Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster & Adoptive Children [Paperback]

Richard J., Ph.D. Delaney (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1993

Caring for troubled adoptive/foster care children can be both harrowing and heroic. Many of today's foster and adopted children come from backgrounds where they experience not only the loss of previous caregivers, but have also suffered from abuse, sexual exploitation, or neglect. Individuals who invite these children into their homes often find themselves in a therapeutic role that can tax and exhaust. Troubled Transplants focuses on these children, their backgrounds, and their deleterious impact on the interaction and environment with the foster or adoptive family. The authors provide suggestions about behavioral roots and practical strategies to address and improve these issues.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This is one of the few books in the field that presents strategies to overcome practically every situation that foster parents come in contact with." --Cora E. White, President, National Foster Parent Association --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Richard Delaney is a psychologist who has worked with foster, kinship, and adoptive parents over the past thirty years. He is a consultant to private and public foster and adoptive agencies. Delaney is a father and stepfather living in Colorado.

Frank Kunstal is a psychologist with broad experience in evaluation and treatment of seriously disturbed children and families. He is a consultant to social welfare agencies, school districts, correctional facilities, and the court systems. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 169 pages
• Publisher: Richard J Delaney (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 093956114X
• ISBN-13: 978-0939561148
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,498,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Informative and empowering, February 25, 1998

By 

Colleen M. McDonald - See all my reviews

This review is from: Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster & Adoptive Children (Paperback)

This book explores the dynamics of both harmful (abusive and neglectful) and therapeutic (specially-trained adoptive and foster) family environments. Disturbed children can be helped to develop more productive and satisfying relationships, the authors suggest, through the efforts of foster and adoptive parents working in the home environment, aided by the support, encouragement, and resources of the professionals on the team.

Most of the book is concerned with therapeutic intervention, based on four goals: Manage acting out behavior; assist the child in becoming conscious of negative expectations of others; help the child develop constructive interpersonal skills; increase positive interactions between the parent and child. Delaney and Kunstal are clear there are no magic or immediate "cures." Their "unconventional" strategies (examples rather than prescriptions) attempt to discourage power struggles, create new opportunities for both the parent and the child, and encourage small successes in order to help motivate foster and adoptive parents to keep trying.

This book, coupled with Fostering Changes (a previous book by the same author), should be required reading for foster and adoptive parents and caseworkers. It is informative and empowering.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful, April 23, 2006

By 

Alyssa A. Lappen (Earth) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster & Adoptive Children (Paperback)

This book contains both useful and not-so-useful information. It covers the basics of harmful, abusive and neglectful relationships and why they cause behavioral problems. It also discusses many therapeutic adoptive and foster family environments and techniques to be used with problem kids. The methods suggested are very situation-specific, and all were developed with the advice of therapists working with the families whose situations are (anonymously) described.

The book, as a previous reviewer notes, mostly discusses methods of therapeutic intervention, with the aim of achieving four goals: Reduce and manage acting out; assist the child to become aware and conscious of others negative expectations; help the child develop constructive interpersonal skills; 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. For example, the behavior of a screaming child was changed when the parents and other siblings began to scream along with him, until he stared at them silently, in disbelief. The method also worked in a supermarket, when the child started screaming there. And humorously, the store personnel even played into the strategy, announcing over the PA system, "child meltdown in aisle 4." Ever after, this child stopped screaming for attention.

Obviously, not all therapies work in all situations. Also, some of the therapies are controversial and are probably contra-indicated in many if not all cases.

Even so, the creativity of the ideas offered herein is a very useful springboard for other parents and therapists struggling to find ways of modifying a child's behavior, when all the other, traditional behavior modification systems have failed.

--Alyssa A. Lappen

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is really a book on how to abuse your child, January 5, 2006

By 

Reviewer - See all my reviews

This review is from: Troubled Transplants: Unconventional Strategies for Helping Disturbed Foster and Adopted Children (Paperback)

The authors Delaney and Kunstal are noted proponent of Attachment Therapy (aka Holding Therapy) and its brutal parenting methods. This practice was denounced as abusive and inappropriate for all children in 2006 by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children and by the American Psychological Association's Division on Child Maltreatment.

The authors themselves admit that their methods not reputable: "These strategies have not been researched by any statistical, controlled study." (page 166) Actually, no human subjects review board would allow children to be subjects in any study involving these methods.

Delaney and Kunstal, as Attachment Therapy proponents (and as therapists), have advocated (and used) "coercive restraint as therapy." This is a vile practice that seeks to disturb children to the extent that they loose control. While held down, the children are yelled at, poked, tickled relentlessly, threatened with abandonment, etc. From pages 141-142 of this book:

"When held in place, [the child] became livid and struggled against the adults -- to no avail. His rage escalated quickly as he screamed louder and louder at those holding him. He commanded them to let him go, he threatened to turn them into the police, and he claimed that they were breaking his arms. The adults kept [the child] in a 'therapeutic restraint,' nonetheless....Many parents and professionals may find this approach quite overwhelming and intense -- even contrary to their beliefs about helping. However for some children in placement, therapeutic holding is imperative..."

There are more bad ideas in this book than you can shake a stick at, such as "infantalizing" older children, "reparenting," forcing eye contact, and advising against reasoning with children. The overall tone of belittling children with terms like "mealy-mouthed" makes it clear that the authors have little respect for children, much less a professional attitude towards child development.

Worse, they would subject the most vulnerable of children to literal torture.

So kids are expected to love their parent if those parents and a therapist rough them up and make their life a living hell? Not likely. This is really about adult dominance and creating gratefully obedience little Stepford Children.