Many adopted or foster children have complex, troubling, often painful pasts. This book provides parents and professionals with sound advice on how to communicate effectively about difficult and sensitive topics, providing concrete strategies for helping adopted and foster children make sense of the past so they can enjoy a healthy, well-adjusted future.
• Presents age-appropriate, specific guidelines that make an intimidating and potentially uncomfortable task straightforward, organized, and manageable
• Serves to remove the fear of how to make sense of the past for foster and adopted children of all ages, allowing parents, teachers, counselors, and other caregivers to have open, honest, and beneficial dialogues with children and teens with tough pasts
• Explains how children’s development is impacted by separation from their birth families and identifies the issues generated by the trauma occurring before, during, and after the separation
• Reveals powerful insights gained from the story of one of the first African American children to be adopted in the United States by a white family—an individual who is now middle-aged
