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Help your child sleep through the night while promoting her attachment to you.
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Essential baby care and bonding tips to help your newly adopted child — and yourself — connect and thrive.
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A little information about your child's medical history goes a long way for finding and preventing risks.
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Planning a trip to see second cousins or great aunts? Before you travel, help your child and relatives expand their conceptions of family.
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Our children learn from us how to express emotions.
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Imaginative play can bring your preschooler hours of fun — and offer a window into her adoption story.
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Even if you've made a scrapbook or lifebook for your child, kids this age like to tell their own stories. Here's how to help.
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Tween adoptees may walk away from their cultural heritage, family outings, and even their family as they try to fit in with peers.
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Your preteen just wants to be cool. But how can he, when he's "different"?
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As teens seek independence, they rethink their relationships with all the adults in their lives — including birth parents.
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Can't pry your teen from the computer? The Internet can be a great tool for finding identity and networking with other adopted teens.
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Sometimes, a teen's behavior calls for outside help. What to watch for and how to find the right adoption therapist.
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When friends asked, I'd always assured them I wasn't sad that I hadn't given birth to my sons. A heartbreaking false start helped me see that I was truly at peace with that fact.
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When you bring your child for their first post-adoption check-up, what should the doctor be looking for?
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A list of lists to help you through the adoption process and wait.
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A list of lists to help you through the adoption process and wait.
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When friends asked, I'd always assured them I wasn't sad that I hadn't given birth to my sons. A heartbreaking false start helped me see that I was truly at peace with that fact.
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When a sibling arrives at an older age or with emotional challenges, everyone will benefit from realistic expectations — and patience.
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Why do some newly adopted toddlers reject one parent? Our expert has answers, and ways to cope.
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When their adoption date was uncertain, our readers took the opportunity to celebrate with their children in tow. Here, they share their experiences.
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When a sibling arrives at an older age or with emotional challenges, everyone will benefit from realistic expectations — and patience.
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When a sibling arrives at an older age or with emotional challenges, everyone will benefit from realistic expectations — and patience.
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When a sibling arrives at an older age or with emotional challenges, everyone will benefit from realistic expectations — and patience.
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A decade of disappointing foster care placements made me doubt the two people who had taken me into their hearts.
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As foster parents, you open your hearts and home to a child even as you're preparing to reunite her with her birth mother.
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Two adoptive moms and a birth mother candidly discuss the adoption match, birth siblings, contact agreements, and more.
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I asked my family not to come to the hospital when she was born, then mourned their absence. Enter her birth relatives.
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If breastfeeding had been easy in the past, adoptive breastfeeding couldn't be so different, or less rewarding, could it? More or less.
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My daughter was eight years old in the referral photo we received during the international adoption process. That's the oldest photo she will ever have of herself.
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Dana E. Johnson, M.D., Ph.D., on introducing new foods and addressing feeding challenges in a newly adopted child.
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Introductions are often fleeting. But then there are those planned meetings that you know will touch you at your core.
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"How can we explain birth family's drinking or drug use?" Older child adoption expert Gregory Keck, Ph.D. answers a reader's question.
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Even if you've made a scrapbook or lifebook for your child, kids this age like to tell their own stories. Here's how to help.
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Between the ages of three and five, children love hearing the story of how you became a family, and begin to ask their first, simple questions about adoption. AF takes you inside the mind of your preschooler, and offers tips for talking.
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Family members, friends, and other parents can use our adoption experiences to broaden their children’s sphere of understanding.
"How can we explain birth family's drinking or drug use?" Older child adoption expert Gregory Keck, Ph.D. answers a reader's question.
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In an open adoption, your child's birth parents become part of your extended family. Here are some common questions when it comes to managing those relationships.
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My daughter was eight years old in the referral photo we received during the international adoption process. That's the oldest photo she will ever have of herself.
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In an open adoption, your child's birth parents become part of your extended family. Here are some common questions when it comes to managing those relationships.
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My daughter, Rubie, has the kind of life I'd dreamed of for her, and is where she belongs. I only wish I had known that sooner.
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The museum view of culture and heritage ignores the realities of life as a racial minority. But there is a middle ground.
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I tell prospective adoptive parents to take a good, hard look at their social circles, their neighborhoods, their churches, their communities and think about how those places and spaces will look and feel to their child. I ask them what they’ll say when their kids hear slurs and taunts from bullies, and how they will answer tough questions about the persistence of racism and a playing field that is far from level.
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How we can help our children feel good about who they are — and where they’re from.
The museum view of culture and heritage ignores the realities of life as a racial minority. But there is a middle ground.
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If your child is prone to overeating or hoarding food, help her move past her food insecurity with these tips.
Parenting children with different DNA opened up new worlds for me. Loving who they are means parenting their DNA and not my own agenda.
Inclusive assignments help your grade-schooler, as well as her classmates, learn about their lives and the world around them.
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Your preteen just wants to be cool. But how can he, when he's "different"?
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As crazy as it sounds, the transition from being childless to becoming a parent has given me time I didn't have before.
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Family rituals take on new meaning when we adopt a baby.
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