In my recent interview with Andrew Bridge, we discussed respite care and the problem of finding appropriate solutions for kids who can’t or won’t maintain a placement. One of the solutions I discussed with Andrew is something I heard about a few years ago. It is called Circle of Families, and it is (was?) an innovative idea proposed by Rick... more

It’s a balmy 21 degrees outside (feels like 10 degrees) and soon I will bundle up and take the dogs for a walk. They don’t care how cold it is …they still want their action. This picture is on the front of our homemade Christmas card. Just like Hallmark, right?

We decorated the Christmas tree this morning … my husband, Dora, Beth and me. This was Dora’s first time decorating a Christmas tree. She thinks our holiday traditions and decorations are pretty cool. Of course, as we hung up the ornaments, there were many of them with pictures of all the kids growing... more

I haven’t had a moment to crank out a blog this past couple of days. Yesterday was two therapy appointments and a doctor’s appointment—my bad finger is going south yet again. I am on my third round of antibiotics, this time a med that will apparently kill off most anything, which no doubt means all the good bugs in my body will die too. So I can’t wait to see what the next couple of weeks bring! I have my... more

Dora’s therapy session on Friday went well. It is a great relief for me to have someone else directing the conversation and probing into feelings, allowing me to just be the mom cuddling the kid in question. Dora was cooperative, reflective, and appropriate.

Early on in the session, the therapist asked Dora if she knew about “the different kinds of parents”. The therapist explained about “birthparents”, “legal parents” and “parenting parents.” This was a good lesson for Dora, because currently three different people or couples represent those three types... more

In the last post I listed four different categories of therapists or social workers as described by Foster Cline. I closed by promising to share Foster’s thoughts on how to differentiate between a good therapist who appears abusive and an abusive person who works as a therapist.

Foster lists the following suggestions for assessing a therapist:

• Assess the therapist’s home life and family. If they are married,... more

In this post I was discussing Foster Cline’s views about the types of individuals who work with abused children. Foster divides therapists and social workers into four categories:

Abusive individuals who appear abusive: This is the most easily identified of the four types of individuals. According... more

Foster Cline was a pioneer in working with disturbed children. Last year I interviewed Foster and Russ Colburn and described their collective perspectives of how things have changed over the years. Foster will volunteer that he thinks some people in the attachment/adoption community view him more as a liability than an asset these days. I never have understood that. Foster would be the first to acknowledge that attachment... more

I skimmed the recent posts this morning from one of ATN’s listserves, and several interesting things caught my eye. The first was this comment from one of the moms:

What a miserable situation to be in … that of an adoptive parent of a child with RAD and whatever else. Boy would I like to get off the wagon and start over. I just want to yell, "HELP" to someone and have all of our situations fixed. I want these kids "healed" so that they can lead... more

I have a ton of really awesome resources sitting around here on my bookshelves, so I am going to start through them and share snippets of wisdom with you from some of my favorite attachment gurus.

Beatitude House in North Carolina is the ministry of Matthew and Fawn Bradley. I frequently have the pleasure of seeing them at conferences throughout the United States. Their ministry is just that—a Christian based approach to many aspects of attachment therapy and healing.

One... more

One of the advantages to moving is that you get to find and organize all kinds of stuff you forgot you had. In the past, my office was short on storage space, so much of my sewing and ADN “stuff” was stored in two closets upstairs… making it very difficult to easily access books and fabric. Not so at our new house… the plan called for a huge master bedroom closet. We added a second closet for my husband (I vowed never to share closet space with him again after we built our first house in the early 90’s!) and added a door from the office into the closet.... more