Jean MacLeod's ADOPTION TOOLBOX

What's in an Adoption Toolbox?

YOU.
Simple (and scary!): PARENTS are the POWER-TOOLS in an Adoption Toolbox, and with a little knowledge, awareness and
application, we can make a huge difference within our families and in the lives of our adopted children. Adoption-parenting
addresses the extra layer our children carry. It’s a perfectly normal extra layer, given an adopted child's life circumstances,
but it’s an extra layer that I wasn’t told about or prepared for when I went through the international adoption process
for the first time, fourteen years ago.

I discovered that I had to help my daughter from China with her feelings, particularly with painful, troubling feelings, and that
there were no easy tools to get us through neatly and cleanly. I found my new mom Toolbox all right, but it was entirely filled
with something I never dreamed of having to use- the tool called “DO THE PARENT-CHILD EMOTIONAL WORK”

If I wanted to help my daughter with her anxiety, with the ghosts from her past, then together we had to examine her
adoption grief and anger, and really face the depth of her pain before she could rebuild a stronger sense of herself. I had to
treat my daughter’s CORE ISSUES, not just the symptoms, and I had to awaken my own emotions about what had happened
to her. I needed to really listen to my child tell me about love and loss, and the unhealed spaces in her heart.

Tough, unpleasant stuff, but facing the issues together ultimately provided us with a family bond forged on empathy,
understanding, love and acceptance. Our adopted children may come to us with an extra layer of life experience,
but we can USE our knowledge of adoption-related issues to embrace the invisible,
and to build and maintain a solid parent-child relationship.

Knowledge really is power, and knowledge applied is what powerful adoption-parenting is all about.
Welcome to your Adoption Toolbox...

Jean MacLeod's
adoption toolbox

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