January 12, 2018
Adoption and Parenting Reads of the Week
Happy Friday!
How was your week? Wonderful, we hope. And if not, then may the weekend bring you calm and peace.
Our favorite reads of the week are below. They’re informative, inspiring, and make us proud to be a part of this incredible world that is the adoption journey. Thank you for sharing the adventure with us!
See you Monday. <3
Twenty children’s books to spark important discussions about race and tolerance. “Having honest and open discussions about race, tolerance, and acceptance from a very early age can set the stage for a much broader and deeper understanding of these issues as your child grows.”
There is so much talk about what you shouldn’t say to people who are adopting…but what about what you SHOULD say?
This birth mother created an incredibly emotional video for the son she placed for adoption. The total tearjerker has, of course, gone viral.
Ethiopia has banned adoption of children by foreigners, in a move they say is to protect children from abuse abroad.
A lovely and insightful piece about what same-sex people should know about adoption. “Look at your own homophobia: Although you’ll be judged and evaluated, nobody is going to be looking in your underwear drawer. I overcompensated by buying conservative beige clothes and over-bathing my dog. One smart thing we did was make our house child-friendly by putting up gates at stairs, covering electric outlets, and installing other safety precautions.”
Do you watch “This Is Us?” Everyone agrees: their portrayal of adoption and foster care is spot on.
Four reasons this birth mother chose to place her baby for adoption. “My love for little R doesn’t make up for the fact that I wasn’t ready to care for her. It wasn’t simply because I was young. I hadn’t yet learned how to take care of myself. At the time, I couldn’t maintain healthy relationships. I pushed away friends and family who wanted to help, surrounding myself instead with toxic people. I was not mentally or emotionally prepared to raise little R the way she deserved to be raised.”
Treating anxiety in children. “Anxieties and worries of all kinds are common in children, necessarily part of healthy development, but also, when they interfere with the child’s functioning, the most common pediatric mental health problems. From separation anxiety to social anxiety to school avoidance to phobias to generalized anxiety disorder, many children’s lives are at some point touched by anxiety that gets out of hand.”