From the Back Cover: The story began like a dream...

A child is born with all the possibilities of a bright future. Nearby, a loving family waits for the son they have always dreamed of. When they become a family through adoption, little league, playdates, birthday parties and college scholarships all seem within the grasp of this all-American family.
But when the fairy tale ended...

The family realizes their precious child is struggling with the most basic developmental milestones, and they vow to love him more. However, the truth of their son’s condition is something that even the strongest family could not undo. His brain has been damaged by alcohol before he was even born. Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is the leading cause of birth defects and developmental disabilities in the United States… and there is no cure.
One family’s powerful story of faith began.

The fight to advocate for their adopted son in a world that did not understand left this family feeling exhausted and hopeless. The isolation of their reality almost destroyed their marriage and their family, until they found strength in a community they never knew existed. They found families that were struggling too. They stepped out of isolation and together they found faith and hope once again.

---

About the Author: Kristin Barry is the former foster mom to 22 children, mom of 8 fantastic children (all of whom were adopted), mother-in-law to two fine young men, and grandmother to the cutest little granddaughter on earth. She has been married to Mike since college, and together they write and speak for confessionsofanadoptiveparent.com, a ministry they started after two of their sons were diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).

---

By the Same Author: The Adoptive Parent Tooolbox: Insights and Stories for the Journey (with Mike Berry; 2016, Lulu.com).

From the Dust Jacket: RUSSIA 1990: A boy named Vanya, afflicted with cerebral palsy, is born prematurely. Eighteen months later, he is abandoned by his mother and sent to a bleak orphanage: called Baby House 10. And so the nightmare begins...

This is the story of John Lahutsky, the boy from Baby House 10, whose childhood—but not his will to survive—was cruelly taken away from him. Once inside the state-run orphanage, he entered a nightmare world he was not to leave for more than eight years.

Confined to one room with a group of silent children, he was ignored by most of the staff and labeled an “imbecile” and “ineducable” by the authorities. He was consigned, for a time, to a mental asylum, where he lived in a high-sided, iron-barred crib, lying in a pool of his own waste, on a locked ward surrounded by screaming children and psychotic adults. But even these dire surroundings didn’t destroy the spirit of this remarkable little boy. Vanya grew into an intellectually curious, verbally complex youngster who reached out to everyone around him.

The first person he touched was a young Russian woman named Vika. The second was Sarah, the wife of a British journalist who was living in Russia. They both knew instantly that Vanya was no ordinary child and had been cruelly misdiagnosed. Immediately, they began a campaign to find him a home. After many twists, turns, and false starts, Vanya came to the attention of a single woman living in the United States named Paula Lahutsky. After a lot of red tape and more than one miracle, Paula adopted Vanya, brought him to the United States, and gave him a home of his own. It was there, in his new home, in a different country, that Vanya started his new life and embraced a new name—John—the English translation of Vanya. John Lahutsky is now an honor-roll student at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and a member of both the Boy Scouts of America and the Order of the Arrow, the BSA’s national honor society. In The Boy from Baby House 10, Alan Philps helps John Lahutsky tell his story, the inspiring true-life saga of a small boy with a big heart and an unquenchable will to survive that will be an inspiration to everyone who reads it.

---

About the Author: Alan Philps is an experienced foreign correspondent who has worked for Reuters and The Daily Telegraph, UK. He lives in London with his wife, Sarah.

John Lahutsky is a high school student who lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with his mother.

How do you fix something that can’t be changed? What happens when helping a broken little boy tears you apart? And when can letting go help you hold on? Breaking Me Whole is the story of how one mother grappled with all of these questions. An arduous adoption journey to bring her son home had left the family financially drained. The discovery of their new little boy’s history of abuse, neglect and mountain of medical and special needs was daunting. The process of building up a broken little boy was completely tearing a mother apart. And what she hoped would ultimately heal them both—love—proved to be cruelly elusive. This is the true story of one little boy’s triumph over a multitude of injustices and one mother’s journey to help him get there while venturing on an unexpected journey of her own.

Grace Layton had just finished her freshman year in college when she was stricken with polio. It was 1950, five years before the polio vaccine, and the disease was merciless, leaving her a quadriplegic. Brimming Over tells the story not only of her disease and the painful, frightening short-term recovery, but of the life that unfolded after the disease. Layton went on to marry and adopt nine non-white children, each with a physical or emotional handicap. The book recounts the early efforts of her and husband, Dave Sandness, to establish independence; of the greeting card business she established by drawing charcoal illustrations using her mouth; of several moves the family made around the country; and of the trials, tribulations and joys of raising nine children, each with their own distinct personality.

From the Publisher: On the day Aaron brought five-year-old Jon into his life, a foster child abandoned by a drug-addicted mother, Aaron was an orphan of sorts himself, estranged from the deeply religious parents who for years regarded him, their gay son, as some freak of nature, an abomination in God’s eyes. Once treasured as their gifted male firstborn, he had endured their criticism and condemnation, their bribes and entreaties to forsake the path to what they called a lonesome and wasted life. Finally he cut them off, and with his life partner resolved to create a new family.

Adopting Jon was the way.

A memoir that reads like fiction, Bringing Him Home traces the gay couple’s fifteen-year ordeal parenting a youngster with extraordinary disabilities: the psychological fallout of early emotional neglect, plus Attention Deficit Disorder more severe than doctors had ever seen. The story follows Aaron’s journey from the joy of bringing home one beautiful boy, to the disheartening frustration coping with the child’s intractable defiance, to the ultimate devastation when they could no longer co-exist under one roof.

Despite the emotional toll, the couple shepherded Jon through boarding schools, mental hospitals, doctors and counselors and juvenile hall. They brought to him an unwavering commitment and loyalty that challenged the homophobic grandfather’s belief that homosexuals live lonely and wasted lives.

In Bringing Him Home, three generations wrestle with dashed dreams and the fundamental powerlessness parents face with their children. It is a story of how and why parents love their kids as they do, and how expectations of a child, when rigid and ill-fitting, fuel the deepest unhappiness in both generations.

A tale of reconciliation and reunion, love and acceptance, Bringing Him Home celebrates the triumph of an open heart over ancient prejudice.

---

About the Author: Aaron Cooper, Ph.D., is a Harvard-educated writer and clinical psychologist with The Family Institute at Northwestern University. He is the author of the award-winning parenting book, I Just Want My Kids To Be Happy: Why You Shouldn’t Say It, Why You Shouldn’t Think It, What You Should Embrace Instead (Late August Press, 2008). His work has appeared in the Off the Rocks anthology (Newtown Writers, 2005) and on BigUglyReview.com. Bringing Him Home won first place in the 2008 Indie Excellence Book Awards (gay-lesbian category).

From the Dust Jacket: The U.S. surgeon general and the American Medical Association recently stated that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption for a woman during pregnancy—a fact unknown in 1971 when Michael Dorris became one of the first unmarried men in the United States to legally adopt a very young child, as affectionate Sioux Indian he named Adam. At the time, little was revealed about Adam’s past, except that his biological mother had died of alcohol poisoning.

The past two decades have been a time of alarming discovery about FAS, both for the growing Dorris family (through the single-parent adoption of two more infants, and a 1981 marriage to write Louise Erdrich, which has produced three more children) and for the international medical community.

Findings about the genetic and cultural causes of FAS—and the enormous scope of the problem (thousands of physically and behaviorally impaired children born each year)—parallel one father’s unceasing battle to solve his eldest son’s developing health and learning problems. The Broken Cord is the inspiring story of a family confronted with a problem with no solution and the first book for the general reader that describes the tragedy and lifelong blight of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

---

About the Author: Michael Dorris is a professor at Dartmouth College, and a member of the Modoc tribe. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife/collaborator, Louise Erdrich, a novelist and poet, and their children. He is the author of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

---

By the Same Author: Paper Trail (1994, HarperCollins).

Broken Hearts, Wounded Minds provides an exciting, new and comprehensive look at attachment disorder, including the latest research findings on the psychological functioning of severely traumatized children and the effectiveness of attachment therapy. This book is aimed primarily at professionals in this field, but also provides an invaluable resource for any parents dealing with their own children’s issues surrounding attachment disorder.

Broken Spirits Lost Souls provides a rare, valuable look at a silent yet potentially deadly problem plaguing families today, Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Children born into crisis or ambivalence are vulnerable to attachment disturbances because the roots of this horrendous disorder occur when basic life enhancing needs of newborns and infants go unnoticed or unmet. Consequently, children who are victims of early neglect or trauma are at grave risk. The candid stories in Broken Spirits~Lost Souls, told by parents of disturbed youngsters, paint a clear picture of their chilling, dangerous behavior. Attachment disorder may be demonstrated by out-of-control children as young as three years old. By their teens, these kids predictably defy authority and challenge every accepted familial and societal norm. At their best, individuals with RAD represent the embryonic stages of an antisocial personality, at their worst they are full-blown psychopaths consumed by the search for another victim. RAD is not a rare phenomenon and is primarily preventable through early identification and by employing simple, sound parenting skills.

From the Publisher: With the unmistakable authority of a clinician, Dan Hughes builds a stirring story around the composite figure of Katie--a fragmented, tormented, isolated little girl in foster care whose terror, shame, rage and despair drive her to deeds like lacing the family hamburger with her own feces--in order to expose the tragedy of the attachment-impaired child. The author also affirms and demonstrates the possibility of transformative intervention. Allison is the confident, compassionate, and controversial therapist who diagnoses and treats Katie’s profound attachment disorder. Jackie is the therapeutic foster mother who fights to create a lasting bond with Katie by applying Allison’s blend of affective attunement and effective discipline. Dr. Hughes speaks in both popular and clinical voices as he animates Katie’s demoralizing but eventually reparative odyssey through more homes than any child should have to live in, drawing on his decades of experience with foster and adopted youngsters, their families, and the professionals who support them. Building the Bonds of Attachment: Awakening Love in Deeply Troubled Children is richly webbed with commentary on the dynamics of that odyssey, and also on the separate and tandem roles of case manager, therapist, and parent-surrogate.

---

About the Author: Daniel A. Hughes, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in Waterville, Maine, where he specializes in child abuse and neglect, attachment, foster care, and adoption. He provides consultation to family services programs and also to therapists, case managers, and parents struggling with the treatment of attachment deficits in children. Dr. Hughes is the author of Facilitating Developmental Attachment: The Road to Emotional Recovery and Behavioral Change in Foster and Adopted Children.

From the Publisher: What happens after a single Baha’i woman adopts three children from the Republic of Buryatia in Siberia? Follow the challenges of the author and her family in this sequel to Siberian Pearls: A Buryat Journey. Starting life in a Siberian orphanage presents difficulties for all the children and for their first-time mom, who hopes that her experience as a psychologist will help her cope with each child’s special needs. With humor, candor, and a drive to find information to help her family, the author describes the demands of rural family life in both America and Siberia, single parenting, remarriage, multiculturalism, special education, and mental health problems in children, including ADHD, Tourette’s syndrome, learning disabilities, and reactive attachment disorder. How does prejudice affect adoptive families? What can Buryat culture teach us? Can all problems be cured with love? Some of the answers might surprise you.

---

By the Same Author: Siberian Pearls: A Buryat Journey (2005).

From the Dust Jacket: Camille’s Children is a warm and moving story of two people who found love together and wanted to share it with children who are mentally or physically disabled. They adopted thirty-one children, many with Down’s Syndrome. Children who were once destined to live out their lives in hospitals or institutions. Be prepared, when you read Camille’s Children you may change your ideas about parenting, kids, commitment, and the handicapped.

“I’m not a caretaker. I’m a mother, and what matters to me is that I matter in the life of a child.” Every day. Camille Geraldi demonstrates just how much a mother’s love, wisdom, and discipline matter. She will tell you. “This is what mothers do.” But have most mothers lived through 72 surgeries? Tied 26 pairs of shoes? Wiped 31 noses? Ordered 12 pizzas? Or bought 8 gallons of milk in one week?

That’s not all Camille has done. She founded the Up With Down’s Syndrome Foundation, a non-profit organization which now has a full-time staff and 350 volunteers. And in the midst of it all, there’s Camille, directing her troops with military efficiency and tending to the children with unfailing devotion.

Author Carol Burris saw Camille on 60 Minutes and was moved to write her story. Burris wrote the book in the first person so we could hear Camille’s own voice and is contributing her royalties to the Foundation.

Experts state that the incidence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is four times greater among adopted children than in the general population. This book, written specifically for adoptive parents, offers eloquent but practical advice about ADHD. In addition to providing concrete, inventive advice about behavior management, medication, and diet, Can’t You Sit Still? provides a message of hope.

From the Publisher: Children who have been abused can heal. In this book, the Razvis share what they have learned about how to care for children who have been abused. They have helped six of their adopted children conquer trauma and become healthy: physically, mentally, and emotionally. This is their personal story. Publisher’s Note: It strongly recommended to purchase this book’s companion workbook, Trigger Journal, which is also published by Conquered By Love Ministries.

---

About the Author: Imran and Tami Razvi are the parents of 11 children (four birth children and seven adopted children). In their dozens of parenting books they teach the unique, practical parenting techniques which make their family so unified. Their adoption books share the skills for healing traumatized children that have helped their family overcome seemingly impossible challenges.

From the Back Cover: In the first book of its kind, experts describe how to help people with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. A summary of recent findings and recommendations is presented by the team who conducted the largest study ever done on people of all ages with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and Fetal Alcohol Effects. Twenty-two experts from the fields of human services, education, and criminal justice respond by describing their solutions to this problem of a birth defect that targets the brain and has lifelong consequences.

Some of the most crippling secondary disabilities that people with FAS/FAE face include mental health problems, disrupted school experience, inappropriate sexual behavior, trouble with the law, alcohol and drug problems, difficulty caring for their children, and homelessness.

This book acknowledges the diverse and multifaceted needs of people with FAS/FAE across the lifespan. It will be valuable for parents and the many professionals working with people with FAS/FAE.

---

About the Author: Ann Streissguth is professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. An international expert and pioneer in research on fetal alcohol syndrome, she has worked for more than twenty years with FAS patients.

Jonathan Kanter is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Washington who has served as a research consultant and an advocate for patients with FAS.

From the Dust Jacket: Most children fall into five basic personality types that stem from inborn physical characteristics: the sensitive child, the self-absorbed child, the defiant child, the inattentive child, and the active/aggressive child. Stanley Greenspan, M.D., is the first to show parents how to match their parenting to the challenges of their particular child. He identifies and vividly describes these five universal temperaments and then, with great empathy, shows parents how each of these children actually experiences the world and how to use daily child-rearing to enhance an individual child’s strengths and talents.

A profoundly optimistic book, The Challenging Child reassures parents that they do not have simply to “live with” or adjust to their child’s temperament, but that by creating new parenting patterns based on the child’s characteristics, they can help the child overcome behavior problems and develop his or her emotional and intellectual capacities to the fullest. Parents will learn how to spot personality differences in the earliest years, and also how to build relationships that nourish growth from the start.

“As parents,” writes Dr. Greenspan, “we are not the cause, but we can be the solution.”

---

About the Author: Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics at the George Washington University Medical School and a practicing child psychiatrist. He is also a supervising child psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute in Washington, D.C. “One of the leading child psychiatrists of our time” (T. Berry Brazelton), he was previously Chief of the Mental Health Study Center and Director of the Clinical Infant Development Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. A founder and former President of the National Center for Clinical Infant Programs, Dr. Greenspan is the author or editor of more than one hundred scholarly articles and twenty books, including First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Development of Your Baby and Child (with Nancy Thorndike Greenspan) and Playground Politics: Understanding the Emotional Life of Your School-Age Child (with Jacqueline Salmon).

Jacqueline Salmon is an editor at the Washington Post. Her articles have also appeared in Ms., Seventeen, and American Baby. She has two children.

---

Compiler’s Note: See, particularly, “Kyle’s Story” (pp. 140-164), a subsection of Chapter 5: The Defiant Child.

A Chance At Life: Stories of Inspiration and Hope for Foster and Adoptive Parents of Abused Children is a compilation of true short stories told from the point of view of a foster parent who shares her experiences of success, failure, and courage, with helpful advice mixed in. People who have provided loving homes to children with abused pasts, as well as adults who were victimized by violence as children, will find this poignant collection of stories filled with humor, hope, and wisdom.

From the Back Cover: It is a hot July day and a long line of cars and vans is winding its way down the dusty country road. Far out in the Michigan countryside, under the ancient pines of the Spaulding farm, the lawn is overrun with children munching hot dogs, licking ice-cream, devouring chunks of chocolate cake, and acting very much like children at any picnic.

A visitor notices, however, that all of the dozens of children are different in some way. A blind girl touches the necklace of a lady sitting nearby. Next to her, a happy four-year-old Mongoloid girl plays with a cloth doll her father just brought her. Farther across the lawn, a three-year-old boy with braces on his legs makes a bee-line for the children’s “fish pond” where, for a dime, he “catches” one of the many possible prizes. Behind the house, a tall, retarded teenager is learning how to play shuffleboard with a friend he just met, and a game of tag is in progress among the boys and clothes-racks of the rummage sale.

While parents talk together at the long tables under the trees, a white-haired man sitting in a wheelchair quietly watches the children play around him. The farm is his, the agency bears his name, and the children are his legacy.

This is the Annual Ice-Cream Social at Spaulding for Children, a highly successful adoption agency which finds families for older and handicapped children traditionally considered hard-to-place or “unadoptable.” Here is the story of this agency and its leadership in the growing movement to find permanent families for the children formerly left to live their lives in foster care and institutions.

---

About the Author: Christopher Unger is Research Director for Spaulding for Children and refinishes furniture. He received his graduate training at the University of Michigan.

Gladys Dwarshuis is married, the parent of three sons, and received her graduate training at the University of Chicago.

Elizabeth Johnson sings and sews. She, too, received her graduate training at the University of Michigan.

All three are psychologists.

From the Back Cover: I waited on my porch for the three guys to corral and catch seven-year-old Lilly. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. A maroon van came speeding down the street and turned into my driveway. A short, chubby lady got out and slammed the door. As she hurried toward me, I recognized her as a woman who lived across from Lilly’s school. She had waved to us many times on our walk home the previous year.

Marching up to me, she said, “Do you know what your little girl did? I saw her running all over, so I thought I’d help and said to her, ‘Hey, you look thirsty. How about a nice cold drink?’ She said yes and came up on my porch. I gave her the water and she took some big gulps then yelled, ‘Fat b--ch!’ and threw the glass of water at me! Then she ran down off my porch!”

Stomping back to her van, she got in, and peeled out of the drive.

I’m not sure why I thought it was so funny. Soon I heard tiny-girl cussing sounds coming my way, and my mind drifted back to how we got entangled with the little girl in the first place, and I had to smile again.

This is a true story.

---

About the Author: Nealie Rose is an Ohio native. Her children are all grown, but she is still privileged to be called “mom” by two foster and two biological daughters. She and her husband, Bruce, find their lives full with 13 grandchildren and two cats. She used to love to bake, but you’ll have to read the story to find out why she doesn’t anymore!

From Education Resources Information Center (ERIC): Across the United States and world, children who lose their parents to HIV/AIDS are one of the fasted emerging groups affected by this epidemic. Increasingly, child welfare and family service agencies are helping infected parents to secure legal and permanent care arrangements for their children. These guidelines address the issues of placing children who lose their parents to HIV/AIDS with kin and with adoptive families. The guidelines are intended to help child welfare agencies develop culturally-competent, comprehensive kinship care and adoption services that respond to the needs of parents who are HIV infected, of children who lose their parents to HIV/AIDS, and of subsequent caregivers. The guidelines are set out in six chapters: (1) “Preparing for the Provision of Placement Services”; (2) “Outreach to and Support Services for Biological Parents and Other Caregivers Who Are HIV Positive”; (3) “Selecting Kin and Recruiting Adoptive Families”; (4) “Preparing Families and Children for Placement”; (5) “Postplacement Support Services”; and (6) “Advocacy and Collaboration.” Ten appendices include a list of child welfare agencies working with HIV-affected families, by state; a list of Family Builders Network members; a description of financial assistance programs; a list of summer camps for children and families affected by HIV/AIDS; a suggested reading list; and a resource list of national organizations. (EAJ)

---

About the Author: Lisa Merkel-Holguin spearheaded CWLA’s HIV/AIDS initiative from mid 1993 to early 1995. In that capacity, she developed these guidelines, with assistance from the CWLA Task Force on Children and HIV Infection. These guidelines are a companion piece to another work by the author entitled Because You Love Them: A Parents Planning Guide—a book that some have called the most powerful, compassionate, and useful resource that assists parents living with HIV/AIDS in planning for their children’s future. As the HIV/AIDS Program Manager at CWLA, she developed other program and policy statements, served as a public speaker, and wrote numerous grants. In addition, Ms. Merkel-Holguin has other published works in such areas as child welfare statistics and outcome measures. She received her MSW from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She now works as a Program/Policy Analyst for the Children’s Division of the American Humane Association in Englewood, CO.

Do you get confused reading complex, technical books about attachment disorder? Do you wish you could find a basic book that you could give to relatives, teachers, and doctors to help them understand the problem? Would you like to educate others on the difficulties you face when parenting your child with attachment disorder? Then Children Who Shock and Surprise is for you. This book is designed to provide you with a brief, but complete, description of the causes and symptoms of attachment disorder, some useful parenting tactics, and the most effective treatment techniques.

From the Back Cover: Just as the decision to adopt should be made with thought and care—after considerable reflection, discussion, and gathering of information—the decision to adopt a child with prenatal alcohol and/or other drug exposure should be made only after consideration of the added challenges.

Designed primarily for professionals, this new book offers practical suggestions, recommendations, and food for thought for preparing, counseling, and working with those who are considering adopting an infant or child who has been prenatally exposed to alcohol and/or other drugs.

---

About the Author: Susan Edelstein is a licensed clinical social worker who has worked with vulnerable children, parents, and families in Los Angeles for over 27 years. She earned her bachelor of arts degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, and her master’s degree in Social Welfare at the University of Southern California. Ms. Edelstein began her career in child protective services, then specialized in adoptions for six years, and in 1979 began her work at the UCLA Medical Center as coordinator of the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) Team. For the past decade, within the Developmental Studies Program, UCLA School of Medicine, she has directed and co-directed several major service, training, and research projects involving interdisciplinary-interagency collaboration, child abuse and neglect, parental chemical dependency, and comprehensive early intervention approaches. Her work has encompassed collaboration with all of the contributing authors of this book.

Judy Howard is a professor of pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and currently heads the Developmental Studies Program within the UCLA Department of Pediatrics. Dr. Howard has directed the UCLA Intervention Program for Children with Disabilities since 1974 and chaired the UCLA Child Abuse Policy Committee for over a decade. Since 1982, she has been principal investigator ona variety of service, training, and research projects relating to prenatal substance abuse and services for affected children, caregivers, and families. Dr. Howard received her medical degree from the Loma Linda School of Medicine, did her pediatric residency at the Los Angeles County /University of Southern California School of Medicine, and completed subspecialty training in child development at the UCLA Department of Pediatrics.

A developmental pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at UCLA, Rachelle Tyler has had extensive clinical and research experience working with substance-affected children and families over the past 12 years. She earned her medical degree at the Boston University School of Medicine, did her pediatric residency at the Martin Luther King, Jr., General Hospital in Los Angeles, and completed subspecialty training in child development at the UCLA School of Pediatrics. In 1982 she earned a master’s degree in Public Health, focusing on health services organization, at the UCLA School of Public Health. Dr. Tyler currently directs two pediatric clinics providing developmental assessments and case management services for medically fragile infants, many of whom were exposed prenatally to alcohol and/or other drugs. She also heads an ongoing training program promoting interdisciplinary teamwork among community-based professionals in Los Angeles County serving children who were exposed prenatally to drugs and their caregivers.

Gloria Waldinger’s career in child welfare has included direct practice in public child welfare settings, management of a number of federally funded child welfare training grant programs, and administration, teaching, and research at the UCLA School of Social Welfare. The focuses of her direct practice and research have been the adoption of special-needs children, child abuse and neglect, guardianship, and the emancipation of children from out-of-home care. Dr. Waldinger is a recognized expert in child welfare policy and is currently serving as consultant to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services’ Family Preservation and Family Support Program. She also participates actively in community organizations dealing with programs and policies for children and families. She received both her master’s and doctoral degrees in Social Welfare at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Annette Moore has worked with the interdisciplinary team of the UCLA Developmental Studies Program since 1988. During this time, she has provided administrative and writing /editorial support on a range of clinical service, research, and training programs related to children and families affected by parental abuse of alcohol and/or other drugs. This work has encompassed collaboration in the preparation of grant proposals, articles, training manuals, and curricula for local, state, and national programs. Her academic background includes a bachelor’s degree in English, German, and art from California State University, Sacramento, as well as a master’s degree in Germanic languages from the University of California, Los Angeles.

This book is mainly intended for parents (biological, adoptive, and foster) who are working with children who are diagnosed as having Reactive Attachment Disorders or those who are undiagnosed but show symptoms of having Reactive Attachment Disorders. The focus of this book is on the reactive attachment disorder behaviors and how the quilting method approach helps in restoring the damaged years.

Writing from her own experience as a parent of a special needs child and with the background of both a therapist and educator, the author presents a most readable text discussing developmental disabilities; emotional and intellectual challenges; neurological disabilities; viral, bacterial, and infectious diseases; premature birth and other newborn complications; genetic and physical impairments; communication and learning disorders; attention deficit disorders; movement disorders; affective disorders; and choosing to adopt a child with special needs. Another area of emphasis is in seeking help and resources for children with special needs, including who to go to in the school setting, how the Individuals with Disabilities Act works, how IEPs are developed, and how inclusional school settings work for the child with special needs. Special features include stories and personal accounts throughout the text from parents who have dealt with special needs of differently abled children. Many helpful resources are provided, including state-by-state listings of support groups and private agencies assisting families of children with special needs, national organizations, special education resources, reading resources for both adults and children, software and media resources, resources for adaptive equipment and toys, and adoption resources. The primary audience for the book includes parents, educators, social workers, healthcare and mental health professionals, and others who work with children who have special needs and challenges.

From the Dust Jacket: Toby McCarroll is a lay monk whose personal quest for God leads him to take care of ill and abandoned children, to make them his own, and to learn from them. Childsong, Monksorg tells the story of one special year in Brother Toby’s life, a year that took him from the Starcross Community, a monastic retreat set in the gentle hills of Northern California, to the hellish hospitals of Romania where children with AIDS were being warehoused and forgotten amongst appalling conditions.

Brother Toby recounts the dark night of his soul when even his faith was shaken by what he saw in Romania, and how with the help of two little girls from opposite ends of the world, one who dies, and one who is brought to a new life, he found his spiritual path once again. Childsong, Monksong is the beautiful story of a unique spiritual journey, and of the fears, struggles, and hopes that we all share.

---

About the Author: Brother Tolbert McCarroll lives at the Starcross Community in Sonoma County, California, with his adopted children.

---

By the Same Author: Morning Glory Babies: Children with AIDS and the Celebration of Life (1988).

Professor David Demers had a good job and a good life. So why would the divorced man who had never changed a diaper adopt a Chinese baby girl on his own? China Girl answers this question and then tells the adoption story, including the trip to China and life afterward. China Girl is funny, heartwarming and suspenseful. Will this balding middle-aged man learn to care for and bond with Lee Ann, who is struggling to overcome some physical and health problems? Can he love her as much as a mother loves her child?

Cline/Helding Adopted and Foster Child Assessment (CHAFCA) was designed to be used by parents or caregivers as a preclinical assessment tool for identifying problems or predicting future ones in adopted or foster children. The subtests are easily administered and scored by nonprofessionals. CHAFCA is appropriate both pre-adoption and post-adoption, as long as the child has been in the current placement for at least 6 months. The twelve diagnostic subtests include such areas as attachment disorder, depression, substance abuse, sensory integration, and emotional health. CHAFCA is an essential tool for foster and adoptive families.

An indispensable book for parents of adopted and foster children with attachment issues. Dr. Katharine Leslie, author of When a Stranger Calls You Mom, is a practicing psychologist who has raised a daughter with attachment issues.

From the Back Cover: The adoption of a child is a joyous moment in the life of a family. Some adoptions, though, present unique challenges. Welcoming these children into your family—and addressing their special needs—requires care, consideration, and compassion.

Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you:

• Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child;

• Effectively deal with learning and behavioral disorders;

• Discipline your child with love without making him feel threatened.

---

About the Author: Karyn B. Purvis, Ph.D., is director of Texas Christian University’s Institute of Child Development, which hosts the Adoption Project and its Hope Connection® camp.

David R. Cross, Ph.D., is associate director of TCU’s Institute of Child Development and a professor in TCU’s psychology department.

Wndy Lyons Sunshine is an award-winning journalist.

A story of foster care and adoption; the pitfalls, the realities, the truth from an adoptive parent and former foster parent. About the Author: Jane Kolar, adoptive parent and former foster parent, writes in this book about adopting children older than 18 months with undetected learning issues and health issues. Her other works include a novel, Fitzwilly: Two Bannocks for Fitzwilly, a rabbit-care manual, and books on writing: The Rainy Day Book, All About the Middles, and Finishing What You Begin. Jane began writing poetry and essays at age 8 when her father gave her one of his old unused theme books from college. Then, after raising her children, she began writing more and publishing her work. Jane is also a composer, songwriter, singer and musician, with a CD, Lifted on Wings of Spirit available through GBSPublishing.com. Its lyrics were written by Jane as well as some of the music with the balance of the music and all arrangements written by her music partner. They have collaborated on over 70 songs available as sheet music and have many more in the works.