Helping Adopted Children Heal From Past Trauma and Loss

Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

03/22/23

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52m

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Did your child experience trauma or loss before they came to you? Do you want to help them heal? Join our conversation with Dr. Amanda Baden, a Professor and the Doctoral Program Director at Montclair State University in the graduate counseling program and a licensed psychologist in private practice in Manhattan. She is an adult adoptee from Hong Kong and an adoptive parent of a daughter from China.
In this episode, we cover:

What is trauma?
What types of events/things create trauma?
Why are trauma, abuse, and neglect so harmful to children?
Is neglect a form of trauma?
How trauma impacts children, and what factors influence how much the trauma impacts the child later in life?
How to tell the difference between typical developmental behavior and behavior that is the result of trauma or loss?
What is triangulation?
How to break the triangle?
Helping our kids integrate their birth, adoptive or foster, and self-identities. Many children who do not live with their birth families struggle to incorporate parts of their birth families, foster or adoptive families, and who they innately are into a whole that is their identity. How can parents help their children form a healthy, complete identity?
Practical tips for helping children heal. Often, we do not know exactly what trauma our children have experienced. Either they don’t remember, or it happened before they were verbal, or they cannot or have not told us. How can we help them if we do not know what happened to them?

This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Previous Episode

Adopting or Fostering a Child Who Identifies as LGBTQ+

March 15, 2023

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48m

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Have you wondered if you could be the right place for an LGBTQ+ youth or child to land? Join us to talk about how to be an affirming and supportive home for LGBTQ+ youth. Or guest will be Angela Weeks, the Director of the National SOGIE Center at the Institute for Innovation and Implementation. Under the Center, she directs the Center of Excellence for LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity and the National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for LGBTQ2S Children and Youth in Foster Care.
In this episode, we cover:

Why are these young people over represented in child welfare?
LGBTQ+ youth are 1.5 -2 times more likely to have a foster placement failure. Why?
What does the research indicate about how sexual orientation and gender identity are formed?
Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely to have a mental health diagnosis or behavioral issues.
Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely than heterosexual or cisgender young people to sexually abuse or otherwise pose a threat to others, including children?
How to help youth evaluate the safety of their communities, schools, social networks, and homes to decide whether to disclose their LGBTQ+ identity, when to do so, and to whom.
Parents often think, especially with younger kids, that this is just a phase. And kids are coming out (acknowledging their sexual orientation/gender identity to themselves and others) at younger and younger ages. And there is some fluidity. So how’s a parent to know how to handle?
- Studies by the Family Acceptance Project have found that most people report being attracted to another person around age 10 and identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual by age 13 (on average). Most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by age 4
Sexual orientation vs sexual behavior.
How can parents create a welcoming and affirming home?

Additional Resources:

Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth: A Guide for Foster Parents https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/lgbtqyouth.pdf
Glossary of Terms (Human Rights Campaign)
The National SOGIE Center. The National Center for Youth with Diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, & Expression provides a centralized site for accessing resources on providing culturally responsive care to children, youth, and young adults with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGIE) and their families across systems, including child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health (including school mental health), substance use systems, and housing and homelessness. https://www.sogiecenter.org/
Family Acceptance Project® LGBTQ Youth & Family Resources To Decrease Mental Health Risks & Promote Well-Being https://lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org/
Learning About Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression (SOGIE) (Video)
A Guide for Understanding, Supporting, and Affirming LGBTQI2-S Children, Youth, and Families
Support for LGBTQ Youth Starts at Home (Video)
Be True and Be You: A Basic Guide for LGBTQ+ Youth
Sharing Our Lived Experiences: 22 Tips for Caring for Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ Youth in the Child Welfare System

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Support the show

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Next Episode

Parenting Adopted Teens and Young Adults

March 29, 2023

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57m

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How does parenting an adopted teen differ from parenting teens that come to us through birth? What are some of the unique challenges adopted teens or young adults face? Check out our interview with Katie Naftzger, an LCSW, Korean adoptee, and the author of “Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years.”

In this episode, we cover:

Why is parenting an “adopted” teen any different from parenting a child who comes to you by birth?
What issues related to adoption come to the front during the teen years?
What issues that relate to early neglect or abuse, or loss come to the fore in adolescence?
In your book, “Parenting in the Eye of the Storm: The Adoptive Parent’s Guide to Navigating the Teen Years,” you talk about adoptive or foster parents taking a learning stance when working with teens. What is a learning stance?
Many of our kids have experienced early life adversity and carry the scars of this early trauma. Parents often naturally feel bad for their teens because of this. How can these feelings of pity interfere with the healthy parenting of teens? When to step in and help and when to let our teens figure out how to handle things on their own?
Some adoptive parents adopt out of a feeling of needing to save the child. How does the savior narrative impact parenting teens?
Birth family issues:
- Birth parents search
- Handling hard birth parent situations
- Identity formation-nature vs. nurture
- Navigating an open adoption with teens
Identity formation as a transracial adoptee.
Transitioning into adulthood.
We hear that adopted teens are more likely to have mental health issues and more likely to commit suicide. How do adoptive parents support their adopted teens?