Status Updates From Upside Down: Understanding ...

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“ in order to parent them effectively you have to quit caring about what others may think and care only about what is best for the child. That’s hard to do as a first time RAD parent and I think that’s why so many disrupt. Hard enough to have your child not love you, but then you have others judging you, too, it’s just too much for many.”

“ it really isn’t experience where you learn about God‘s love for us though, because it is often years of loving them with no love in return. other dogs give them attention, it only makes it worse and prevents them from attaching to the parents longer. So many parents, though, feel so judged as they try to parent these kids.”

“ my friends,adoption is redemption. It’s costly, exhausting, expensive, and outrageous. Buying back lives costs so much. When God set out to redeem us, it killed Him.”

“What you are doing is not easy. But you are doing a good job. And it will be worth it.”

“unloading on a friend is tough because, “well (shrug), you signed up for this. That’s like lecturing a friend on “signing up” for the side effects of chemotherapy. The path is tiresome, but worth it, and we still appreciate dear friends to bear the burden alongside us.”

“behaviors – lying, stealing, peeing and pooping (in all the wrong places!), hoarding food, mumbling, throwing homework out the bus window – guarantee an argument and so, the adoptee believes, “my heart is protected from further pain.”

“For your child struggling with attachment, attention from other adults is often like giving sugar to a diabetic child... Affectionate interaction from other adults is poisonous, but when it comes from their parents, it is their medicine. If other adults give them attention though, it often prevents them from taking the medicine from their parents.”