20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed..Discover the Unique Need of Your Adopted Child and Become the Best Parent You Can

by Sherrie Eldridge

This book is PURE ENCOURAGEMENT for adoptive parents! Most adoptive parents don't know that their child has a different "heart language" than theirs. They need a translator, which Sherrie Eldridge becomes in her new book. In her groundbreaking first book, Twenty Things Adopted Kids Wish Their Adoptive Parents Knew , Sherrie Eldridge gave voice to the very real concerns of adopted children, whose unique perspectives offered unprecedented insight. In this all-new companion volume, Eldridge goes beyond those insights and shifts her focus to parents, offering them much-needed encouragement and hope.

Genres: Adoption, Parenting, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

For well over two decades, Sherrie Eldridge has offered her unique voice within the adoption community, as an established author and international speaker. An adoptee herself, Eldridge has the ability to see life through the eyes of an adopted child. In her seven published titles, she has shared her passion for validating adoptees’ life experiences and her desire to help adoptive parents better understand and meet their adopted children’s emotional needs.

Reviews

[Ellie Sorota · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another half-star adoption book. Eldridges organization is very helpful, and she offers lots of practical suggestions throughout her book. Each chapter tackles a topic and then gives age-appropriate suggestions. For example, in regards to bonding she suggests holding infants close and tight to your chest until they relax, as it is common for adopted infants to arch their backs and resist relaxing, thereby inhibiting infant bonding, she then follows with bonding suggestions for childhood years, teenage years, and adult years. This one positive, however, does not outweigh the many negatives.

Now having a handful of adoption books under my belt it is clear that a negative cloud hangs over most adoption writers. Whereas pregnancy books include the negative possibilities, problems and concerns that weigh on every expectant mother, these are balanced and often outweighed by purely objective information. In other words, pregnancy books generally read "Expectant mothers should consume the appropriate number of calories through a well-balanced diet to provide their babies with a healthy foundation." If an adoption writer tackled the same sentence it would read: "Any deviation from the appropriate number of calories, or indulgence in anything beyond nutritional superfoods will most likely result in a deformed, emotionally-stunted, anger-ridden child. This result will be irreversible and completely, totally your fault."

This is to say, that this adoption book, like so many others, tries to address your concerns about adoption with factoids like "When your adopted child questions their very existence and becomes suicidal..." Wha...What? First of all, I am not convinced from what I've read that every adopted child will question their existence, nor as adoption books suggest, is this a question confined to adoptees alone. In fact, self-understanding/identity is a natural mulling of the adolescent mind. Nor does it result in suicidal thinking. Are adopted kids more likely to commit suicide? Currently no report exists to confirm this fear. And this leads me to my main complaint about adoption books.

Primarily, adoption books are written from fear rather than celebration. And these fears are largely all of the made-up, out-of-proportion fears of adopting parents, not actual research. There is so much that must go wrong in order for an adoption to be possible (ill-equipped parents, unplanned pregnancies, infertility, relatives who reject a child rather than taking him in, failed foster families, etc.) that the mindset of adoption seems to be "What else will go wrong" rather than moving ahead in a right direction.

Although this book is titled "20 Things Adoptive Parents Need to Succeed" it's main points were:
1. Don't expect your child to love you (although they might come around after you're dead), and
2. Adoption is the worst thing that will happen to your child - nevermind sin, death, health, deciding on a career, succeeding in school, making friends, making enemies, etc. (in other words, all the other things your child will endure in the course of his life), none of these other life experiences will overshadow adoption in his life. He will wrestle with it until the day he dies.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy it. It certainly may be true for some, but I highly doubt that an adopted child who breaks his arm is going to think, "Well, just something else in my life going wrong - goes back to the day I was born." Geeze, I guess if that's true then adopted kids are an unusual pool of philosophers.

[Shannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful book from the perspective of an adopted child. Sherrie Eldridge discusses the reasons behind an adopted child's "atypical" behaviors (due to grieving, trauma, adjustments) as well as advice for successful parenting and how to respond. I was a bit turned off by all the "doomsday" emphasis on how an adopted child is painfully wounded for life even while in the womb, and her own narrative is a bit unsettling--her parents NEVER realized that they were successful? She NEVER embraced them with the blessed assurance that she loved them, the way she does now in her books? And must she insist to her adoptive parent friends that they might NEVER hear their children say, "I love you"? That's grim.

But on the upside, she does not shy away from a very unpopular reality that adopted children DO grapple with their traumatic pasts, that some never fully come to accept what had happened to them, and that for many, there is a lingering curiosity about their birth families. It has nothing to do with their adopted parents, but rather a need to know their own origin. This book is relevant, I think especially, for people who are adopting infants, as much of the novel is channeled toward how to explain to a child that he/she is adopted, reminding him/her of their birth families, etc. People looking to adopt older children, especially children in foster care, who are fully aware that they are adopted, will glean from her suggestions on nurturing (beautiful passage about shepherding the heart of a wounded child), but would also benefit from finding a book specifically targeting their needs. Good book, but, with all things, take with a grain of salt.

[Emily Newman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked: Hmm, not much. A few reminders that some problems need spiritual solutions, and some general good common-sense stuff that you could easily find better presented in other books (The Connected Child would be my first recommendation.)

Didn't like: Negativity about adoption. The author has a lot of negative personal experiences related to adoption and tends to assume that every child who has been adopted will have the same intensely negative experiences, even though adoptive practices have come so very far in the +-60 years since the author was adopted. Also, the suggested activities seemed random (object lessons with no clear translation) and not age-appropriate.

[Charlotte Gross · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is not great, and I would not recommend to any adoptive parents I know or any friends wanting to adopt. As other point out, this author very much takes the stance of:
- Adoption being a “horrible traumatic crisis” that will impede on a persons life forever and nothing else will be good.
- Adoptive children are broken people who need to grieve constantly.

The author also says that this book is “anecdotal and research-based” however the last time I checked citing four facts from a study and then telling your audience to “go read more”, without applying this facts to any of your anecdotes does not equate to a research-based book.

I find it disheartening that this author makes it seem as if adoptive parents are always going to be miserable and that their adoptive children need the fact that they were adopted shoved down their throat and in their face daily. If my adoptive child were to express a liking for Mexican food I don’t think my first response would me “Maybe your birth mom or dad liked Mexican!” as the author suggests. And when your child tells you they don’t want to talk about their adoption I find it concerning that this author tells you to continue to push them.

Perhaps it is the age of the book (almost 10 years at the time of my review), but the author’s stance on how rare adoption is and the research she uses are all very outdated.

There are far better books on adoption out there, skip this one.

[Jordan B · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to stop reading. too much of this framed adoptive children as inherently unhealthy compared to birth children. I understand that adopted kids might have different emotional needs than children you birth yourself but kids that stay in their birth families can have emotional issues too! I wish I hadn't started with this book because it paints such a bleak outlook on adoption. Between the constant reminder that your kid might never love you and that adoption is synonymous with grief forever, full stop, it's hard to understand why the author also thinks adoption is beautiful. It seems to me that when she occasionally peppers in that she's pro-adoption, the rest of her content is not influenced by this.

All I wanted was a crumb of optimism based in reality in regards to adoption and there was none to be had here.

[Mary Rachel Fenrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked it okay, didn’t love. Had I read this before we adopted our daughter 8 years ago, I might have been scared out of adoption entirely. As some other reviewers have mentioned, the author seems to have a somewhat “gloom and doom” approach to adoption. I know that my daughter experienced trauma prior to her adoption and still continues to deal with some hard things related to adoption. I also agree completely with the idea of honoring her story and her birth family and letting her share all of her feelings without condemnation. However, overall she is a happy and healthy child, and I don’t believe that success can be defined in the terms the author lists in the book anyway. Also, some of the examples of things she says to do at the end of each chapter were a little cheesy and “out there”.

[Colby · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you have enough patience, you will mine things from this book that can help you, put you at ease and make your life as an adoptive parent more understandable for yourself, your child and others.

But man. Had I read this before I adopted my first rather than after I adopted my second, I would have been terrified.

An inordinate (and unhealthy) amount of the discourse is devoted to problems your child will have. Not COULD have—WILL have. Drugs, suicide, social issues, development issues, intimacy issues, anger, fear, rebellion, hatred—yes, they are all possibilities. FOR EVERY CHILD. This is not somehow unique to adoption, and it’s not the certainty it’s painted as here.

So much of this process is already rooted in fear and anxiety. This book provokes more.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author made great points about what to expect. She did constantly address that not every child will go through these problems. It is important to know what could happen. If you don't like the book because you think that the author may have some hidden unresolved problems and can't see how these issues may or may not affect you, then you are not ready to adopt or be a parent.

[Rachel Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very insightful, and offers an honest opinion on how to raise children who have been adopted. As an adoptee myself, there were many moments where I finally felt understood and heard. Like I wasn’t alone or crazy. It made me wish my parents had had this knowledge while I was growing up. A definite must read!

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

An eye opener about the issues related to adoption, so many things I had not really thought deeply about before. Very clear, helpful format in chapters with topic information, group discussion questions, child points of view. Would recommend.

Pop sugar reading challenge 2021- a book about a social justice issue

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

A helpful toolkit written by a adopted person, Sherrie Eldridge's book closes every chapter with hands on activities that you can do to build the emotional vocabulary of adopted children and unpack the challenges of adopted families. Useful and highly applicable. I read a copy from the library and plan to get one to keep on the shelf at home.

[Josh Hamon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I appreciated the layers in this book. The adopted's perspective at multiple life stages, the perspective the adoptive parents of different backgrounds and the human aspect that sometimes we don't fit into the statistic.

[Jodee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this helpful with an adopted teen who spent many years in foster care.

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall I liked the book. However, it suffers from the same problem as almost all of the other adoption books I've read thus far: the book attempts to cover too much information. I feel like I have a lot of preparation to do to become an adoptive parent and I want to really dig into some scenarios and advice about various challenges. This book covers 20 different topics and offers very few details about each of the topics.

It did provide food for thought, just not enough meat. My favorite part was the suggestion to have a grief box for your child as a way to acknowledge the pain she/he has suffered and hopefully heal from it. I copied that section from the book and hope to find better, more detailed advice from the next adoption book.

[Meagan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm glad that the chapters are short in this book. None of the chapters delves deep but each offers an introduction to issues. There's a little too much touchy-feely in this book at times. I also dislike that so many adoption books make it sound like parenting adopted kids will be overwhelmingly hard every day. Parenting any kid is challenging but also brings joy. People who only have adopted children should not think that their struggles are always due to adoption.

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

I preferred this book to the author's first. A lot more hope and a lot less doom and gloom. I don't relate to a lot of these visual metaphor imagery the author uses, but overall there is a lot of concrete, practical advice. A lot of reference to other useful resources as well. Only one Webster's dictionary reference in this book... So significant progress there.

[Alyssa · Rating 2 out of 5]

If you're going to read one book on adoption, this certainly is NOT it. She was adopted, and has adopted grandchild(ren?), but beyond that it doesn't seem she has much expertise. I found the tone patronizing, the hypothetical situations she put forward extreme (you may die before your child tells you they love you, but they do . . .?), and the helpful bits only occasional.

[Handora · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was a very informative book about adoption, and I learned a lot. But it's not really an enjoyable book for someone who does not like to connect things to faith... So, I am glad that I finished reading.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and helpful title to help adoptive parents with children of all ages.

[Anna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mushy, touchy-feely, full or jargon, lots of complex analogies. You'd think, with a title like this, that it would be succinct. Nope.

[Tom Panning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Practical information, but also a lot of pulling on your heart strings.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Honestly, it didn't tell me anything that I'm not learning in my MAPP training, I ended up skimming most of it. Maybe I'll take another look once I have a child, we'll see.

[Elise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay. Better than her other.

[Marian · Rating 2 out of 5]

As my daughter would say: "meh".

[Brent Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was focused heavily on the challenges of international adoption and on things women who adopt may feel. It also felt quite schmaltzy at times. There were some topics that were applicable to my situation, but not enough that I'd recommend this book widely.