Programs for adoptive families were added to Parenting Services for Families and named After Adoption in 1986. After Adoption grew from adoptive parents' interest in talking about their specific concerns. Discussion includes adoption issues and integrating cognitive and emotional understanding of adoption in growing children. The goal at After Adoption is to enhance family relationships by promoting attachment, increasing parents’ understanding of their child's development and how adoption fits into the overall picture.
Tots and Moms Together for Adoptive Families
"Building relationships in Adoptive Families"
In the parent-child program for adoptive families, parents learn how attachment is affected by the child's temperament and past experiences and how to understand what appear to be unexpected or confusing behaviors in their children, especially while they are adjusting to new home environment and family members. Handling the everyday issues of raising young children is also an integral part of this class. Developmental issues discussed include:
• Sleep and Bedtime routines
• Attachment and Separation
• Limit Setting and Aggression, Tantrums and Independence
• Fears, Fantasies and Imagination
• Children’s Understanding of Adoption
• Communication and Creating an Adoption Dialogue
We especially recommend this class for newly placed babies as well as for toddlers and children who are new to their families, or have lived in orphanages or foster care settings. The group has families with a variety of adoptive situations.
The classes cover the attachment process as it unfolds between you and your new addition. It focuses on adjustment of parents and children to one another, provides child development and temperament information, alerts you to the joys and tribulations of the "next stage" of growth and offers parenting techniques and answers to adoption questions. If you child has had a past life before you met, the effects of the past on current behaviors and adaptation are explored. You attend WITH your child.
Our Booklet, “Becoming a Family, Building Relationships, Belonging: The Attachment Process in Children Adopted After the Age of Five Months” is available upon request.
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