Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families

For children who have experienced traumatic moves and separations, moves can be triggers for crisis. They may experience irrational fears of being left behind or abandoned when the family moves, or the children may intensely grieve for lost relationships with friends, neighbors, or teachers as a result of the move. Some strategies to address this t

Because the child has learned that he cannot trust adults, he tells his new parents what he thinks they want to hear. The parents interpret these as deliberate lies and conclude that the child cannot be trusted.

Life is the teacher. Parents, teachers, and counselors are sympathetic participants/observers who act as coaches or mentors.

Zachary’s New Home: A Story for Foster and Adopted Children1

Key Point 1: Recognize Expectations Parents who don’t understand their expectations of themselves, the child, their birth children, extended family, and adoption agency, will find themselves cornered in a maze of frustration without resources to find their way out. They find themselves broadsided by shattered assumptions. Ten common expectations ab

It is estimated that adoption disruption rates are highest among children with special needs and older children, with rates ranging from 10 to 20 percent.

Splitting Delaney and Kunstal define splitting as “the psychological phenomenon — an inner defense — which explains why troubled foster and adoptive children think in all-or-nothing terms.” This type of black-and-white thinking paints some people as all good and others as all bad. Examples include: • The child idealizes the foster or adoptive fathe

Three Parental Responses A tremendous challenge stands before foster and adoptive parents while caring for a traumatized child. There are three main elements in parents’ responses to their child’s trauma and behavior: 1. Believing and validating their child’s experiences 2. Tolerating their child’s affect (emotions) 3. Managing their own emotional

For children who have experienced trauma to their primary attachment, the learning process depends on the perceived security of the relationship with the teacher.