even know who…
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How Adopted Kids Want Their Parents To Handle Their Pre-Adoption Loss
It’s painful to enter into your child’s suffering. It’s so much easier to assume that all is well inside your child, especially if she hasn’t manifested any obvious problems. But all adopted children have been wounded, simply because they experienced a profound loss before they were embraced by their new family. The first thing your…
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What Adoptees Must Consider Before Searching for Birth Family
“Understanding my adoption experience,” Richard says, “has allowed me to bring authenticity to my relationships with family, friends, and others in my life. I no longer hide my thoughts and feelings—the veil of secrecy has been lifted. People now get the real Richard since I’ve uncovered my past, understand how precious the present is, and…
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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 Adopted and Foster Kids Consider Worse Than Anger
But, this crummy fear consumes, engulfs, surrounds, and ties our tongues. It condemns beautiful personalities, prompts self-protection at any level, and requires all dangers to disappear. It thrives on isolation and multiples with broken promises. It cripples authenticity and encourages sickness.
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Dude..No Need To Feel Guilty For Thoughts About Your Birth Mom
Just think about how intimately we were united with the woman who gave us birth! What a connection we had for at least nine months. An inseparable bond. As inseparable as tea from hot water. As inseparable as a bud from the stem of a flower. As inseparable as the ocean from the sand.
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What If Adoptees and Foster Kids Discover They’re Royalty?
This photograph is fodder for the imagination of foster and adopted kids who need to envision the awesome life God has planned for them. Sherrie provides truths and life purpose that often comes from painful beginnings.
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Remember This When You’re Labeled Bastard or Illegitimate
This young woman in this photo illustrates the paralyzing fear of being exposed as an illegitimate or bastard child. Even in church, mean words are uttered and Scripture is twisted at times. Sherrie offers a strategy for adopted and foster kids to overcome deep-seated shame.
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Why Adopted and Foster Kids Believe They Don’t Belong Anywhere
What is a secret that adoptees and foster kids guard? It’s their feelings of not belonging. They feel like a square peg in a round hole. Parents sometimes hurt instead of help…unknowingly. Sherrie Eldridge offers a challenge to both parents and kids.
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Don’t Fry Your Adopted/Foster Kid Brain-OK?
This teen could be a picture of an adopted or foster kid pushing themselves to the hilt…which only costs themselves. Such striving is contrary to learning to self regulate addictive emotions that tell us to do more. Sherrie Eldridge shares how adopted and foster kids can relax during busy times.
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What Adopted, Foster Kids Must Know About Emotional Abuse
Many times we enter into relationships with unhealed moms and dads with unhealed pasts and chronic issues. We all can recognize physical abuse but emotional abuse is incredibly subtle. And, our propensity for connection blinds us to the hurtful elements of the relationship.
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How Can Adopted and Foster Kids Grow In Spite of Parental Rejection?
News flash: Adoptees and Foster Can Grow in Self-Esteem in the Midst of Parental Rejection My heart breaks for fellow adoptees and foster kids who are being rejected. It doesn’t have to a monumental, in-your-face rejection, but it is rejection nonetheless. For example: Teen waits for birth parent to pick up for movie date but…
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What Fuels Birth Family Searches for Adoptees and Foster Kids?
Finding clues about birth family history sends me on an adrenaline high. I love being a sleuth and solving adoption mysteries. Just my first name–Baby X–makes me curious! Clues come in the most unexpected times and ways, oftentimes through the least likely people and circumstances. As I have turned over every stone possible to find…
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Would Adoptees and Foster Kids Say Yes to This?
Lately, I find myself asking, “If you knew before you were born, would you have signed up for the life you’re living? Would I have signed up for: Being an unplanned baby, called Baby X Not being able to see my birth mother’s face from birth until reunion at 47 years old Feeling ill at…
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The Royal Wedding Can Teach Adoptees and Foster Kids to Dream Big
The royal wedding of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry was something like a fairytale. We all dream of such a life. Their wedding illustrates a very important reality that adopted and foster kids and parents can look forward to in the midst of a broken world.
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Adoptee and Foster Kid Cry Prints Speak Volumes
This baby’s cries are vital for developing connections between parent and child. You will be surprised at what the parental role is in this entire phenomena. Of course. adopted and foster babies have a cry that will reflect trauma…they may be daunting to listen to. Here’s how to begin.
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Please Don’t Read “Two Moms” Poem on Mother’s Day
This photo shows an adopted or foster teen who is dressed up for Mother’s Day. Inside, however, she is filled with mixed feelings. Sherrie Eldridge provides three suggestions for helping adoptees and foster kids, plus parents, cope with this unchangeable reality.
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How Can Adoptees and Foster Kids Know Who Is A Safe Person?
When we adoptees and foster kids are hurting badly, we lack a lot of discernment about who to share our innermost thoughts with. This post teaches how to find safe people by looking at three characteristics that must be present to qualify a person as safe. This is also applicable to anyone who is hurting.
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Has God Forgotten the Fatherless?
Because adopted and foster children suffer great loss of the birth family and place of belonging, they oftentimes feel forgotten–by those in their lives and by God Himself. Sherrie provides Biblical answers of God’s inheritance to the fatherless.
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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 Adoptees and Foster Kids Can Grieve Loss
“Select items that are representative of each loss and put into the box. (Small items can be used, photos, mementos. The item can be as simple as a button).
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Adoptive and Foster Parents Can Offer Comfort on Boo-Hoo Birthdays
What are adoptive and foster parents to do when their child acts out on birthdays…or when their child shuts down? Here are five beliefs many adoptees have about birthdays and five things parents can do to help comfort the sadness.
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Helping Adoptees and Foster Kids Identify and Describe Hidden Loss
Yep, we adoptees and foster kids are well guarded when it comes to talking about sadness and loss. Parents will gain hope from this post on what they can do to help their child move through it successfully.
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Become Your Adopted/Foster Child’s Cheerleader In Adoptions’ Olympics
Want to see how much adopted and foster kids are like Olympians? We run like Olympians every day in dealing with special needs resulting from relinquishment. Helpful is parental understand of special needs. List provided. Parents can become #1 cheerleaders.
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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 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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Preparing Adopted and Foster Kids for Family Holiday Gatherings
There’s nothing much more shocking than walking into a room of family members who snub you. Well, not only snub you, but act like they don’t know you’re there. I still remember when Bob and I attended the funeral of my beloved birth uncle Dave Clark, who stood up for me against a mentally-deranged and…
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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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Why Adopted and Fostered Kids May Cry Old Man Tears
Why would a seemingly insignificant object trigger pieces of my adoption puzzle that stayed dormant for years? And, how could I solve the grief puzzle it surfaced?