Should You Invite Your Foster or Adopted Child to Co-Pilot Their Life?
Every foster or adoptive parent understands the extreme need for control that our trauma-surviving children often exhibit. Arleta James, the author of The Science of Parenting Adopted Children, describes this battle for control, writing “We really aren’t going to ‘out control’ these kids. They have an advanced degree in control, a Ph.D. We are undergraduates!” My husband and I found this to be so true as we parented our foster and now adopted daughter. We understood her need for control came out of a necessity of surviving her early years. However, she also needed to know we were in control in order to feel any kind of stability in our home. Using an airplane metaphor, we maintained control as pilots, but brought […]
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