Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft

I just finished this book and thought I’d highlight some of the things I learned.

1. This book is a good resource even for “experienced” parents.
Early deprivation, lack of nurture & stimulation, malnutrition & other problems related to neglect can greatly affect an infant’s growth & development.
A child adopted as a toddler needs a parent who understands both his developmental needs & the effect of his early life experiences on that development.
Let’s face it…an adopted toddler will have different needs and will require a different parenting strategy than biological children.

2. Toddlers grieve to.
Unfortunately many people don’t believe toddlers are capable of realizing loss. As painful as it is, it is absolutely essential to support their loss. Regression is perfectly normal and will often help with attachment.

3. Attachment
Parents must recreate the attachment cycle, beginning where the child is developmentally, not chronologically.
Recreating attachment is an intrusive process and begins with differentiating between a toddlers needs and a toddlers wants.

4. First things first
Toddlers often arrive home with behaviors that the parents would like to change. But, if we try to change all of these behaviors at once, we spend our entire time disciplining rather than just enjoying. A child who is constantly corrected quickly learns to tune out authority figures. Just take it one day at a time and change the things that HAVE to be changed right now…let the little things go for a while.

Basically I felt this book made some really good points about behaviors of adopted toddlers. While I have raised 2 toddlers already, I know there will be differences between my biological girls and our newest daughter. And even though we have requested AYAP, I still felt this book was important to read as, at some point, our daughter will be a toddler. I would definitely recommend at least checking it out at the local library.