Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments with Your Adopted Child [Paperback]

Lark Eshleman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 31, 2005

It is a story that moves us to tears. An American couple travels across the world to rescue a child from the hopelessness of a foreign orphanage, bringing their new son or daughter to a life of love and family. But does this transition always go smoothly? Adoptive parents hope their child will easily fit into the family and quickly become emotionally connected to the parents or siblings. But child psychologists and adoption experts say this connection is the most difficult aspect of international adoption. In countries where international adoptions are common-China, Russia, or Romania-orphanages commonly represent the available children to their new parents as healthy kids who just need a little love. In many cases, this is a gross misrepresentation. Children who spend time in institutionalized care may have experienced trauma, and therefore may not attach easily to their new family. Parents anxious to bring these children into their homes and their hearts struggle seriously with this issue. Although these children will eventually adapt in a healthy fashion, the road to emotional health and harmony can be a rocky one. Becoming a Family tackles this intricate issue head on. It provides parents with effective strategies for ensuring that their adopted child adjusts as quickly and seamlessly as possible. Practical and accessible, this book will help parents identify severe problems before the adoption, significantly reduce the risk of future difficulty, improve the damage already done to the child's otherwise normal, healthy development, and dramatically help enfold the child into a family ready to give love, security, and a new life.

Editorial Reviews

Review

...provides parents with effective strategies for ensuring that their adopted child adjusts as quickly and seamlessly as possible. (Kankakee, (Il) Journal )

Practical steps a parent can take to alleviate a child's attachment problems are also highlighted, and types of therapy that may be helpful for the child are discussed. (Tracy Behringer Pottstown Mercury )

That some older adoptive children didn't know how to trust can be the source of misunderstanding, fustration, anger, and pain for many of the parents who adopt them. The sooner the parents understand and respond to the source of the distrust rather than take it personally, the sooner they will be a family in spirit as well as words. (Barbara F. Meltz Boston Globe )

It discusses the characterisitics of normal parent-child attachment and explains what can happen if the attachement is interrupted. Practical steps a parent can take to alleviate a child's attachment problems are also highlighted and different types of therapy that may be helpful for the child are discussed. (Tracy Behringer West Chester Local News )

Offers parents effective strategies for ensuring their adopted child adjusts as quickly as possible by helping them identify severe problems before the adoption. (Www.Parents-Express.Net )

About the Author

Lark Eshleman, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Institute for Children and Families. A psychotherapist, Dr. Eshleman has trained orphanage workers in Croatia to work with children before they are adopted. A frequent speaker and writer on emotional trauma, she lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing (August 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1589792602
• ISBN-13: 978-1589792609
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,561 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great information on attachment in adoption, June 22, 2005

By 

skrapbooker "skrapbooker" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments With Your Adopted Child (Hardcover)

I don't entirely agree with the other reviewer who said that this book is too scary. It *could* be scary, but the author bends over backwards to preface everything by telling you *not* to be scared off & that extreme cases are relatively few. I certainly did not get the impression that he believe that intervention is necessary for attachment. He does a great job of provides tools to assist in healthy attachment from day 1, as well as helping to discover if there are issues to be aware of later on. I am normally one to shy away from "scary" topics, but this book made me feel well-equipped - not scared. Note: I am now editing my review after having read section 3 of the book (the final section). That did get scarier... but this book still provided a lot of insight & helpful advice for promoting attachment.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Abusive Therapy, September 21, 2011

By 

Reviewer - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments with Your Adopted Child (Paperback)

The author, Lark Eshleman, is a proponent of "Attachment (Holding) Therapy," its parenting methods, and the unrecognized diagnosis "Attachment Disorder" (a catch-all list of signs that demonizes children). These practices have been denounced by professional organizations as abusive and inappropriate for all children. See "APSAC Task Force Report on Attachment Therapy" in the journal *Child Maltreatment,* Feb 2006)

The author is a fan of Martha Welch, MD, who claimed Holding Therapy could cure autism. On page 49, Eshleman has a parent describe Holding Therapy:

"ABOUT ANNA Anna was taken to a Russian orphanage immediately after she was born...At age four and a half she began intensive attachment therapy....[H]er mother describes some of her experiences with Anna. 'On Wednesday we had our first holding time. Anna wanted a bedtime story and I said we should try doing it a new way, alternating sentences while I held her in my lap. She hated this. She was squirming and yelling and kicking. On Thursday I came downstairs with a power screwdriver and Anna asked if I was going to hurt her. We went straight into holding time.... She squirmed, kicked, and tried to hide her face in my side. I kept kissing her and she kept pushing me away, sometimes so forcefully I though I'd get a black eye or blood nose. She screamed, "Don't kiss me! Got your hands off me! You're hurting me!" I kept telling her to do deep breathing....Holding time lasted forty minutes....A few days later, I came into my room carrying a hammer to hand a picture...Anna asked if I was going to hurt her, and again we went into holding time.'"

Besides coercive restraint as therapy, Eshleman also promotes another abusive practice called "Reparenting," or the forced age regression of children. Children are treated like a baby or toddler against their will -- bottle fed, bathed, dressed, baby talk, etc.

And straight out of the mouth of Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Eshleman says teachers should be taught something she calls "Funneling." With this practice, the teacher frames comments to the "Attachment Disordered" child in terms of whether the child's behaviors and accomplishments would meet with his mother's approval.

10 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good, but deserves a warning before reading!, May 30, 2005

By 

M. Moore "Maggie" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Becoming a Family: Promoting Healthy Attachments With Your Adopted Child (Hardcover)

Warning... this book could instill a LOT of fear! Granted, it is an excellent book in describing a healthy attachment and how to achieve this with your adopted child; only that is NOT the book's primary purpose. The author wants to illustrate what is not healthy, and how often these "unhealthy" attachments occur, specifically in international adoptions. The author write this book firmly in the belief that no matter how much love you shower upon your adopted child/children they will always lack the ability to bond unless intervention is taken.

So, if you choose to read this book, it is best to read as a "heads-up." Because, even though this book appears more "doom and gloom," there really are a lot of great suggestions to help build this much needed bond with your adopted (even bio) child/children, and the author also suggests the best types of therapies for these children with RAD (reactive attachment disorder) as they will not respond to "normal" therapies.

Unfortunately, the negative seems to so overpower the positive that if you aren't careful, you may be left re-thinking your adoption all together.