Beth and I are at the NACAC conference today, as is Julie, one of my co-bloggers on adoption.com. We have had quite the day. Our booth was busy all day long. This is significantly different from past years when we haven’t seen too much traffic. The consensus is that getting the word “disorder” out of our organization’s name and adding the “trauma” piece was a good move. (In April, we changed from the Attachment Disorder Network to the Attachment & Trauma Network.) Folks understand more about how trauma affects attachment and are not put off by the concept that a child has a “disorder”. Semantics. But whatever works. I am not doing anything differently now than I did five years ago, but if, as Julie says, “our time has come”, then who am I to argue? I’m just glad folks are finding us and getting resources.


And on that note, there was a gathering tonight of folks after the conference, and many great ideas were generated. Julie and I met with several other adoptive parents who are also professionals … and they have the dubious honor of being a member of a really exclusive club … that of parents to very, very difficult and disturbed kids. So one of the amazing conversations that started tonight was how to impact the system to prevent more families from imploding under the stress of children who have such deep attachment and trauma issues. Of course, this is what those of us at ATN have been trying to do for years. So we were most interested in contributing to this discussion.


Here are the three goals that were named in this conversation …

Educate those involved in the infrastructure of support needed by our families—like school professionals, mental health professionals, etc. There is an appalling lack of mental health professionals trained in trauma and attachment issues in children, and we can talk about support all we like, but if there are no professionals trained to deliver services, how does that work?


Create a paradigm shift in the definition of “family” and “attachment” and “perfect adoptive family” so that the public doesn’t hold erroneous ideas of what adoption is all about. Much as the public perception of “handicapped” has shifted to “handicapable”, so do we need to switch the standard perception of foster and adoptive families. This is already happening, without anyone specifically deciding to make it so. But there is more awareness that this is a necessity if one is to receive services for this population.

Research what happens to the minds of traumatized children and develop a better understanding of how to address those neurological and biochemical changes.


This was an exciting discussion! I am thrilled by the reception we have found here. I do agree with Julie that times are a’changin’, no matter how slowly.


We also discussed the need to develop a larger and more vocal and powerful coalition of parents in order to raise enough voices to make someone listen. To that end, I would like to encourage you to add your voice to ours, and join ATN. As individuals we can do much less than we can as a group. I am so pumped at the groundswell of interest here ... Help us implement these ideas!


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