Book Description
An acclaimed novelistÂ's riveting memoir about what it means to be adopted and how all of us construct our sense of self and family
Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. Her birth mother was a twenty-two- year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with children of his own. The MistressÂ's Daughter is the story of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her.
Homes, renowned for the psychological accuracy and emotional intensity of her storytelling, tells how her birth parents initially made contact with her and what happened afterward (her mother stalked her and appeared unannounced at a reading) and what she was able to reconstruct about the story of their lives and their families. Her birth mother, a complex and lonely woman, never married or had another child, and died of kidney failure in 1998; her birth father, who initially made overtures about inviting her into his family, never did.
Then the story jumps forward several years to when Homes opens the boxes of her motherÂ's memorabilia. She had hoped to find her mother in those boxes, to know her secrets, but no relief came. She became increasingly obsessed with finding out as much as she could about all four parents and their families, hiring researchers and spending hours poring through newspaper morgues, municipal archives and genealogical Web sites. This brave, daring, and funny book is a story about what it means to be adopted, but it is also about identity and how all of us define our sense of self and family.
Customer Reviews:
an interesting read.......2007-10-06
This book is the interesting story of one woman's adoptee search, told as engagingly as any good novel. I have no doubt that it would make a great movie. This is not a fairy tale reunion story, but it is reality, and many lessons are learned along the way.
A Loss to Know.......2007-09-16
I'm an avid A.M. Homes' reader. People who really know me, know this. I've read nearly every book she's written, (my favorites are "Music for Torching" and "The Safety of Objects"), and love her style. It's what I'd call, "Suburban Surrealism." Truly the non-logical, wacky mysteries of everyday life.
As always, this book has A.M. Homes' very detailed and visual style (something I truly appreciate in writers), and it unveils an often hidden aspect of life: adoption. Not much is written on adoption, and it's about time. It reveals a lot of the longings that adoption can bring out in people. And, she's very honest -- about all her feelings -- which is brave and intense and interesting.
I was totally wrapped up in the book until the middle when the book moves from very real relationships with her mothers and fathers to an almost imaginary but true emotional probing of their ancestors' origins -- not lives, per se, but origins. Where they were from. Who they married. And, yet, the plot itself is about wanting. Emotional life, not facts. I guess I wanted more external plot and dialogue rather than musing and searching without real connection between people. I felt lonely reading this book.
Granted, we readers understand from the story why it's hard for A.M. Homes to relate to her bio parents because they are caught up in their own narcissistic fantasies of who she is in relation to them. And, A.M. Homes does a wonderful job in illustrating this, and of also describing their idiosyncrasies and her hit and run, hit and run, hit and run experiences with them.
I also know what it's like to have overly-inquisitive parents, so I can sympathize with her wish to shut down and close off. But, we never know how much time we have with people.
A.M. Homes holds her bio parents so much at bay that they are pulled to plead with her for information about herself, to want from her. I felt the same way with her.
I met A.M. Homes briefly when she came for a book reading and signing for The Mistress' Daughter. And, the one thing I took away from the reading was how private she was. I felt compelled to tease out facts from her and asked about the truth of her last name, (considering she often writes about homes and families). When she revealed, hesitantly, "Yes, that really is my last name," I felt I'd won. Wow! I got her to reveal something. And, I was really struck at the time by the fact that I'd felt this pull to know more about her even though I'd attended a book reading about her autobiography.
This book is a fascinating entry into the world of adoption and a reminder that the fantasy of who we wanted our parents to be does not exist, and we have to give it up in order to move on and to grow up.
That said, I wanted to experience a plot in which A.M. Homes makes it through to the other side of acceptance, that who she wanted was not who she had, and that who she had was better than imagined. I wanted to experience the real relationships more than the fantasied ones.
Driven To Understand.......2007-09-06
A strong memoir progresses from "I thought this" to "Then I thought this," and eventually to "Now I think this." A strong writer will invite the reader to challenge her conclusions. A.M. Homes' THE MISTRESS'S DAUGHTER is a strong memoir.
Early on, Homes imagines her birth mother the way I've heard adoptees imagine their birth mothers, or, at least, the better life they know they would have had if they lived with them: "In my dreams, my birth mother is a goddess, the queen of queens, the CEO, the CFO, and the COO. Movie-star beautiful, incredibly competent, she can take care of anyone and anything. She has made a fabulous life for herself, as ruler of the world, except for one missing link... me."
But she learns her birth mother is far from a goddess; she's mentally ill. This is part of a phone conversation in which Homes is scolded for not sending her birth mother a Valentine's Day card:
"I'm not really sure why you're so angry with me." [Homes says to her birth mother]
"You don't take good care of me. You should adopt me and take good care of me," she says.
"I can't adopt you," I say.
"Why not?"
Then, through her interactions with her birth father and what she finds out during her genealogical research, she begins to understand why her birth mother was the way she was: "My mother had no life after she gave me up--she never married, never had another family. She invested in him [Home's birth father] from a very early age, he used her and then said good-bye. She never recovered."
Homes convincingly shows her parents' and birth parents' character (as she sees it) through dialogue, meanings often open to interpretation, depending on the information available to the listener.
I'll admit sometimes Homes bogs the book down with her play-by-play accounts of researching her parents' backgrounds, yet I take the stance that this reflects how possessed--and bogged down--she was by her need to decipher fact from fantasy, to put to rest the mother she had imagined. This drive to understand is not limited to her--an adopted child looking for answers. It grabs hold of most strong authors and their readers.
Dies halfway........2007-09-04
This book starts out moderately well. It was drawing me in and Homes did start to drop from time to time the crazy assertions which can enliven her fiction such as her assumptions about her fathers intentions towards her.
I really thought it was picking up and turning into a very good read. Then she wades into a swamp of genealogical research which is dull (even to her I suspect). Research into the history of the people who raised her , the people who adopted her, will not brighten her day and it certainly set me yawning.,
The book finishes on a very poor note indeed. She criticises her real father for his reticence and lack of cooperation . At the same time she tells hardly anything about her adoptive father, her partner (is there one?) and the child she felt she had to have.She wants her privacy but wants to invade the privacy of others.
An Adoptee's Perspective.......2007-08-31
I read "The Mistress's Daughter" as a part of a law school course on adoption. Much to my delight, the book was not merely a dry summary of adoptee reunion statistics and current case law, but rather an intriguing personal story of one woman's reaction to unexpectedly meeting her birthparents at the age of 30. The book details her thoughts and feelings as she experienced the emotionally charged experience of meeting biological relatives for the first time, and follows her experiences as the relationships develop and eventually terminate. One caveat, however: the book is one woman's individual experience and cannot be assumed to be the "normal" adoptee/birthparent reunion story. I, too, met my birthfather in 1999. My experience has been vastly different than the author's. Each reunion story is different.
Book Description
"Birthdays may be difficult for me."
"I want you to take the initiative in opening conversations about my birth family."
"When I act out my fears in obnoxious ways, please hang in there with me."
"I am afraid you will abandon me."
The voices of adopted children are poignant, questioning. And they tell a familiar story of loss, fear, and hope. This extraordinary book, written by a woman who was adopted herself, gives voice to children's unspoken concerns, and shows adoptive parents how to free their kids from feelings of fear, abandonment, and shame.
With warmth and candor, Sherrie Eldridge reveals the twenty complex emotional issues you must understand to nurture the child you love--that he must grieve his loss now if he is to receive love fully in the future--that she needs honest information about her birth family no matter how painful the details may be--and that although he may choose to search for his birth family, he will always rely on you to be his parents.
Filled with powerful insights from children, parents, and experts in the field, plus practical strategies and case histories that will ring true for every adoptive family,
Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew is an invaluable guide to the complex emotions that take up residence within the heart of the adopted child--and within the adoptive home.
Customer Reviews:
Great Book for Adoptive Parents and possibly Adoptee's.......2007-09-27
I have just begun reading this book but can already tell it is going to be very helpful for my husband and I and how we bring up our daughter. It is essential to know these things beforehand and to be equipped for how to deal with them.
Book review.......2007-09-13
This is an awesome book and filled with valuable and useful information for ALL parties within the adoption triad!
Scary book.......2007-08-12
I would NOT recommend this book to anyone considering adoption and the recommendations that Ms. Eldridge gives for adoptive children could be very psychologically harmful to children.
Focuses on negative, but is realistic.......2007-08-09
I am adopting 2 boys and when I first read this book it totally scared me! It seemed like there was no way that anything positive could come out of adoption. At the same time, my older sister was adopted as a child and I could see so much of what was written in what played out in my family growing up.
This book is real and it is important to learn from the pain others have gone through to try to ease that for the future generations of adopted children. This book does complain - that's often what we do. But while doing so, it sheds light on the internal pain that many people who have been adopted can feel.
Do not read this book as your sole source of information though. There are a number of books that offer practical advice that will give hope and understanding on how to talk positively about adoption, how to love your entire family without guilt, and how to give the love that the child needs.
On a side note: I let my mom read this book and at first she was upset by it. She had done the best job she could to raise her adopted child just as she did the rest of us. After some time away from the book and after several talks, she came to understand that by "ignoring" the differences she was not helping her daughter and just because her daughter didn't bring up the adoption didn't mean that she wasn't thinking about it all the time.
Yesterday to Today: A book I hated 5 years ago is suddenly really good.........2007-08-01
Adopted children have a range of specific needs as a result of their backgrounds. These are described by Sherrie Eldridge in her book "Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew".
As an adoptee and an adoptive mom, it had been for many years my opinion that people wrote adoption books with the main objective of making money or becoming an 'expert'. I have seen a few really good ones over the years, and quite a few bad ones. When the following book crept across my review-table years ago, I barely gave it a glance, mentally classifying it as more rubbish about how adopted kids are particularly messed up.
Oh, how time can change our thinking! Some of my kids are older now and we have walked through their developmental changes, their yearnings, their wonderings. That search-for-self can be so very painful, but does it always have to be? And must every child agonize through it alone? I was wrong about this book. I have recognized that it is a useful guide to parents, and I want to give it my highest recommendation today.
Each month I will review one or two books that are think are the Good Ones. They will not all be newly published. Some, like this one, will be re-visited and given the proper review that I now know they deserve. In fact, in the review department, I have more books than I can possibly read. If you are a good writer and are experienced with reviewing, please contact me and I'll be glad to have publishers send samples!
Excerpt from Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew
By Sherrie Eldridge (Dell Publishing)
The special needs of adopted children as expressed in the child's words:
Educational Needs :
* I need to be taught that adoption is both wonderful and painful, presenting lifelong challenges for everyone involved.
* I need to know my adoption story first, then my birth story and birth family.
* I need to be taught healthy ways for getting my special needs met.
* I need to be prepared for hurtful things others may say about adoption and about me as and adopted person.
Emotional Needs:
I need help in recognizing my adoption loss and grieving it
I need to be assured that my birth parents' decision not to parent me had nothing to do with anything defective in me.
I need help in learning to deal with my fears of rejection-to learn that absence doesn't mean abandonment, or a closed door that I have dome something wrong.
I need permission to express all my adoption feelings and fantasies.
Validation Needs :
* I need validation of my dual heritage (biological and adoptive).
* I need to be assured often that I am welcome and worthy.
* I need to be reminded often by my adoptive parents that they delight in my biological differences and appreciate my birth family's unique contribution to our family through me.
Relational Needs:
* I need friendships with other adopted persons.
* I need to be taught that there is a time to consider searching for my birth family and a time to give up searching.
* I need to be reminded that if I am rejected by my birth family, the rejection is about them, not me.
Spiritual Needs :
* I need to be taught that my life narrative began before I was born and that my life is not a mistake.
* I need to be taught that in this broken, hurting world loving families are formed through adoption as well as birth.
* I need to be taught that I have intrinsic, immutable value as a human being.
* I need to accept the fact that some of my adoption questions may never be answered in this life.
It would be wonderful if there were an outline...a course-book that came with every human born or adopted into each family. Many of the things above, such as 'I need to be assured that I am welcome and worthy', could be used with any child, anywhere. It is a gift of the greatest value to give your child the knowledge that they belong somewhere, they are wanted and cherished. I highly recommend this book, and hope you will learn from it, as I have. Perhaps a little bit later than I should have, but that is the benefit fo life: It gives plently of second chances.
Martha Osborne
Adoptee and Adoptive mom of five, Editor of [...] Adoption Magazine.
Average customer rating:
- Wonderful Read, perhaps not for everyone.
- Divided and yet united in our experience of suffering
- most pleasurable read
- Lucien Segura is not real?
- A sophisticated meditation on intersections and divisions
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Divisadero
Michael Ondaatje
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 Contemporary
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Ondaatje, Michael
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ASIN: 0307266354
Release Date: 2007-05-29 |
Amazon.com
From the celebrated author of The English Patient, comes another breathtaking, unforgettable story, this time about a family torn apart by an act of violence. Divisadero is a rich and rewarding read, one that Jhumpa Lahiri, in her guest review for Amazon.com (see below), calls "Ondaatje's finest novel to date." --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, as well as the PEN/Hemingway Award for her mesmerizing debut collection of stories, Interpreter of Maladies. Her poignant and powerful debut novel, The Namesake was adapted by screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala, and released in theaters in 2007.
My life always stops for a new book by Michael Ondaatje. I began Divisadero as soon as it came into my possession and over the course of a few evenings was captivated by Ondaatje's finest novel to date. The story is simple, almost mythical, stemming from a family on a California farm that is ruptured just as it is about to begin. Two daughters, Anna and Claire, are raised not just as siblings but with the intense bond of twins, interchangeable, inseparable. Coop, a boy from a neighboring farm, is folded into the girls' lives as a hired hand and quasi-brother. Anna, Claire, and Coop form a triangle that is intimate and interdependent, a triangle that brutally explodes less than thirty pages into the book. We are left with a handful of glass, both narratively and thematically. But Divisadero is a deeply ordered, full-bodied work, and the fragmented characters, severed from their shared past, persevere in relation to one another, illuminating both what it means to belong to a family and what it means to be alone in the world. The notion of twins, of one becoming two, pervades the novel, and so the farm in California is mirrored by a farm in France, the setting for another plot line in the second half of the book and giving us, in a sense, two novels in one. But the stories are not only connected but calibrated by Ondaatje to reveal a haunting pattern of parallels, echoes, and reflections across time and place. Like Nabokov, another master of twinning, Ondaatje's method is deliberate but discreet, and it was only in rereading this beautiful book--which I wanted to do as soon as I finished it--that the intricate play of doubles was revealed. Every sign of the author's genius is here: the searing imagery, the incandescent writing, the calm probing of life's most turbulent and devastating experiences. No one writes as affectingly about passion, about time and memory, about violence--subjects that have shaped Ondaatje's previous novels. But there is a greater muscularity to Divisadero, an intensity born from its restraint. Episodes are boiled down to their essential elements, distilled but dramatic, resulting in a mosaic of profound dignity, with an elegiac quietude that only the greatest of writers can achieve. --Jhumpa Lahiri
Book Description
From the celebrated author of The English Patient and In the Skin of a Lion comes a remarkable new novel of intersecting lives that ranges across continents and time.
In the 1970s in Northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence—of both hand and heart—that sets fire to the rest of their lives.
Divisadero takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos and eventually to the landscape of south-central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time—Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. And as the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough hewn from the past.
Breathtakingly evoked and with unforgettable characters, Divisadero is a multilayered novel about passion, loss, and the unshakable past, about the often discordant demands of family, love, and memory. It is Michael Ondaatje’s most intimate and beautiful novel to date.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful Read, perhaps not for everyone........2007-10-12
I truly enjoyed taking my time with this book and getting to know each of the characters and what experience they brought througout the novel. The clever and imagintive writing of the French Countryside created a yearning to actaully experience the lifestyle portrayed in the Novel.
Based on other reviews this book may not be for everyone, however those of you who appreciate not only the content of the story but also the time & creativity it takes the writer to create the characters and vivid scenes will thoroughly enjoy this book.
Divided and yet united in our experience of suffering.......2007-10-03
Some reviewers have complained about the divided nature of the two halves of Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje's latest novel. Nonsense!
The book is a singular literary feat. Ondaatje sweeps up fragments of lives that are threatened with destruction and makes them whole. He brings together two motherless infant girls and a four year old boy and melds them into a single family that only implodes years later in the face of adolescent passion and fatherly fury.
These three lives are the thread that runs throughout the book. An examination of the life and work of an (imaginary) writer of the 19th century becomes the focus of research for one of the three primary characters, and once again, Ondaatje is telling us that each of us live our lives as part of an extended family, our actions causing reactions in others in the family, but that essentially we are all alone in the life struggles and the death struggles that we all must endure.
Ondaatje is a joy to read - one of the handful of writers whose books I buy in hard cover as soon as they become available.
most pleasurable read.......2007-09-28
It has been a long time since I enjoyed a book like I enjoy this one: hauntingly beautiful, precise and sensual (as if looking through a series of taciturn tableaux). For connoisseurs. Highly recommended.
Lucien Segura is not real?.......2007-09-22
The characters and events in Michael Ondaatje's novel Divisadero seem to be lingering in my mind. My only disappointment is that Lucien Segura is not a real person. I may find myself googling his name for a while.
A sophisticated meditation on intersections and divisions.......2007-09-18
There aren't many novelists whose hardcovers I preorder. Ondaatje is one of the few. If you've never read his work, you're missing out. He's a poet at heart, and the images he creates are of such haunting beauty that they will linger long after the specifics of plot have faded.
Summing up one of his novels is no easy task, so I'll just say that this is a book about intersections and divisions, about the way our lives impact and mirror one another. The language is as masterful as ever, and the characters as richly imagined.
I've read everything he's written, and so I can't help but look at this book in comparison to the others. DIVISADERO lacks some of the overwhelming passion of his earlier work. This isn't a criticism so much as an observation; the book feels like the creation of an older man, a more mature artist, who has less interest in the intensity of fire, and more in finding meaning amidst the ashes and smoke.
Book Description
This book shows how to work successfully with emotional and behavioral problems rooted in deficient early attachments. In particular, it addresses the emotional difficulties of many of the foster and adopted children living in our country who are unable t
Customer Reviews:
excellent resource.......2007-01-19
I found this book to be an excellent resource with many case examples. Very encouraging.
facliting development attavchments.......2007-01-03
THis book is excelant and was a great help we will keep this as a reference book
for proffessionals.......2006-08-14
Great book but aimed more at therapists than parents. There is a good chapter on parenting. I did think it was worthwhile though reading about the type of therapy these kids need, especially since mine is about to start therapy.
excellant resource.......2006-07-02
We have been through quite a journey so far with our newly adopted girls, 7,8. Many resources are ineffective that the special needs program gives you when you start. This book helps you understand and work through the special issues of neglected and abused children. I wish we had this book before we evedr adopted.
Facilitating Developmental Attachment: The Road to Emotional Recovery and Behavioural Change in Foster and Adopted Children.......2005-10-04
This author has shared his skills in working with children who have been damaged emotionally by being removed from their birth parents. The theories and practices he uses are well recommended to all workers who are involved with children in foster care or children who have been adopted, in particular those children who have been adopted from a different culture.
Book Description
From Alaska to Australia the word is spreading. Adoptive parents are discovering the enormous value of adoption lifebooks. But then the questions begin. Where do I start? What information should be included? Do I let my child bring it to school?
Beth O'Malley M.Ed. provides the answers to these and more. In her best selling book, LifeBooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child Beth guides you though the process, step-by-step and page by page as if she were right there with you.
Learn about the difference between a scrapbook or baby book and a lifebook. Or explaining tough truths, dealing with secrets and which pages are essential.
Newly revised 2002
Dozens of real life stories
Lists of hard-to-find lifebook resource websites
Sample pages for international and domestic
Special waiting parent section.
If you get really stuck, there are three full-length examples in the back section, including one for China adoptions.
Her life experiences as an adoptee combined with doing lifebook seminars with adoptive parents all over the country, gives Beth a special perspective on lifebooks. Most importantly, Beth has made countless lifebooks with children in her role as an adoption specialist in Massachusetts.
Beth O'Malley has helped thousands of adoptive families give their children the answers and security they crave.
This book is an indispensable guide to making your child's lifebook. You will refer to it for years to come!
Customer Reviews:
A wonderful guide to create a treasure for your child!.......2007-06-24
This is such a great book. Wonderful ideas for adopted children internationally or domestic, children of any age, foster kids. She covers everyone. She does a fantastic job sharing and guiding. This would truly be a treasure to a child. Easy read and quite enjoyable as well. Wonderful tips and ideas!!
Outstanding.......2007-02-17
This book is wonderful. It gives step by step directions on how to start a life book. It explains what it is and why they are good for the adopted child. I highly reccommend this book to all adoptive parents!
great book!.......2006-08-28
This book gives practical ideas, with examples to follow broken down into a user-friendly format for those of us who are journaling-challanged!
Perfect Book for a Foster/Adopted Child.......2006-07-03
I am currently writing my childs LifeBook. Without this book for guidance I would be lost. I am lucky enough to have a few photo's of my son at various ages from 1 month to 18 months, including one of the birthmom and him at 5 months of age. This book is helping me tell his story without my emotions getting in the way. This is truely his book and very personal.
Creating a Lifebook.......2005-09-25
This book has a lot of idea's for creating a lifebook. It will be very helpful.
Book Description
Building the Bonds of Attachment is the second edition of a critically and professionally acclaimed book for social workers, therapists, and parents who strive to assist poorly attached children. This work is a composite case study of the developmental course of one child following years of abuse and neglect. This work focuses on both the specialized psychotherapy and parenting that is often necessary in facilitating a child's psychological development and attachment security. It blends attachment theory and research, and trauma theory with general principles of both parenting and child and family therapy in developing a model for intervention. This work is a practical guide for the adult--whether professional or parent--who endeavor to help such children.
Customer Reviews:
The Single Most Helpful Book I Have Read .......2007-09-07
My husband and I adopted a 7 year old girl two years ago. Like so many well-meaning but naive new parents, we had only a vague idea of what life with a traumatized child would be like. We assumed that love, stability, structure and consistency would heal her. We were wrong. For over a year, we struggled with such ugly, mean, rejecting behaviors that I became significantly depressed... until I read Dan Hughes' book. That was the beginning of a new stage in our lives, as no one and nothing has helped us like it has. Our therapists hold Mr. Hughes in the highest regard - he is enormously respected and admired because his compassionate, beautiful ideas WORK. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children.......2007-09-03
This book is excellent for those who are wanting to understand and effectively parent those children who have suffered trauma and/or have attachment deficit no matter how small or great! A must read for foster and pre/post adoption parents.
A good companion book would be Beyond Consequences, Logic and Control which will deepen the understanding and give parents direction on how to help facilitate family relationships.
This book changed some of my fundamental assumptions.......2007-08-05
What a great book! Like so many readers, I devoured Building the Bonds of Attachment. Katie's story was so compelling, even taking into consideration that it was obviously an oversimplification of the process. I had always been aware of the challenges of parenting a chid with attachment problems, but this book opened my eyes to the possibilities for change and improvement. It seems so obvious now why traditional parenting processes (like time-outs, punishment/rewards, and even spankings) are incredibly counter-productive with children with attachment problems. This was one of the best books I've read in ages. Definite recommend.
This book is more than a book about adoption........2007-07-29
I am 25 years old and I have a 14 year old brother who is a problem child. My parents are to blame for his attachment difficulties. This book is about how to create love in your life and create attachment. It is a hopeful book and while I'm not a fostert parent or a parent at all this book is a great read and it should be required reading for everyone. It teaches harmony and love and shuns materialism. Thank You Daniel and I hope I can meet you and find a therapist like Allison. I feel this book gives one information and helps one understand what is going on around him instead of living without an understanding. I had an idea of what a therapist should be doing but I thought I was wrong because I never received warmth and compassion. Thank you Daniel. After reading this book I thought it was written by a female but I guess not. thank You Daniel.
A great book on attachment.......2007-07-09
This is a great book for understanding children with attachment disorders because it weaves the fictional story of a child with the research and clinical experience. If you are interested in attachment, I highly recommend reading anything by Daniel Hughes, and this book is a great place to start.
Amazon.com
"Some people may describe adoption as difficult; others simply describe it as different. I am inclined to think of it as complex," writes Lois Ruskai Melina in the updated, revised Raising Adopted Children: Practical, Reassuring Advice for Every Adoptive Parent.
Adoption practices have evolved considerably since this book's first publication in 1986, and the new version of the "Dr. Spock for adoptive parents" reflects the latest theories. Drawing on the findings and practices of pediatricians, social workers, scientists, and adoptive parents, Raising Adopted Children is carefully and thoroughly researched. Chapters on open adoption, international adoption, and transracial adoption are combined with advice on bonding and attachment, breast-feeding an adoptive infant (possible but complicated), dealing with schools, privacy issues, adopting a child with disabilities, adopting as a single parent, and the challenges of adolescence. While Melina's many years of professional and personal experience shape her advice, she remains very evenhanded. For example, she's a strong proponent of the "early telling" theory of adoption (being open about the adoption with the child from the beginning), but she also clearly presents other points of view, and, throughout the book, encourages parents to make decisions that feel right for them.
The text includes specific suggestions for explaining a child's birth circumstances, including common misconceptions, and a valuable discussion about whether adoptees are at greater risk for behavior problems or learning disabilities. She also provides suggestions for setting rules for contact with biological parents, easing grief, and acknowledging a child's history. A completely annotated list of selected references and resources rounds out this superior guide. --Ericka Lutz
Book Description
In this completely revised and updated edition of Raising Adopted Children, Lois Melina, editor of Adopted Children newsletter and the mother of two children by adoption, draws on the latest research in psychology,sociology, and medicine to guide parents through all stages of their child's development. Melina addresses the pressing adoption issues of today, such as open adoption, international adoption, and transracial adoption, and answers parents' most frequently asked questions, such as:
- How will my child "bond" or form attachments to me?
- When and how should I tell my child that he was adopted?
- What should schools be told about my child?
- Will adoption make adolescent upheavals more complicated?
Up-to-date, sensitive, and clear, Raising Adopted Children is the definitive resource for all adoptive parents and concerned professionals.
"Raising Adopted Children is a comprehensive source of practical, reassuring advice and intelligent support for the adoptive parent. [It is also an] excellent professional resource for social workers, physicians, teachers, therapists, and others working with adopted children and their parents."
--North American Council on Adoptable Children
"Melina, an adoptive parent, writes both sensibly and sensitively on many critical issues faced by parents and their adopted children from infancy through adolescence."
--Booklist
Customer Reviews:
Informational, Yet Flawed.......2005-10-14
I agree with the two reviwers who said that this book assumes that all people who adopt are unable to conceive, and that the book is overly "PC". In regards to infertility, the book really does heap it on about how people who can't conceive need to grieve, and may think that they won't be able to love another's child, and so on. We're not infertile, but I would be just as offended if I were. Infertility and adoption do not always go hand in hand, and I think that Melina forgets that.
I also found the writing to be hyperbolic, as in "You MUST" do this, or, my favorite "All adoptive parents" fear that their children will love their birthparents more than the adoptive parents. Use of such imperatives, "All," "must," "will," instead of more realistic words like "Many," "should/need," and "might," makes the text sound like a user's manual for computer applications.
That negative said, the book itself does contain a lot of useful information, which I haven't seen in any of my previous adoption-related readings. I would absolutely recommend it to people who are going through the adoption process. I think there are better books for people who are wondering whether or not to adopt (such as "Is Adoption for You?"), but that this book directly addresses the fears and questions for people who are about to become adoptive parents.
The number one book to get!.......2005-08-01
We are in the process of getting our home study done thru Lutheran Social Services and this is one of the "required reading" books. It is far better than any book I've purchased on adoption on my own. It takes you through every scenario. It's realistic and practical. It's also easy to read.
Disappointing........2005-05-18
Like the other posters, I too was given this book as part of our homestudy for adopting a child from China. After reading the first chapter I found myself insulted. This book assumes all who read it are adopting because they cannot get pregnant, which is not my case. While infertility is something that should not be ignored, and I appreciate the fact that most adoption books I read address the matter, this book would have been much more respectable if it did not direct its text to the reader as a person who cannot conceive. I was so insulted that I returned the book to my social worker with these concerns.
Helpful.......2005-03-14
My husband and I found this book invaluable in raising our son. There is so much information that you need to know: from dealing with varied emotions to working with your child's teachers and peers and helping them relate to the world. Should definitely be a required book for all parents of adopted children.
Excellent and should be required for prospective adoptives.......2004-10-01
So many adoptive parents lose sight of the fact that adoption exists to provide loving homes for children, NOT to provide them, an infertile couple, with a child. Even the happiest adopted child, in the very best of circumstances, will have certain issues throughout their life and their parents should be prepared to deal with these and answer questions. For far too long adoption has been a secretive practice and everyone has assumed that the process itself ended when the court papers were signed. It's a lifetime adjustment and education like this will help ease the concerns of all three members of the adoption triad - birthparents, adoptives, and adoptees. How I wish my adoptive parents had had something like this to read. They did so many insensitive things that were so hurtful. Should be required reading for everyone planning to adopt.
Customer Reviews:
remarkable insights.......2007-10-06
I don't know how I missed this book for more than a decade, but it is still timely and insightful, explaining many things about the adoptee's experience which didn't make sense when trying to analyze the experience emotionally or intellectually. A must read for any member of the adoption triad.
Primal Wound.......2007-08-13
I feel that this is a must read for everybody adoptee, birth parent and adoptive parent and ever those that were just given away.
Self-Knowledge and Rehabilitation.......2007-07-25
Reading this book is like peering through a window into the secret inner life of the adoptee, which makes it an excellent book both for adoptees and for those who are close to them. Since some of the issues Verrier addresses in this book are common to many people who were not adopted, such as people who were placed in incubators at birth or people who grew up with alcoholic parents, this is also an excellent book for people outside of the book's target audience. In very accessible language Verrier argues that much of the perplexing and often maladjusted and maladjustive behaviour exhibited by adoptees is caused by the trauma they suffered upon separation from their birth mothers. According to Verrier, the effects of that trauma are made worse by the fact that, for the most part, those effects are unrecognized not only by society as a whole, but also by the adoptees themselves. Adoptees whose trauma goes unrecognized are not able to grieve the loss of their birth mothers, which leaves them alone to struggle with the potentially debilitating issues that arise from their unresolved grief. One of the most important functions this book performs is to acknowledge and thereby validate the often silent suffering of adoptees, which may then allow adoptees to begin the process of healing both themselves and their relationships with others. This process begins with the recognition of Verrier's critical insight into the fact that adoptive families are very different from biological ones, and may proceed not only with the help of some of the practical suggestions Verrier puts forward in this book, but also with the help of her more in-depth study of the same issues in the sequel to this book, _Coming Home to Self: The Adopted Child Grows Up_. For anybody who is interested in reading more about the false selves that Verrier says adoptees often live with, I highly recommend R. D. Laing's _The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness_. Similarly, for anybody who is interested in reading more about the significance of the family for one's sense of one's own identity, and about the significance of one's relationships with others more generally, I highly recommend chapter four of John Russon's _Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life_.
The Primal Wound.......2007-04-24
The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child
I lost count on how many times I said "Just like me" while reading this book.
It should be a required read for any prospective adoptive parent and for all who councel adoptee's and their adopters. Any adoptee who cannot see themselves and how they sometimes feel and behave in this book are in deep denial!
Thanks for the insight! I'm not crazy, I'm adopted! Whew!!
THE BIBLE FOR ADOPTEES!.......2007-02-17
THIS BOOK HITS EVERYTHING ABOUT ADOPTION 100% ON THE HEAD! I CAN'T READ IT IN IT'S ENTIRETY, BUT IS THE BEST PIECE OF WORK OUT THERE!!!
THANK YOU!
GABI532
Book Description
Like Passages, this groundbreaking book uses the poignant, powerful voices of adoptees and adoptive parents to explore the experience of adoption and its lifelong effects. A major work, filled with astute analysis and moving truths.
Customer Reviews:
Somewhat painful to read.......2007-08-02
Although this book has some very good information, I might suggest reading
it after you have adopted your child/children. It's a bit like hearing all of the very difficult parts of raising children at the same time. It was pretty overwhelming campared to many of the other books out there.
A Great Developmental View of the Adoptee's Life.......2006-06-27
If you want a general idea of what you might expect to experience from the womb to the tomb (as an adoptee), this is the book for you. I always quote Drs. Brodzinsky and Schechter when I speak. One of the most profound things they say is that adoption loss for the child is more profound than death or divorce. Yea for the doctors--if more people would only listen to their wisdom and begin seeing adoption through the eyes of adoptees. A must-have for your adoption library.
Excellent resource for all members of the adoption triad.......2004-10-01
Thank goodness people are finally admitting that adoption, even if you had a great experience, still brings with it certain issues. Adoptive parents should read books like this to understand that their adopted child has special needs - so many adoptives take it as a personal affront if their child decides to search for birthparents, or even asks about them. For birthparents, it's affirmation of their loss (even if it was the best decision they felt they could make) and understanding of their surrendered child's feelings. Should be required reading for prospective adoptive parents
Okay, but repeat of many other better books.......2004-05-19
This was the third book I read as I began my search for my birth mother. It was repetative from other help books on searching and adoption and since I did not experience any negative feelings all my life from being adopted, I can't say that I can relate at all to some of the comments, stories, etc. It does have some good points though for helping in the search process.
A compassionate book for adoptees, birth and adoptive parent.......2003-09-19
I am not an adoptee but I can imagine that I would have experienced the unique stages the authors describe of adoptees as they grow up and try to cope with their past. I like the compassionate but also dispassionate tone of the authors as they lay out their balanced view of adoption, enlightening not only adoptees but also the general public. It is good, too, that the authors point out not all adoptees feel the same way, that some are greatly troubled by their adoption while others are less concerned about their past. A good book for everyone to learn from.
Gisela Gasper Fitzgerald, author of ADOPTION: An Open, Semi-Open or Closed Practice?
Customer Reviews:
When You Were Born in Vietnam: A Memory Book for Children Adopted from Vietnam.......2007-10-13
Helpful to me as a future parent of a child from Vietnam and I can't wait to share it with my child when he's old enough. Help's demonstrate what the experience was like for child and will be like for prospective parents.
Excellent, excellent book.......2007-03-08
This is the most interesting and informative book I've seen yet dealing with adoptions through Vietnam. A very thorough book that has the most striking photos. Of course I had to take a number of small breaks to keep from tearing up too much when I read it out loud to my three boys. If you are adopting from Vietnam, this is the book you want.
As an adoptive parent..........2006-09-02
If you only buy one book for your child about their birth culture - this is it (my advice goes for the When You Were Born in China and Korea books as well). Why? The stories we will tell our children, even their life books will be told with some emotion and our memory behind them. Though life books are tailored to their specific start in life and are meant to be purely informational for our children (as opposed to emotion based), the reality is that it is hard to keep from editorializing it and acting as the "color commentator." This book does what we can't do and does it in a broad fashion. When we were on the journey to our oldest child in China my husband gave me the When You Were Born in China book and of all the books I'd bought or received during our wait, that was the one that was never far from my mind because it told the story of our journey. I love this book because it brings to life for our children the story of how they forever became part of our family.
If you are reading this review because you know someone adopting from Vietnam, you will not regret buying this book for them, it's truly a treasure. If you are reading this because you are in the process of adopting from Vietnam, congratulations - there is truly no experience or journey quite like the one you are on. This book will not only mark your journey, but it is a great thing to take with you on your adoption trip. We took our oldest daughter's book with us to China and had the director of her orphanage sign it as a way to celebrate and remember where she had come from and a person who had been a part of her life in China.
Faces of Adoption.......2002-01-29
I totally recommend this book! The pictures are lovely, and the text is excellent (best for ages 6 and up, although can be para-phrased for those younger). The pictures put clear images into my mind's eye, images that had been absent prior to reading this book. Further, seeing the orphanges and the caretakers, not to mention the beautiful children, have allowed me to visualize more clearly where my daughter will soon come from.
I highly recommend this book to all, whether in the process of adopting, having already adopted or simply interested in a good, hearwarming read. You won't be disappointed!
Good, but too complicated for small children.......2002-01-03
This is a very good book and I recommend it for anyone adopting from Vietnam. We will be adopting our baby in a few months and it reflects everything we have learned about our process so far. Also, if for no other reason, buy this book for the beautiful photographs.
BUT, and this is a big BUT, this book is not something you can sit down and read a toddler or even have a first or second grade student read through. It's fairly long (44 pages) and has complicated enough words that I would guess it's at a third or fourth grade reading level. Believe it or not, this book was actually best suited for educating our relatives unfamiliar with how Vietnamese adoptions work. I would love to see the authors write a related book (with fewer pages and simpler words) that I can read to my child when he/she will be at pre-school level.
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