Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family, Focus on the Family Resource

If you’re considering adoption or have already adopted children who appear “adorable on the outside, hurting on the inside,” this scriptural resource of personal examples, and professional advice, is for you. Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family explores “attachment and bonding issues, sibling and extended family relationships, and past abuse issues.” The information equips parents to nurture and discipline, and teaches how to develop and build solid families and support networks.

Endorsed by—“Christian Alliance for Orphans”—“National Council for Adoption”—and a recommended resource with “Focus on the Family,” Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family, provides adoptive parents with practical, helpful information.

Seventeen chapters, divided into four sections, cover critical issues like: “Becoming an Adoptive Family,” “Life Issues from Birth to Adulthood,” “Unique Identity Issues,” and “Special Challenges.”

For example, Washington adoption specialist, Laura Christianson, writes about and speaks on adoption-related issues. She encourages adoptive parents “to fulfill the law of Christ and carry one another’s burdens:” (Galatians 6:2).  In the chapter on “Developing a Support Network,” she writes that adoptive parents need the “emotional and spiritual support” found in such groups. Groups provide necessary tools, resources, knowledge and encouragement to persevere and maintain parental commitment, nourish children and accept sometimes overwhelming challenges of an adopted family.

Parent, Barbara Testa Butz lists ten things about adoption she “wishes she’d known sooner.”  Concerns caused by subtle media adoption bias, unanticipated school issues, and negative peer-group beliefs. 

International adoptee, Alyssa Hoekman, relates her personal story in the chapter on “Ethnic Identity.”  Born in India and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Alyssa struggled knowing she was different from age three. She noticed her skin color and features were different from not only her mothers, but from everyone else too. She asked her mother at age five, if she could join the neighbor girls sunbathing on the lawn. She wanted her skin to “turn white” like theirs. She wanted to “fit in.” Later, well-meaning friends asked Alyssa who her “real” parents were, of if she wanted to learn about her India cultural heritage. She internalized her cross-ethnic struggles and still grapples with her ethnic identity as a twenty-one-year-old graduate student—“the only person of color in a class of 20.” Grateful for sympathetic parents, she comments with humor, “21 years later I now know sunbathing will not turn me white!”

The book ends with a medical and adoption acronym glossary, a resource guide and adoption organization resource list.  A bonus chapter is available online: www.iCareAboutOrphans.org, with other resources offered at www.FocusOnTheFamily.com

If you have adopted, intend to adopt, or struggle with adoption issues, this invaluable resource strengthens parenting skills, helps make informed decisions, and prepares your family to thrive on what general editors, David and Renee Sanford call, a “journey of faith.”

Handbook on Thriving as an Adoptive Family, Tyndale House Publishers, Focus on the Family Resource, General Editors, David and Renee Sanford, 2008, 288 Pages, ISBN-13: 978-1589973381, $14.99