Customer Reviews

Healing Power of the Family: Illustrated Overview of Life with the Disturbed Foster or Adopted Child

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This book contains interesting information regarding the potential of adoptive and foster families to heal children harmed, abused and neglected in the first years of their lives. These children frequently exhibit behavioral problems, and the book discusses therapeutic adoptive and foster family techniques to be used with problem kids.

As with Delaney's other book, Troubled Transplants, the methods suggested here are situation-specific, and all were developed with the advice of therapists working with the families whose situations are (anonymously) described.

Also as in Troubled Transplants, this slight volume (123 pages) discusses therapeutic methods of intervention that aim to achieve four goals: Reduce and manage acting out; assist the child to become aware and conscious of others' expectations; help him/her develop constructive interpersonal skills; and to increase positive interactions between the parent and child.

The authors note frequently that when dealing with these kinds of situations, there is no magic bullet. Therapies and therapeutic parental reactions must be developed in response to each child's needs. But very often, these strategies work and just as often, they include a sense of humor.

In one case, the family discovered that their child, who consistently ran away during meals, was hiding under a neighbor's porch during his little "outings." To stop the behavior, they made arrangements with the neighbor to watch their son carefully while they responded to the behavior with a little outing of their own: After he had run away, they all piled into the family mini-van, backed out of their driveway and opened the window shouting loudly as they passed the neighbor's home that they were going out for the boy's favorite food-ice cream. After they had gone home, he came out of his hiding place, according to the neighbor, went home, and when he found the door locked, waited on the front step until his parents and siblings returned. From then on, the family went for ice cream-together-after every dinner, and the little runaway, who ran no more, went with them.

Obviously, not all therapies work in all situations.

Yet, the creative methods described here helped the children and families whose examples are noted, and the kind of contrarian thinking suggested is, as in Troubled Transplants, a useful springboard for other parents and therapists struggling to find ways to modify a child's behavior, when the many other, more conventional behavior modification systems have failed.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

I have a duaghter having a big problem with her troubled foster daughter. She was feeling such a failure and struggling with day to day pressures. This book was just what was needed to help her and all of us understand that she was not the only one feeling as though life was out of control.

It is a short read with a powerful message. As with his other books Troubled Transplants and Raising Cain, Richard Delaney has helped me a great deal in understanding the troubled foster children that have come into my home. I have thoroughly enjoyed the way he presents his message.