As much as we wish we were super-humans with the power to export the trauma out of our children’s lives, we’re not. How do we love them through the darkness of their past, but also help them grow?
It’s extremely challenging to raise children from difficult places, who often speak and behave out of their trauma. How do you keep from losing it when you’re pushed to the edge by your child on a daily basis?
We see it in the eyes of fellow foster and adoptive parents often. Desperation, and shame. If you were offered a spot on a private island, where you could hide from the world, you would take it. We understand because we’ve been there.
There’s often an assumption that since our children are adopted, or have been adopted from the foster care system, their birth mothers must be bad people, or have done some really bad stuff. The truth is, this is an unfair assumption to make about a human being.
*Editor’s Note- We are taking a brief hiatus from The Honestly Speaking Parenting Podcast this week. Join us next Wednesday for a brand new episode.
It’s something you might expect will happen when you begin the foster care journey, but still find yourself unprepared for. Strong emotions. How do you navigate the ups and downs, twists and turns, and unending roller coaster ride that foster parenting can often become?
What do you do when the child you love, parent, and pour tons of time into, continues to push you away and look for approval from everyone else besides the mother who never leaves? It’s difficult and defeating, but there is hope!
Last month we hosted an online Q&A on FASD with Dr. Ira Chasnoff and Gabe Chasnoff from NTI Upstream and the results were amazing. Two hundred people showed up for the event. We’ve had so many requests for the replay that we’re sharing the audio on today’s podcast. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum disorder affects an estimated 40,000 newborn infants every year. While those statistics are staggering and shocking, FASD as a whole, is often overlooked, downplayed and even judged in today’s society. Our goal at Confessions Of An Adoptive Parent, as well as NTI Upstream, is to give this disorder a voice and
We’re the parents of 8 children, all of whom are adopted. We drive a big old 12-passenger van and a Suburban to boot. Quite often we’re asked how in the world we have enough money to do it all. Our secret isn’t in what we have. It’s in what we’ve decided to live without.
Attachment disorder is one of the hardest, loneliest, and defeating aspects of parenting children from traumatic pasts. If you’re anything like us, you struggle to not take the words and actions of your child personally. So, how do you find light at the end of a very dark and long tunnel?
