Books, Books, Books

I am the kind of person who reads a lot before I decide to do something, and adoption was no exception.  My husband and I spent a full year discerning a call to adopting hurt children and another two years waiting for placement. 

Here are the books I found helpful:

• Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents by Deborah D. Gray
• Nurturing Adoptions: Creating Resilience after Neglect and Trauma by Deborah D. Gray
• Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft by Mary Hopkins-Best
• Parenting the Hurt Child: Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow by Gregory C Keck, Regina Kupecky 
• Welcome Home: A Guide for Adoptive, Foster, and Treatment Foster Parents by Christopher Alexander
• When Love Is Not Enough by Nancy Thomas
• The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to your Adoptive Family by Karyn Purvis, et al
• Can this Child be Saved? Solutions for Adoptive and Foster Families by Foster Cline, Cathy Helding 
• Healing Parents: Helping Wounded Children Learn to Trust & Love by Michael Orlans, Terry M. Levy
• Beyond Consequences, Logic, and Control: A Love-Based Approach to Helping Attachment Challenged Children With Severe Behaviors by Heather T. Forbes
• Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children by Daniel Hughes

I really liked the last one, Building the Bonds of Attachment, because after reading of hundreds of pages of social worker/psychologist speak, it gave me a narrative description of attachment disorder and healing that helped me really visualize it.

After a while of reading, I noticed that there was a spectrum of approaches, from the strict and arguably authoritarian Nancy Thomas to the touchy-feely Heather Forbes and Karen Purvis.  Sometimes they even argued with each other in print. 

Isn't it odd that they can be so different but all seem to have found a formula to success?  And I don't think they're lying.  I think all of them have helped kids heal from attachment disorder.  That means it's what they have in common that's essential and everything else is just style.

All the books stress the fundamental importance of connection and rebuilding the attachment cycle.  That's absolutely essential and must be pervasive in any approach.  The differences were mostly in dealing with the icky behaviors kids have while they are attaching. 

OK, I get it.  Connect first and foremost, and find a way to cope with their crazies until they're not crazy anymore.  

After our kids came home, I went back to books as I needed them.  How do you deal with peeing?  Or tantrums?  Or  lying?  Or night time hassles?  I pulled ideas out of different books that fit my parenting style and mashed them together into my own approach.  I gave myself permission to ignore the ideas that didn't work for us.  We have nine children so I can't spend 30 minutes exploring the feelings behind the latest lie with one child.   Our lives demand a more strict approach.  We also have to use an approach that isn't contrary to the way we parent our bio children.  And we have Asperger's in the house, so that has to fit in too.  

These books helped me through very hard days, but reading so many also helped me do it my own way.