2. A birth mother is seeking a strong Christian couple who can lovingly set limits for her Caucasian 7 year-old son. The child has some behavioral issues, but has not been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. This birth mother prefers a childless couple and seeks letters and photos.

To learn more about any of these adoption situations, please visit Lifetime Adoption and fill out a free application.

In order to find only the best families for these little ones, all families need to be home study ready and have legal representation. Please consult with your attorney about requirements in your state. Thank you so much for assisting us in finding families, especially for those children that are hard to place.

For three years I tried to raise my daughter myself. Her father left two weeks after he found out I was pregnant. My parents live in another state. My mother is remarried and my stepfather didn't really like me. So we didn't see each other very much. It had been Amber and me from the start.

I tried to take care of her the best I could at nineteen. She had been raised by a lot of day care people. Something I didn't want. Welfare wasn't enough and I had to go back to work when she was six weeks old. I saw her in the evenings when I picked her up from the sitter after ten hours of being apart.

Sometimes she came to me but sometimes she'd look up and didn't want to leave. That broke my heart to see her reject me and hug the sitter. I worked long shifts, came home smelling like fried chicken and grease. I was dead tired and all I had at home was bills and more bills. I couldn't seem to get ahead. I made just enough to get by. I was able to buy her a toy now and then, pay the sitter, and was forever putting money into the dang thing called a car.

I came home one Friday to an eviction notice. I didn't know where we were going to go since my credit was shot. I wouldn't be able to get into a decent apartment. The only apartments were located on a trashy side of town and Amber's sitter was on the opposite side where my job was. I could have gotten another job but then she would be at the sitter over 14 hours per day and Saturdays.

I looked into her sad eyes and saw that I wasn't doing parenting very well either. She wasn't happy and she always knew when I was upset and acted out. I decided she needed more than I could offer. I rethought the choice I had considered when I was pregnant with her. That was adoption.

To read further about this birth mother's choice for her daughter, click here.

We Need Your Help!

What topics are you most interested in? What would you like to read about in this newsletter? What information would you like us to research and bring to you?

Please take a moment to vote at right so that we can help to provide the information you are seeking. Thank you!

Create a lifebook your child will cherish for a lifetime. Typical baby books lack the all-important steps adoptive parents go through to form their families. Use your own creativity to form a book that is as unique as your child.

To find out how you can create a life book of your very own, please click here to visit Memories of Miracles.

Smart Adoption Tip

Photography: Always use a professional photographer who will know how to capture the best of you in, preferably, an outdoor setting. Good photography is a MUST for your Dear Birth Parent letter. Check with your adoption coordinator if you have any questions on this very important part of your adoption.

March 23, 2004: Christina Harper from The Harold newspaper joins us live, as she shares with us her unique experience adopting from China. As SARS and the Bird Flu disrupt our Eastern neighbors, Christina adopted her daughter successfully from China. Share in her difficulties and her triumphs, as she brings her newly adopted daughter home to the United States.

March 30, 2004: Sherrie Eldridge joins Let’s Talk Adoption with her new book, Twenty Life Transforming Choices Adoptees Need to Make. Learn what feelings adoptees have in common and how best to overcome them.

"Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents"
by Deborah D. Gray

This month's book selection discusses how adoptive parents can bond with their adoptive children while overcoming obstacles of trauma, grief, cultural differences, prenatal exposure to alcohol and drugs, and much more. Gray has put together a proactive and positive guide for today's adoptive parents who face more bonding challenges now than ever before.

Please enjoy two excerpts below:

Challenges for Children and Parents: Always Angry and Afraid -- Maltreatment's Imprint, page 42:

"Children in danger go into a physiological state of fight or flight. They surge with energy that can be used to fight or run for their lives. Their brains bypass the higher thinking centers, using primitive areas of the brain. Very young children will often freeze in place instead of running or fighting. They try not to move or attract attention to themselves. They may show fear or anger. However, these are two sides of the same coin. The coin's currency is good for survival. It is rare that a child with neglect and abuse is happy or grateful after placement. Instead, they remain preoccupied with the lessons learned from the past, readying themselves for a similar future."

The Shape of Progress: Supporting Children through Periods of Regression, page 264:

"When children move into regression, parents do not have to create new techniques to deal with their child. Parents can re-introduce some of the attachment-producing techniques that they have used in the past. For example, the parent "assigns" ten minutes of rocking, reading stories together, bottle-feeding, etc., in order to overcome emotional distance and increase the child's security.

One eight-year-old boy was remarkable in his inability to tolerate touch from his parents, except by his own infrequent initiation. The parents were encouraged to touch him a great deal more. As he weathered a particularly horrible stint of processing traumatic material from his past, he protested every "assignment" of physical affection -- both at the beginning and end of the assignment! He invariably asked for more time at the end. He still showed difficult behaviors, but he and his parents felt remarkably better-connected. Their family self-esteem went up in spite of the difficult material that he was processing."

Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today's Parents is available at Amazon

Spreading the Word About Adoption

Are you a proud adoptive parent or parent-to-be? There are some great custom shirts, hats, and blankets just for you! Whether you wear them around town or give them as gifts, they are high quality, embroidered items that can be worn with pride for many years to come. Take a look, at the products available at Adoption Tree.

Heart of Adoption
Answers to Your Adoption Questions

Q: What is Open or Semi-Open Adoption?

A: In an open adoption, the birthparent may choose the adoptive family themselves, rather than having an agency choose the family. The birthparents may also decide on the amount of contact they wish to have. Some women want letters and photos, others want visits or phone calls after the adoption and some may choose to have no contact at all.

The choices are up to the birthparent and the adoptive family. Both parties have a wide variety of options. Both the birthparents and the adoptive family should thoughtfully consider what they are seeking, and then work with an adoption professional that can help them fulfill their needs.

Q: What is a Putative Father?

A: A putative father is the individual that the law presumes to be the legal father of the child until proven otherwise. This person may or may not be the biological father.

Confused? Here's what the putative father is in plain language: He is the person who is taking responsibility for the pregnancy. In some cases this may be the husband of the birth mother. The husband would then be considered the putative father until the biological father steps up and proves responsibility through DNA testing.

Click here to find more answers to your adoption questions.

Life at Home: Corned Beef & Cabbage

Many of us don't have much time during the week to prepare a large meal for family or friends, so the more time-consuming meals need to wait for the weekend. Surprise your family this weekend with this delicious recipe for Corned Beef and Cabbage.

Servings: 8 to 10 for large brisket Total prep and cooking time: 5 to 6 hours

Ingredients:
1 corned beef brisket (small, medium or large)
Pickling spice package
2 medium heads of cabbage, quartered
5 carrots, quartered
3 or 4 large potatoes, or 8 to 12 small red potatoes
3 or 4 turnips, scrubbed and sliced
Honey mustard

Preparation:
Place the corned beef on a steamer rack in a pot of water (water level should reach bottom of the rack). Season with the juice form the corned beef and the pickling spice package.

Bring the water to a boil. Then, steam the meat for several hours, until you can easily sink a fork in it. Note: As the meat cooks, add water to keep the level constant.

About 20 minutes before the meat is done, add to the pot the cabbage, carrots, potatoes and turnips.

When the meat is done, remove it from the steamer; set it aside. Leave the assorted vegetables to cook in the juice; remove them when they're as soft or hard as you like them.

Slice beef against the grain and serve on a platter with the vegetables.

Tips and Timing: In place of water, some cook the brisket in beer, which gives the meat a distinct flavor. Also, while a spice pack will season the meat well, you can use individual spices, such as cinnamon, mustard seeds, dried chilies or coriander seeds instead of or in addition to the package.

Adoption Wisdom

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