Home Study Class Session 4 of 5

This session covered:

Adoption Issues:

• Responding to outsider questions; deciding what to share (not all questions need to be answered)
• Lifelong issues in adoption
• Family building; bonding and attachment
• Transracial/cultural adoption
• Preparing yourself (the adoptive parent)
• Preparing family and friend (adoption is a process how your child joined your family, not how they should be described).

Parenting & Child Development

• Becoming a parent
• Stages of development
• Child/parent behaviors
• Listening/Setting limits
• Healthy adoptive parenting
• Stress busters for adoptive parents
• Success factors for adoptive parents
• Parents Rights

Telling

• Bill of Rights for Adoptee
• Talking about adoption with children

Some of the topics we have discussed would be very helpful to "normal" families, not just adoptive families.

Tomorrow is our last class!  We will schedule our home visit be fore we leave; it will take place within the next 4-6 weeks.  We (I) have been busy writing resume letters and creating our portfolio; these item and some other paper work need to be completed and turned in at our home study.  Once our home study is approved we start the waiting game; it will take any where from 2 months to 2 years be fore we could be selected by a birth family.

Please keep us, the birth families and other adoptive families in your thoughts and prayers; we are all in need of them!