Come and play Adoption Tuesday Trivia #1

Categorized | My Crazy Stuff

Tags | Adoption, adoption advice, adoption blog, Ethiopia adoption blog, Videos

Come and play Adoption Tuesday Trivia #1

Posted on 24 November 2009 by Kari Gibson

Welcome to the 1st Tuesday Trivia video game. I want to provide you with fun, easy to understand Q & A that applies to adoption. All you have to do… share your answers. Like your teachers used to say, there are no wrong answers. I would love the doors to swing open with thought provoking conversations in adoption land. I want to hear the good, the bad and the crazy. We can teach each other a thing or two about adoption. In a few days, I will come back here and share Trivia Answers with specific methods, insight, and practical tools suggested straight from the book, Attaching in Adoption.

One of my favorite adoption training books, Attaching in Adoption, offers practical tools for adoptive and foster parents. “All parents deserve positive, proactive, and the state-of-the-art knowledge about their children. This is all the more imperative when children have been adopted after challenges.” The topics offer a wide range of information:

trauma,
grief,
attachment disorder
emotional age vs chronological age,
cultural change,
race,
prenatal exposure to alcohol and drugs,
getting diagnoses,
identifying their family’s challenges,
meeting challenges within the family,
forming a circle of support for the family,
working with mental health providers.

Watch Flip to find out Adoption Trivia Question #1

Trivia Q #1: What is attachment and why is it so important?

You can purchase this book at Adoption Boutique/Treasures.

Hannah Russell

Attachment is a long-lasting psychological and emotional connection between infant and caregiver.

It is important so the child can develop a relationship with the parent, and so children will not replace any parental attachment void with peer attachments, which are not what growing children or teens need.

http://www.simplyloveproject.org Kari Gibson

Hannah,

You are definitely the winner so far today:)))

This def. will really help parents understand the importance… even long term.

Thanks so much for stopping by my crazy blog!!

http://www.simplyloveproject.org Kari Gibson

Take a peek at this special adoption blog…. a wonderful post on Attachment & Bonding!! This is some powerful words from a mom that "gets it" They adopted Pandu from India.
http://www.fayrefamily.com/2009/11/expectations/

Here are a few of Lalena's thoughts:

I grow tired of people’s inability to comprehend the impact of neglect. Most children are doted on by their family. Every sneeze, every noise, every smile, every movement praised and lavished heaps of attention on. It’s a wonderful thing that we put our children first. The effect is children who develop at the normal speed and of course they are the most x child in the world, they have been the center of the universe.

But image if you will if you didn’t get that. If every sneeze was ignored, if hugs were denied, if food was sparse, if attention was given occasionally and unreliably, if no one noticed that you stood up. The impact is profound. Some children turn off and never return. Some, like Pandu, do unthaw but just as quickly can rethaw.

Pandu will go into his own safe world when he feels insecure. Like we all do. Only Pandu’s safe world is completely removed from our own. He doesn’t throw a tantrum for attention. He doesn’t jump up and down hoping someone will notice. He will go off and escape. Only with concerted effort can you get him out of that. And even if you do, a part of him remains indifferent even as you hug him.

I mention this because we have been recently questioned about Pandu’s developmental level in a harsh way. I don’t know how to make anyone understand exactly why Pandu is at the stage he is at. Their judgment comes from ignorance but then I wonder if they understood would that help. I think not.

This is the reason that hundreds of thousands of children are left in orphanages. Because they are too old and frankly will have felt that impact of neglect, maybe not as severely as Pandu or maybe even more severely. The point is that some people give up on other people. We don’t stop to think that maybe we could make a difference by showing that person love and understanding, respect at the very least.