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Books on Foster Care (for Children)
Books on Foster Care (for Adults)
Books on Parenting and Discipline
This page is intended to be a resource for foster and adoptive parents and as such the books listed below are suggested readings and are not necessarily endorsed by Fostering Together. Any funds raised by your purchase of these books on Amazon.com through the links below will be used to purchase books for a lending library.
Please email Kathy at Kathleen-Haugland@olivecrest.org if you have any books that you would like to recommend for this page.
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Adoptive Families |
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(Pre School-Grade 2) Celebrate the diverse family groups that make up our world! Positive, clear text helps emergent readers understand different family relationships, while recognizing the bonds that all families share. —These titles look at the structure of different types of families. They have a reassuring tone and present matter-of-fact information. Each volume contains 110 words or less, and the large, clear text appears on clean white pages. The families photographed are of varying ages, races, and ethnicities. Each title ends with a similar sentence: "—family members love each other." While this may or may not be true in readers' experiences, the books do remain completely positive about the various family situations. |
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Bringing Asha Home |
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(Kindergarten-Grade 3) Just a couple of months after Arun wishes he had a sister with whom to celebrate Rakhi Day, his parents announce that they are adopting a girl. As he awaits his new sibling's arrival, he carefully crafts a special paper airplane, pretending that it is flying to India to bring her home. After more waiting, Dad finally retrieves Asha, who gives Arun the rakhi bracelet she clung to during the flight. An author's note provides additional details about adoption and the North Indian Hindu holiday that celebrates the bond between brothers and sisters, symbolized by a bracelet given by the sister. Realistic illustrations spread across the pages in muted colors and show well the characters' range of emotions. |
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Emma's Story |
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(Pre School-Grade 2) Emma Li Ming, who was born in China, is happily ensconced in her new home in North America. But as she and her brother make cookies to resemble their family, she is dismayed that hers is the only one decorated with raisins and black licorice for eyes and hair, in contrast to her fairer relatives. When she comments, "I want to look like everyone else," her affectionate grandma suggests that they read the story of Emma's adoption as a reminder of the great joy and happiness that she has brought to their family. Grandma counsels that "It's not how we look that makes us a family, Emma. It's how we love each other." |
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Forever Fingerprints |
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For adopted children, learning about their beginnings and how they understand what that means to them is a process. It doesn't happen at one point in time, but rather throughout the experiences of life. In this heartwarming children's book, Forever Fingerprints uses a common occurrence-a relative's pregnancy-as a springboard for discussions on birthparents, where adopted children are before they are born, and how that makes one little girl feel about it. Lucie is excited to feel a baby moving in her Aunt Grace's tummy but it makes her think of how she understands her adoption story in a different way. The tools offered in this book help her to create a unique connection to her birthparents, allow how she is feeling to surface and to be discussed, and give Lucie's parents the chance to reinforce their love for her, to empathize with her feelings and to honor her past. |
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Heart of Mine |
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(Ages 4-6) In this sentimental look at international adoption, told in folkloric style, a mommy and a daddy who "longed for a child to take care of and love" are united with a little girl born on the other side of the world. The parents are overjoyed when they learn of Tu Thi's birth. Preoccupation with their new daughter becomes foremost as they announce her birth to family and friends, realize that the "child of their hearts" was born on Valentine's Day, think and dream about her as they prepare their home for her. The intimacy of the story is enhanced by watercolor-and-pencil vignettes that show compact characters with rounded, smiling faces, abstract landscapes, and comfortingly curved shapes, all rendered in shades of blues and oranges. |
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My Adopted Child, There's No One Like You |
| Every child is special. And every child deserves to be recognized for what makes him or her unique. Now birth order guru, Dr. Kevin Leman, and his artist son, Kevin Leman II, offer parents the perfect way to tell their adopted child just how wonderful he or she is. A read-to-me children's picture book, My Adopted Child, There's No One Like You conveys love, acceptance, and a sense of individuality to adopted children. The combination of Dr. Kevin Leman's trademark humor and his talented son's artwork makes this book a wonderful gift. |
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My New Family |
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(Ages 4-7) Children are sometimes upset to discover that they have been adopted. This book helps them understand how lucky they are to have to have loving, adoptive parents—and how lucky their parents are to have them! A First Look At.. is an easy-to-understand series of books for younger children. Each title explores emotional issues and discusses the questions such difficulties invariably raise among kids of preschool through early school age. Written by a psychotherapist and child counselor, each title promotes positive interaction among children, parents, and teachers. The books are written in simple, direct language that makes sense to younger kids. Each title also features a guide for parents on how to use the book, a glossary, suggested additional reading, and a list of resources. There are attractive full-color illustrations on every page. |
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Sisters |
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(Pre School-Grade 2) This heartwarming picture book tells about Melissa and her newly adopted sibling, Kika, who barely speak the same language but must now become sisters. The story alternates between the first-person viewpoints of each girl, making it easy for readers to relate to both characters. From excitement to apprehension and jealousy to generosity, the two youngsters share their emotions as they discover what it means to be a family. The colorful, naive cartoons keep the narrative lively, with many amusing details, including a grocery list on the fridge, a sunflower-shaped nightlight, and a well-loved stuffed puppy. The illustrations lend a comfortable feel and make it fun to flip through the pages again and again. This is a lovely story for family sharing, particularly for children with new siblings in their lives. |
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The Red Thread |
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(Pre School - Grade 3) Lin offers a contemporary fairy tale, using a story within a story to weave in a Chinese belief that "an invisible, unbreakable red thread connects all who are destined to be together." It begins with an Asian girl asking her Caucasian parents to read a favorite story "again," thus introducing the main story: a royal couple both suffer a mysterious pain in their chests that nothing can remedy or explain, until a peddler gives them magic spectacles that allow them to see a red thread bound tightly around their hearts. They follow its loose end for days, crossing a sea, the pain gradually easing, until they reach a small village in a foreign land and find a gurgling, smiling baby at the end. A wise old villager tells them, "This baby belongs to you." Bright illustrations and vivid language will likely appeal even to preschoolers. |
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We Belong Together |
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Popular author-illustrator Parr illustrates the rewards of family ties in this heartfelt, supportive book geared toward adopted children and their parents. In each double-page spread, Parr completes the phrase "We belong together because . . ." with poignant explanations that touch upon basic, tangible needs ("You needed a home . . . and I had one to share") as well as emotional ones: "You needed someone to say 'I love you' . . . and we had love to give. Now we all have someone to kiss goodnight." Cheerful, friendly artwork, with thickly outlined forms and characters and a bold rainbow palette, inclusively depicts an array of children and families and emphasizes the rewards of adoption for adults and children alike. Apart from the subtitle, the text never uses the word adoption nor refers to the adoption process, keeping the focus squarely on the universal joys of sharing hearth and heart. |
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You're Not My Real Mother |
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(Pre School-K) An adoptive mother tells her daughter all of the reasons why she is a "real mother," even though they do not look alike - "does a real mother drive to Parker's house to pick up Polar Bear [her stuffed animal] when you've left him there?" Page after page of heartwarming examples are presented as the parent and child are portrayed in large, realistic-looking, mixed-media illustrations. One spread shows them frolicking on a trampoline surrounded by yellow forsythia bushes; the girl's happiness is clearly expressed on her face and the mother seems to be jumping right off the page. Adoptive parents will welcome another chance to show their love through the sharing of this cheerful book. |
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Zachary's New Home: A Story for Foster and Adopted Children |
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This story for adopted and foster children describes the adventures of Zachary the kitten, who is taken from his mother's house when his mother is unable to take care of him. The book follows Zachary as he first goes into foster care and then is adopted by a family of geese. Zachary experiences the expected and true-to-life feelings of shame, anger, rebelliousness, and hurt, and his adoptive parents struggle with their own feelings during Zachary's tougher times, until Zachary finally finds a place he can call home. The poignant story is brought to life by Margo Lemieux's detailed, evocative drawings. |
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Adopting the Hurt Child; Hope for Families with Special-Needs Kids |
| 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. |
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Adoption Parenting: Creating a Toolbox, Building Connections |
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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. |
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Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents |
| 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. |
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The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog |
| 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. Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has treated children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, witnesses, children raised in closets and cages, and victims of family violence. Here he tells their stories of trauma and transformation. |
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The Connected Child |
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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. The adoption of a child is always a joyous moment in the life of a family. Some adoptions, though, present unique challenges. Welcoming these children into your family--and addressing their special needs--requires care, consideration, and compassion. 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. |
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Connecting with Kids Through Stories |
| 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. |
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Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family: Real Life Solutions to Common Challenges |
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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 Familyis the one parenting resource that provides comprehensive, topical, Bible-based solutions for the inevitable challenges after adoption. |
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I Love You Rituals |
| 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 active can be played with children from infancy through age eight. In only minutes a day, these powerful rituals will help prime a child's brain for learning, help children cope with change, ennhance your child's 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. |
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LifeBooks:Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child |
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"In LifeBooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child, Beth O'Malley provides the adoptive parent with a unique, invaluable, practical, highly recommended, step-by-step guide for explaining the truth of their child's history in ways that the child can understand, accept and feel good about. Drawing upon her seventeen years of experience and expertise as an adoption worker to write clearly and informatively for a non-specialist general reader. The result will help any adoptive parent to assist their child in creating a record of his or her life from birth using words, photos, graphics, and artwork in the form of a "LifeBook" that is more effective than a general scrapbook or traditional baby book. |
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Parenting the Hurt Child; Helping Adoptive Families Heal and Grow |
| 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. |
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Toddler Adoption: the Weaver's Craft |
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Toddler Adoptionlooks 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. |
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Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew |
| 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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Twenty Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed |
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A companion book and sequel to adoption expert Eldridge's 20 Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew, this offers prospective, new, troubled or experienced adoptive parents a combination self-help manual, sourcebook and emotional touchstone featuring 20 ways to confidently and competently address the specific challenges of raising adopted children. Adopted as an infant (at age 47 she met her birth mother and learned she was the result of a rape), Eldridge is sensitive to all aspects of the adoptive parents' journey and adroitly tackles many difficult, loaded issues including the importance of telling children the truth—positive and negative—about their origins as soon as possible, communicating heart-to-heart even when angry, when to seek professional help and understanding their own needs as well as their children's. The author's accessible information coupled with an accepting, understanding tone and personal insights will educate and reassure readers. Each chapter opens with a story about a family problem that is bound to resonate with readers and has imagined letters to parents from the young child, teen and adult adoptee's point of view. |
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Families Change |
| Written by Julie Nelson, who has taught in at-risk early childhood settings for nearly 30 years, this is a simple, softcover picturebook about the realities of when families have big problems and need to change so that kids can be safe. The illustrations, painted in warm colors, evoke a powerful sense of hearth and home while the text gently discusses difficult situations. "When families change, kids can remember the happy times and the sad and mad and scary times too. Kids can remember and love their birth families. Kids can love their new families too." The last few pages offer a serious message to parents, foster parents, social workers, teachers, and caregivers, offering basic information about how to support and encourage young children amidst the terrifying crossroad of the termination of parental rights, as well as a list of resources and organizations created to help such children and those who look after them. Highly recommended especially for sharing with children in foster care or other, similar situations. |
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Finding the Right Spot |
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Finding the Right Spot has a double meaning in this superb book of the same name. It is a story of disappointment and reconciliation for a little girl placed in foster care and the dog who is unapproachable until she finds just the right place to touch him. Geared towards ages 6 through 12, Finding the Right Spot by Janice Levy teaches the reader to grasp the perspective of a child who cannot live with her parents. Whatever the reason for the child's placement in a home outside his or her own, this book offers ways for the child to relate to the protagonist's emotions of anger, sadness, hope, and disappointment. It is equally appropriate for adults who work with children living without their parents. |
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Kids Need to Be Safe: A Book for Children in Foster Care |
| (Pre School-Grade 1) Meant to reassure children in foster care, this accumulation of short, declarative sentences stresses the importance of being safe. The illustrations show a multiethnic cast of kids and adults, some in positive situations and others in more stressful settings. The first half of the book discusses, in the briefest possible terms, why kids end up in foster care, and the second half talks about foster parents and other adults in supporting roles. A brief but helpful informational message for adults is appended, giving tips on helping foster children work through their difficult emotions, and a list of adult resources is also included. The book does offer validation of a living situation that affects thousands of children in the U.S. each year and explains it in a straightforward style. |
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Maybe Days: A Book for Children in Foster Care |
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(Ages 4-10) This interesting book is designed primarily for foster parents to share with their foster child, but any professional, including teachers, counselors, ministers or those in the legal profession, would benefit from reading it or having it in their office. All sides of the foster care situation are discussed with great sensitivity to the feelings of the foster child. Parents, foster parents, professionals as well as the court system are profiled with a point of view that everyone is working for the benefit of the foster child. Bright, watercolor illustrations portray families in all situations in the community and at home without necessarily relating specifically to the text. A lengthy note to foster parents and other adults further defines some of the issues surrounding foster care. |
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Murphy's Three Homes: A Story for Children in Foster Care |
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(Pre School-Grade 1) Murphy, a Tibetan Terrier puppy is told he is a 'good luck dog'. He is cheerful, happy, and loves to play and wag his tail. However, after going through two different homes and an animal shelter, Murphy starts to feel like a 'bad luck dog' who nobody wants. Murphy's Three Homes follows this adorable pup through his placement in three new homes, as well as through his anxiety, self-doubt, and hope for a new, loving family. Finally, Murphy is placed in a caring foster home where he feels comfortable and valued. He learns that he is not a bad dog after all and can go back to being a playful puppy and a 'good luck dog'! |
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My Foster Family: A Story for Children Entering the Foster Care System |
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(Ages 5-11) My Foster Family is a special children's coloring book that offers young children entering foster care the opportunity to explore their feelings and to adjust to the foster care system. Intended for children who are being placed in foster care for the first time, it provides a gentle and thoughtful description of both the logistical and emotional changes that a young child is likely to face. Useful at any stage of the foster care placement process, My Foster Family employs the familiar coloring book format as a safe and supportive tool to help children share their deepest fears and concerns upon entering foster care. |
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The Star: A Story to Help Young Children Understand Foster Care |
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The Star: A story to help young children understand foster care is an easy-to-read, short story with beautiful, watercolor illustrations. The book follows a fictional young girl, Kit, who is taken from her mother to the safety, and different world, of a foster home. On Kit's first night in foster care, she becomes friends with a star outside her bedroom window. The star tells Kit about other foster children it has seen. Throughout the story, the star is a source of comfort for Kit as she experiences many emotions and adjusts to all the new things in her foster home. A refreshingly sensitive book that affirms and encourages children who have been taken from their homes and placed in foster care. The author addresses feelings and questions that children typically have and supportively lets them know that they are not alone. To get the most out of this book, the author recommends looking at Questions & Activities for The Star: A handbook for foster parents. |
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The Star: A Handbook for Foster Parents |
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This handbook is a must for adults who wish to ease a child's transition into a foster care situation. It is user friendly and provides tools that caregivers can use to help nurture the bond between themselves and foster children. The workbook provides questions about the story, THE STAR, that foster parents and professionals can use to indirectly gain more understanding of the foster child's experience. It also includes fun activities for both children and adults that can help break the ice. Foster parents may be unpleasantly surprised by foster children's hesitancy to get close to them. This booklet can serve as a guide to help adults to effectively help each unique child. The beauty of this book is that the author is an experienced foster parent (in addition to being educated in psychology and pediatric nursing). Her experience in working with children, who have been deeply wounded, helps her to effectively relate to the unique issues that foster parents and pediatric professionals may face. |
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Castaway Kid: One Man's Search for Heart and Home |
| 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. |
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Fostering Love: One Foster Parent's Journey |
| Children suffering from abuse. Neglect. Malnutrition. Even drug-related problems passed on from a mother's addiction. Children rejected by those who were to love them most, their parents. When placed into a foster home, many of these children carry with them the physical and emotional scars that prevent them from accepting the love of another. This journey as a foster parent is the most difficult thing John DeGarmo has done. Through the sleepless nights with drug-addicted babies, the battles with angry teens, and the tears from such tremendous sadness, John DeGarmo learns that to follow God's call in his life means to take up His cross in his own home. Fostering Love: One Foster Parent's Journey is the true-life account of his experience as a foster parent, along with his wife and their own three children, as he followed God's call to take foster children into his home. This is a story of heartbreak, sadness, and ultimately love as he came to find God in the tears and smiles of many foster children. |
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Small Town, Big Miracle: How Love Came to the Least of These |
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On one memorable day, while Bishop W. C. Martin and his wife, Donna, were in prayer together, God gave them a one-word message: “Adopt!” They were called to carry out literally James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans . . . in their affliction.” Over the next five years, the Martins would adopt four kids, including two with special needs. And though they didn't make adoption a “cause” at that time, the members of their church of 200 soon caught the same vision. The church has now adopted 72 children and counting. For more than 20 years Bishop W. C. Martin has served the community of Possum Trot, Texas, as pastor of Bennett Chapel. In 1997, he and his wife, Donna, adopted two children and began a miraculous adventure that has become one of the premier adoption stories in America. Bishop Martin and Donna have appeared on such programs as "Oprah," "Dateline NBC," and "Good Morning America" to tell this miraculous story. Martin's vision for the church in America is to encourage Christians toward caring for orphans so that no child will be left without a loving home. |
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So Many Children |
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June Pereira Ward was born in Upstate New York where she grew up attending Norwich Schools, graduating in 1950. June attended Columbia Bible College and then moved to Tucson, Arizona. In 1967 she began taking in pre-adopt newborns which soon came to a close due to Roe vs. Wade. For 25 years June took in newborns through 12 years of age, alone and in her arms. June has touched the lives of 350-plus precious children who were hurting deep within due to broken bones, drugs, sexual, mental and /or physical abuse. As June herself states, it was a glorious 25 year journey-seeing frightened, confused, hurting, weary children come alive and begin to find that there can be joy and happiness in their lives. June s purpose for this book is that it will reach out into the communities and touch the lives and hearts of Christian parents to become Forster Parents to these precious children who have no choice. June says, I know God will bless you abundantly if you choose this ministry. |
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1-2-3 Magic: Effective Discipline for Children 2-11 |
| This revised edition of the award-winning 1-2-3 Magic program addresses the difficult task of child discipline with humor, keen insight, and proven experience. The technique offers a foolproof method of disciplining children ages two through 12 without arguing, yelling, or spanking. By means of three easy-to-follow steps, parents learn to manage troublesome behavior, encourage good behavior, and strengthen the parent-child relationship—avoiding the "Talk-Persuade-Argue-Yell-Hit" syndrome which frustrates so many parents. Ten strategies for building a child’s self-esteem and the six types of testing and manipulation a parent can expect from the child are discussed, as well as tips on how to prevent homework arguments, make mealtimes more enjoyable, conduct effective family meetings, and encourage children to start doing their household chores. New advice about kids and technology and new illustrations bring this essential parenting companion completely up-to-date. |
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Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children |
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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. |
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Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood: Practical Parenting from Birth to Six Years |
| 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. |
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Parenting with Love and Logic |
| Psychiatrist Cline and educator Fay's "Love and Logic" parenting method advocates raising responsible children through practice. "Helicopter" parents hover around their children while "drill sergeant" parents give orders to theirs, they claim. Neither of these styles permits children to learn how to make choices and learn from the consequences. The result is that as early as adolescence these children too often make bad decisions. In the context of a healthy, loving relationship, "Love and Logic" parents teach their children responsibility and the logic of life by solving their own problems, providing skills for coping in the real world. After laying out the principles of "Love and Logic," the authors provide "parenting pearls," which are strategies for applying the method to actual situations such as back-seat battles in the car, homework, and keeping bedrooms clean. The narration, performed by Tim Kenney and Bert Gurule, is clear and energetic. This is an upbeat and sensible approach to child rearing that will be popular with foster/adoptive parents. |
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Parenting Teens with Love and Logic |
| The real world doesn't operate on punishment. It operates on consequences. Teens must never be allowed to think that the consequences of their poor decision will be "Mom and Dad will get angry." They should be thinking of the natural consequence of their actions. Whenever we lay something on a teenager that doesn't happen in the real world, it's a punishment and not a consequence. This book empowers parents by providing them with the tools and skills to handle each mistake with respect and embrace it as a learning opportunity. This respectful attitude assists teenagers in becoming responsible adults while maintaining a positive healthy parent/teen relationship while also providing parents with a wide variety of the necessary skills to set behavioral limits, encourage decision-making, and teach their teenagers the essential social skills to function in the adult world. |
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The Out-of-Sync Child: Recognizing and Coping with Sensory Integration Dysfunction |
| 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. |
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The Out-of-Sync Child Has Fun: Activities for Kids with Sensory Integration Dysfunction |
| 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. |
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Therapeutic Parenting; It's a Matter of Attitude! |
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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 also available in-print by ordering from the Nancy Thomas website. |
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When Love is Not Enough; A Guide to Parenting Children with RAD |
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This book 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! |
