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Books on Adoption
Books on Foster Care
Books on Parenting

Books on Adoption

Adopting the Hurt Child; Hope for Families with Special-Needs Kids
by Gregory Keck and Regina Kupecky
 
Most parents who adopt from foster care, over time realize that these children require unique parenting due to early trauma caused by multiple separations, abuse and neglect. The world is full of hurting kids who suffer from emotional trauma caused by someone they should have been able to trust. It’s a pain that lasts into adulthood if not healed and resolved. It is the new face of adoption.
In this revised and updated guide to healing the emotional trauma of the adopted child, authors Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky provide a clear picture of what it’s like to hurt and what it means to heal. Through advice, tips, and success stories of those who have been there, you’ll find valuable insight and hope.

Adoption Parenting; Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections
by Jean MacLeod & Shenna Macrae
 
Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections is a fabulous compilation of parenting advice for adoptive families that has never before been in one book. As an adoptive parent myself, I have been amazed at the sharing of wisdom and helpful advice that this book encompasses. This is the book I wish I had when I adopted my children. Every contributor is either an adoptive parent, an expert in the field of adoption, an adoptee, or a birth parent and I have learned so much of value for my own family by publishing this book. My hope is that this book will help many families navigate their own journey of adoptive parenting.

 
Attaching in Adoption; Practical Tools for Today's Parents
by Deborah D. Gray

Gray, a clinical social worker specializing in attachment, grief and trauma, has penned a comprehensive guidebook for adoptive parents, taking an in-depth look at how children and families adjust. The author notes that many of today's adoptions involve older children who may have been abused or neglected, or who may have spent years in institutions or various foster situations; due to their past experiences these children may have difficulty attaching to their adoptive parents. Explaining that attachment forms the template for future adult relationships, Gray stresses how important it is for adoptive parents to be patient in forging this new bond. She advises creating a high structure/ high nurture environment for the child, and instructs parents to find out about their child's background. The book covers many issues, including cross-cultural and interracial adoption, religious concerns and other complications for attaching, such as ADHD and learning disabilities. Gray also includes a detailed exploration of developmental delays common in kids who have been adopted later in life. While the book is densely written, it will nevertheless be invaluable for adoptive parents. Gray compassionately helps readers form realistic expectations, while offering a myriad of suggestions for families and children striving to form lasting, loving relationships.

The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog
by Bruce Perry
 
It’s not often that a book is published on the neurobiology of trauma. It’s even less often that I would read one, be completely riveted by it, and then want to discuss it with everyone I meet. But Bruce Perry’s newly released book, The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog, meets all of those criteria and more, making it a must-read for parents, professionals and anyone who works with children. 
 

The Connected Child
by Karyn Purvis, David Cross and Wendy Lyons Sunshine

Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child , effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders and discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened. This book is a must-read not only for adoptive parents, but for all families striving to correct and connect with their children.
 

Connecting with Kids Through Stories
by Denise Lacher, Todd Nichols and Joanne May
 
Children whose early development has been damaged by abuse or neglect are notoriously difficult to reach. Through many years' therapeutic work with adopted children and their families, Denise B. Lacher and Todd Nichols have developed an exciting and innovative technique which uses stories as the main mode for helping parents to communicate and connect with their troubled children. Connecting with Kids through Stories is an accessible guide to Family Attachment Narrative Therapy for the parents of adopted or fostered children, and for the professionals who work with them. Providing a thorough theoretical grounding, and detailed information on therapeutic techniques and how to assess progress, the book shows parents how to create their own therapeutic stories to promote increased attachment and improved behaviour in their child. The authors describe how different kinds of narratives can help with specific difficulties and illustrate their techniques with the story of a fictional family who develop their own narratives to help their adopted child heal. 

 
Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family: Real Life Solutions to Common Challenges
by David and Renee Sanford

Adoption is a high calling from God, and the Christian home primary soil for planting seeds of faith. But how will post-adoption challenges affect this growth? Most agencies do a great job of connecting families with children who need a forever family. Not many prepare you for the unexpected issues—an adopted child fighting with his new siblings or not wanting to be touched or showing signs of reactive attachment disorder (RAD). The more you know, the more confident you will be to meet the unique needs of your adopted child and your entire family. This distinctly Christian book will equip readers to be successful adoptive parents. Packed from cover to cover with information, advice, ideas, and resources, Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family will inspire and inform parents committed to making adoption work. Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family is the one parenting resource that provides comprehensive, topical, Bible-based solutions for the inevitable challenges after adoption.

I Love You Rituals
by Becky Bailey
 
I Love You Rituals offers more than seventy delightful rhymes and games that send the message of unconditional love and enhance children's social, emotional, and school success. Winner of a 1999 Parent's Guide Children's Media Award, these positive nursery rhymes, interactive finger plays, soothing games, and physically activitites can be played with children from infancy through age eight. In only minutes a day, these powerful rituals help to prime a child's brain for learning, help children cope with change, enhance attention, cooperation, and self-esteem, help busy families stay close and affirm the parent-child bond that insulates children from violence, peer pressure, and drugs, and much more. Easy to learn and especially effective in stressful situations, I Love You Rituals gives parents, grandparents, caregivers, and teachers inspiring tools to help children thrive.

Lifebooks
by Beth O'Malley
 
LifeBooks:Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child is an easy to read guide which explains all the details. Beth O'Malley offers concrete suggestions and tips on everything from tricky text to adding your precious photos. If what you are looking for is an adoption lifebook guide with a proven track record, Beth's book is the one.

Parenting the Hurt Child; Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow
by Gregory C. Keck and Regina M. Kupecky
 
In this sequel to their Adopting the Hurt Child (1998), Keck and Kupecky explore how parents can help adopted or foster children who have suffered neglect or abuse. They begin by outlining changes in adoption and fostering procedures in recent years and use case studies to document the friction and disruption introduced into a household when a hurt, adopted child is brought into the family. The authors examine attachment disorders and control issues as well as parenting techniques that work (praise, consistency, flexibility, anger management) and those that don't work (punishment, withholding parental love, grounding, time-outs, deprivation). They highlight the symptoms of abuse and options for therapy. Foster or adoptive parents need to claim the role of parent in the child's life, the authors advise, suggesting ways to deal with teachers and other authority figures in the child's life. The book includes a variety of resources on, among other topics, finance, therapy for siblings and parents, cultural differences, and marriage counseling.

Todder Adoption: the Weaver's Craft
by Mary Hopkins-Best
 
Toddler Adoption looks at the unique joys and challenges of adopting and parenting a toddler. When a child aged is adopted between the ages of 12 to 36 months, they often show signs of cognitive and emotional immaturity, which can cause behavioral and relational issues. This book offers support and practical tools to help parents prepare for and support the toddler's transition between the familiar environment of their biological parent's home or foster home to a new and unfamiliar one, and considers the issues that arise at different developmental stages. It highlights the challenges that parents are likely to encounter, but also gives positive guidance on how to overcome them. Written by a specialist in children's development who is also an adoptive parent herself, this fully revised and updated edition of the go-to-source on adopting toddlers is essential reading for both parents and professionals working with adoptive families. 

Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
by Sherrie Eldridge
 
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame. With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love--that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future--that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be--and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents. Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child and within the adoptive home. 

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Books on Foster Care

Castaway Kid: One Man's Search for Heart and Home
by R.B. MItchell

Mitchell is a respected financial consultant and a dedicated youth advocate, but what's not well known is that he had a tumultuous childhood. His memoir reveals his life in an orphanage after his mother abandoned him at age 3, as well as his struggle to find love and acceptance and learn to trust. Mitchell knew his mentally ill mother, who once kidnapped him from the orphanage, but had no real memories of his father, who attempted suicide but ended up brain damaged. His maternal grandmother was the boy's anchor, but she couldn't raise him, which only added to his confusion. He teetered on the edge of disaster as he matured, but at age 17 he prayed, "Jesus, if You are real, come into my nightmare. Forgive me of my sins and change me." Mitchell's story is inspiring both for its spiritual dimension and its conventional Horatio Alger narrative. The facts of his case are also verifiably true, which Mitchell and the publisher take pains to ensure in part through the Web site www.amillionlittleproofs.com, which offers .pdf versions of documents from Mitchell's past. His memoir will appeal to adults with difficult pasts, those who work with troubled kids and anyone who revels in seeing God change a life

Small Town, Big Miracle: How Love Came to the Least of These
by Bishop W.C. Martin

One person can make a difference; the difference. The questions then becomes: are you the person? Author Doug Sauder makes the case that you are; at least you can be. But because you may think yourself inadequate to evoke change in the world, you don't. Sauder writes, "One is always the catalyst... One person can inspire another who inspires others, turning addition into exponential power." And then he lays out the proof.  The foster care system in our country is so clogged up that the system choking on it. This is the story of One church in Broward County in South Florida that took action. A verse comes to mind: Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:26 (NIV) Most churches have systems and strategies for the last part - keep oneself from being polluted by the world - but not for the first - to look after orphans and widows in their distress. I wonder why that is. I wonder if God wonders. Sauder divides the book into a series of "Ones". One Vision, One Person, One Moment, One Idea, One investment, One Passion, One Source, and then he brings it home with You; what will you do with it.  Sauder's stories and his final appeal are moving. You are the One that can make the difference. No matter what your view of you is, with God's help, you're special enough and equipped for the task.

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Books on Parenting

Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children
by Daniel Hughes

Building the Bonds of Attachment is the second edition of a critically and professionally acclaimed book for social workers, therapists, and parents who strive to assist children with reactive attachment disorder. This work is a composite case study of the developmental course of one child following years of abuse and neglect. Building the Bonds of Attachment focuses on both the specialized psychotherapy and parenting that is often necessary in facilitating a child's psychological development and attachment security. It develops a model for intervention by blending attachment theory and research, trauma theory, and the general principles of parenting, and child and family therapy. This book is a practical guide for the adult--whether professional or parent--who endeavors to help such children.

Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood; Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years
by Jim Fay & Charles Fay

Parenting little ones can be exhausting...until you discover Love and Logic. Take the exhaustion out and put the fun into parenting your little one. If you want help with potty training, temper tantrums, bedtime, whining, time-out, hassle-free mornings and many other everyday challenges, then this book is for you! This book is the tool parents of little ones have been waiting for. America's Parenting Experts Jim and Charles Fay, Ph.D., help you start your child off on the right foot. The tools in Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood will give you the building blocks you need to create children who grow up to be responsible, successful teens and adults. And as a bonus you will enjoy every stage of your child's life and look forward to sharing a lifetime of joy with them.

The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Integration Dysfunction
by Carol Stock Kranowitz
 
The Out-of-Sync Child broke new ground by identifying Sensory Processing Disorder, a common but frequently misdiagnosed problem in which the central nervous system misinterprets messages from the senses. This newly revised edition features additional information from recent research on vision and hearing deficits, motor skill problems, nutrition and picky eaters, ADHA, autism, and other related disorders.

The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Integration Dysfunction
by Carol Stock Kranowitz

Carol Stock Kranowitz, M.A., is a leading author in the Special Needs Parenting area. She has been a music, movement, and drama teacher for more than 20 years, and is the author of The Out-of-Sync Child, which the New York Times called "the parents' bible to Sensory Processing Disorder." She speaks widely about sensory problems in children. This book presents activities to strengthen the abilities of children with sensory integration dysfunction at home while having fun.

Therapeutic Parenting; It's a Matter of Attitude!
by Deborah Hage, MSW

This book is small, but mighty! Deborah Hage, a renowned attachment therapist, and a mother to two children by birth, seven children by adoption, and therapeutic foster parent to five other children, presents an immense amount of information on how to parent a child with attachment issues. Her experience with one of her own sons, adopted at six months of age, has given her insight into what life is like as the parent of a child with attachment disorder. The suggestions are concrete and can be used immediately. This is available in-print by ordering from the Nancy Thomas website.

When Love is Not Enough; A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD
by Nancy Thomas
 
When Love is Not Enough: A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD-Reactive Attachment Disorder brings hope and healing tools to parents and professionals working to help challenging children. Effective interventions, a full step by step plan, clearer insight and understanding make a powerful difference in helping children heal. If you want to make a difference in the life of a hurting child, this book will do it! This plan was honed on some of the most difficult children in the US and has been used successfully to help thousands of children around the world. Children can learn to be respectful, responsible and fun to be with. This book tells the reader how to do it and then zaps them with a boost of encouragement to get started!

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