International Family Services

Post Arrival Resources

Once their child arrives home, most parents are greatly relieved that their adoption process is over and their life as a new family can finally begin. This is indeed a time to celebrate. But very soon, the parents need to attend to issues like a Social Security card, proof of citizenship, finalization, and maybe readoption.

See Welcome Home for information on obtaining a Social Security card and proof of U.S. citizenship, post-adoption and post-placement reports, and adoption tax credits.

See Readoption for information on, well, readoption.

Please also take a few minutes to complete our Client Evaluation and return it to us.

Parent Training
Post-arrival parent training is not required by IFS (except in India cases where an IFS social worker may require additional parent training prior to finalization of the adoption). However, IFS urges adoptive parents to continue their learning as parent. The resources below include online training and books authored by professionals. Consult with your home study agency about the most appropriate resources for your family and situation.

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Respectful & Effective Parenting, Ages 6-12 offered by Lifematters.com at http://www.lifematters.com/parent_bookstudy.asp

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Parenting Young Children, Ages 3-6 offered by Lifematters.com at http://www.lifematters.com/young.asp

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Parenting Teenagers offered by Lifematters.com at http://www.lifematters.com/teen.asp

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These courses introduce the concept that children misbehave when they feel thwarted in their need to belong and in their need for love and attention. Using this approach, you can develop a reliable, parenting style which uses logical and natural consequences, not punishment. Based on the premise that children naturally want to learn and cooperate this class is applicable for children of all ages. Eight week, self-paced online class with access to a personal coach.

This training is not required but highly recommended.

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Love and Logic Parenting
http://www.loveandlogic.com/

Love and Logic® provides simple and practical techniques to help parents (and teachers) have less stress and more fun while raising responsible kids. Love and Logic® offers many useful techniques that parents can begin experimenting with immediately. Here are some examples:

• Locking–in sadness or empathy before delivering consequences
• Setting limits with enforceable statements
• Sharing control through lots of small choices
• Building relationships with the One Sentence Intervention
• Neutralizing arguing with the Brain Dead technique
• The Anticipatory Consequence

This is not an online course. Select from the resources available to match the age of your child or situation at http://www.loveandlogic.com/ecom/default.aspx.

The book Parenting with Love and Logic is also available from large booksellers.
(NOTE: Love and Logic tends to focus more on helping children learn responsibility, Respectful Parenting on meeting children’s emotional needs, though both include responsibility and emotions.)

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The Connected Child
From the Institute of Child Development, Texas Christian University (http://www.child.tcu.edu/Secondary%20Pages/Training_Books.htm):
“Truly groundbreaking work on helping youngsters overcome behavioral problems, learning difficulties and mental illness resulting from early trauma and deprivation. The Connected Child is the first book to share Drs Purvis and Cross’ highly nurturing yet disciplined techniques so that parents can use them at home with their own children. This book is absolutely essential to foster and adoptive parents, care givers, and educators.
“The Connected Child takes a multi-dimensional approach based on the latest research, covering a spectrum of strategies, including attachment exercises, behavioral retraining, nurturing touch, sensory integration and nutritional therapy, to help parents and care givers to help heal the child’s invisible wounds” (from theconnectedchild.com).”

For more information, see MH Professional Website
http://www.theconnectedchild.com/

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Parenting the Hurt Child
From Booklist
“In this sequel to their Adopting the Hurt Child (1998), [Gregory] Keck and [Regina] Kupecky explore how parents can help adopted or foster children who have suffered neglect or abuse. They begin by outlining changes in adoption and fostering procedures in recent years and use case studies to document the friction and disruption introduced into a household when a hurt, adopted child is brought into the family. The authors examine attachment disorders and control issues as well as parenting techniques that work (praise, consistency, flexibility, anger management) and those that don’t work (punishment, withholding parental love, grounding, time-outs, deprivation). They highlight the symptoms of abuse and options for therapy. Foster or adoptive parents need to claim the role of parent in the child’s life, the authors advise, suggesting ways to deal with teachers and other authority figures in the child’s life. The book includes a variety of resources on, among other topics, finance, therapy for siblings and parents, cultural differences, and marriage counseling.” Vanessa Bush
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