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Adoption

Book: Welcoming a new brother or sister through adoption

3 replies

64x32x24 · 02/05/2014 14:04

So I picked up a book in the library, called 'Can I tell you about Adoption' which is a 'guide for friends, family and professionals' but really is written from a child's perspective. Anyway at the end of the book there is a list of other books, and one of them is, as above,

Welcoming a new brother or sister through adoption
by A. James, 2013

You can 'look inside' on Amazon and it looks pretty good. The foreword states (among other things)

'Throughout the book, James discusses the impact of bringing a traumatized child into a family with children already living there. She goes into great detail about how to prepare the children in the family, whom she refers to as resident children, for things previously unknown and foreign to them, such as sexual abuse, sexual activity, stealing, lying, aggression, chronic dysregulation, and the chaos that they see their parents endure as the new brother or sister joins their family.'

I think it sounds really interesting for people adopting for the second time, or who have birth children. However it is not cheap (£13 for the kindle version) so I was wondering if anyone knows it and could recommend?

Thanks!

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Lillyludge · 02/05/2014 16:31

This book was recently recommended to me by several social workers. I have it on order now!

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MoJangled · 02/05/2014 19:17

Taking note in hope that I'll need this

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64x32x24 · 12/05/2014 14:26

Price for e-book went down to £8 something so I bought it and have started reading. So far so good.

One key take-home point (for me) so far: In the absence of facts, fiction/fantasy flourishes. The author generally advises to explain things (age-appropriately) in a factual way to resident children and gives some good examples of how it could be done, depending on the age of the children.

Further, if your resident child doesn't ask many questions, don't just assume that it means they are not curious and wondering. It may be because they see the burden their parents are under and don't want to add to that.

And thirdly, children, like parents, have expectations of what it will be like to have a new sibling. However, unlike parents who go to prep courses etc. where they have naive expectations driven out of them, and learn what is realistic to expect; the children's expectations frequently remain intact until reality proves them wrong, which can come as a huge shock and cause resentment and other complex feelings. So it is a good idea to -find out what the resident children's expectations are, and -pass on some of the knowledge gained in prep groups, in order to help them gain more realistic expectations.

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