QUESTION:

This is a wonderful site. Thanks for all your work and for advocating for children! It's very nice to see my way of mothering supported!!!

I was curious ... in sites like this and in magazines like Mothering and other similar books and magazines, there is NOTHING written about or for those of us who came to being a mom (or dad) through adoption. I have 4 kids.....one birthed and 3 adopted internationally. Two were infants (4.5 months and 10 weeks) and one was 25 months. 2 were in foster care, one in an orphanage. None of them are doomed due to less than ideal start in life!

Anyway, I would love to see this issue addressed (or if it has been, could you direct me to the proper source?) Once the kids are home....the parenting is the same...whether by birth or adoption.

Thanks,

Jackie

JAN'S REPLY:

Hi Jackie,

Thanks very much for the kind words about my site.

Adoption certainly has its specific issues, but, as you say, parenting principles are the same.

For the specifics, an excellent site is Voices of Adoption.

There is also an excellent booklet on adoption put out by the La Leche League. The title is Helping Love Grow, by Norma Jane Bumgarner (the author of my current guest column on extended breastfeeding). You can purchase it from a local League chapter. Thanks for reminding me about it - I'll add it to my list of future guest columns. The League also has material on nursing adopted babies.

See also Marcy Axness' article on our site, "Affirming the Adoptee's Reality- A Way to Intimacy".

Jan