From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

6. Your abused child needs your help in identifying and dismantling triggers.

A trigger is anything that can cause an abuse survivor to have a flashback. Most people think of flashbacks as visual experiences, and they can be experienced that way – as vivid memories. However, flashbacks can also be experienced as auditory... more

From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

5. Your abused child needs you to hear his story in his own time.

A foundational principal of psychotherapy is that you need to talk about your issues until you no longer feel the need to talk about them anymore. This is why “talk therapy” is so successful. Talking about the issues helps you to face and dismantle... more

From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

4. Doing well in school does not mean that there are no emotional issues from an abusive past.

Survivors of abuse tend to do things in extremes. Society has gotten better about “red flagging” children who react to the abuse by acting out in ways such as doing drugs, binge drinking, or becoming promiscuous. However, the children... more

From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

3. When an abused child rejects you, he is really rejecting himself.

There are three aftereffects of childhood abuse that are shared by virtually every abuse survivor: self-loathing, inability to trust, and shame. These feelings cause the child to reject himself. When you, as an adoptive parent, tell the child that you love... more

From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

2. Just because you are trustworthy does not mean that an abused child will choose to trust you.

When a child has been abused, particularly by his birthparents, his trust has been shattered. This is much more than just broken trust. If broken trust is ripping a piece of paper in two, shattered trust is like running the... more

From Top Ten List: Adopting an Abused Child...

1. No matter how much you love an abused child, he must choose to receive that love in order to heal.

When many hopeful adoptive parents decide to adopt a child who has been abused, they believe that they can love the child enough to heal the emotional wounds. This is a myth, which many adoptive parents... more

In honor of April being Child Abuse Awareness Month, I have put together this series on adopting an abused child. Child abuse is an epidemic in Western society. According to the All About Counseling website, roughly 1 in 3 girls and 1 in 5 to 7 boys are sexually abused. These are just the statistics for sexual abuse. Factor in the number of children who endure physical abuse,... more

If you decide to adopt domestically, there are a couple of routes you can take: you can adopt out of foster care, or you can match with a placing mother. I will discuss matching with a placing mother in the next post.

There are many good reasons to adopt out of foster care, not the least of which is that these are children who are waiting for a forever family. Many of these children have been through some terrible life experiences to wind up in the foster care system in the first place.... more

I just found out that some friends of mine aren't going to be able to adopt the foster baby they've had for over a year.

I wrote a little bit about their story here.

When the baby was placed with them she was supposed to be a foster-to-adopt child. The bio mom had lost custody and the bio dad was in jail and he'd already signed relinquishment papers.

But then one of his relatives found out about the child...and decided she wanted her. 12 months later, Baby Bebe is leaving... more

Big J, my oldest son, had a friend come over after school the other day. It was N., a friend we've known a long time. N. happens to be a kiddo who was adopted. N.'s grandfather happens to be a small town physician and through his doctor connections he helped arrange the private adoption of his grandson. It is a semi-open adoption, which is what N.'s birth mother wanted.

Now N.'s mom and dad wanted more children after N. It's kind of ironic, because they happen to be Catholic and they're the kind of Catholic who say to heck with the birth control! Let's have 12 children!... more