I went looking for more information on the negative impact of shame on our children. Quite frankly, there's not a lot of concrete information out there in cyberspace. But the prevailing opinion of those who study and write about shame includes these tenets:

1. Shame is a negative emotion and can easily become chronic - i.e. not related to the "fault" of the person feeling ashamed. There is a lot of discussion of shame in conjunction with victims of abuse, especially sexual abuse and the way that shame alters their lives. 2. Many professionals link long-term shame with depression, anxiety, OCD, personality disorders, addictions, and eating disorders. 3. Shame is... more

Parents of children with Reactive Attachment Disorder frequently get taken to task for calling their children "RAD kids" or "RADishes". While these terms personally make me cringe and I'm not sure I've ever called my child either, I tire of the criticism being leveled at parents already under a great deal of stress.

I wonder if parents of children with other disorders are held to the same standards. I've recently come across quite a bit of literature referring to "apsies" -- i.e. children and adults with Asperger's Syndrome (a high functioning form of autism).... more

I stumbled across this article from the Science Daily website: Treating Autism 'Right The First Time' and remembered I had heard about this before. Upon reading the article, I realized that Pivotal Response Training (PRT) is a behavior-intervention pioneered by Robert Koegel and Laura Schreibman at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Koegel and his wife, Dr. Lynn Koegel were keynote speakers at a recent autism conference in Atlanta that I attended. The presentation dealt with PRT, but focused mostly on Dr. Lynn Koegel's experience on Super Nanny in an episode where the family had a young autistic son.... more

I got my latest e-newsletter from a couple pioneering a very unique ministry in China - Lotus Buds International. Rick & Chris Carter are adoptive parents, whose daughter was a Chinese orphan. Sometime last year, I don't know when, the months all run together, Chris emailed me and we chatted about the importance of teaching attachment parenting to pre-adoptive families. It was then that she told me of their plans to move to China and to launch an organization whose sole purpose is to promote the adoption of Chinese orphans BY Chinese residents. As others have noted in recent... more

So, does struggling with attachment and emotional illnesses change my view of adoption as being a wonderful way to create a family? NO WAY!

Debi's post (which has definitely provided me food for thought, since I'm getting two posts out of it) has a quote from Dr. Julie Bledsoe that doesn't surprise me a bit. (Dr. Bledsoe feels almost like family, since my Grandmother was a Bledsoe and my name is Julie....)

Dr Bledsoe says: "The survey found that 90 percent of the parents felt they were with the child they were meant to be with-and that's all comers, even people whose children have... more

Debi Stevens' blog today on Older Parent Adoption struck a chord with me. I agreed with much of what she had to say, yet disagreed as well. The result was that it inspired me to write a bit of my perspective...

I do understand the desire (and subsequent joy) of giving birth to a child. My biological daughter was born in 1991 (just a year earlier I had approached my now ex-husband about adoption from Romania and he had not agreed - so the international adoption seed was planted deep in me as well.) I have to say that raising this daughter is one of the truly pure joys of my life. She is... more

Ok - I can't hold back any longer. I've been writing this blog for nearly a month now and haven't once mentioned the one event/activity that is consuming nearly as much of my time as raising LuLu...the Attachment Disorder Network's first annual conference.

As the conference chair, I can honestly say this has been an undertaking of mammoth proportions. And I'm learning that mammoths are not extinct! But as I keep reporting back to the conference committee...every day I get more and more JAZZED about how things are shaping up.

The conference is aptly... more

I'm finally delving back into the Massachusetts Advocates' report of the Impact of Trauma on Learning. This is a long document and it may take a while to digest it all. But there are some important things just in Chapter 1.

It explains the basic trauma reaction to violent events and that trauma is not an event-- but a response to the event. For children who have been traumatized -- fear becomes a way of life. They see any and all events through "trauma glasses". "Unable to regulate heightened levels of arousal and emotional responses, they simply cannot turn off the survival strategies that their brains have been conditioned to employ." And the report cites that childhood trauma... more

All the adoptive parents of children with disabilities who I know will eventually ask me if I believe it is important to work on attachment FIRST, before treating other disabilities. I have this discussion most often with parents whose children have sensory integration issues, FAS, speech delays, ADHD,or PDD. So many of the symptoms and behaviors associated with each of these can be masked by or can mask attachment issues. And so many of the children with these issues who have been in less-than-ideal conditions (i.e. abusive homes or orphanages), have many overlapping issues, including learning disabilities that may not be apparent until the child reaches school-age.

I used to say... more