Our newly adopted, 1-year-old daughter wakes often throughout the night, crying and wailing. If I rub her back or pick her up, she stops almost immediately.
Is It Adoption, or Is It Life?
Five of the country's top adoption therapists tell us what we need to know to support our children.
What Can We Learn from Our Kids’ DNA?
As genetic testing makes its way into the adoption world, our families discover its promise — and its limitations.
Establishing a Healthy Sleep Routine
Help your child sleep through the night while promoting her attachment to you.
Flights of Fantasy
Imaginative play can bring your preschooler hours of fun — and offer a window into her adoption story.
“Loving My Children’s ‘Ingredients'” – Nature vs. Nurture
Parenting children with different DNA opened up new worlds for me. Loving who they are means parenting their DNA and not my own agenda.
Ask AF: Sex Education Assistance
Can you recommend some books that will help us explain the facts of life?
“What We Wish We Had Known” – Older Child Adoption
A mom and her daughter share lessons learned about older child adoption.
Understanding Open Adoption
Among experts who study it and families who practice it, open adoption varies widely. Here's a look at open adoption today.
Post-Adoption Check-Ups
When you bring your child for their first post-adoption check-up, what should the doctor be looking for?
Your Earliest Adoption Conversations
Not sure when — or how — to bring up adoption with your toddler or preschooler? Here's where to begin.
A Meeting of the Open Minds
Two adoptive moms and a birth mother candidly discuss the adoption match, birth siblings, contact agreements, and more.
Winning Your Child’s Trust Around the Dinner Table
In an excerpt from her guide to enjoying family meals, our childhood feeding specialist explains how to show your foster or adopted children love through food.
What to Expect: Special Needs Adoption
I’m considering a special-needs adoption. What might a referral indicate?
Ask AF: Explaining Biological Siblings to an Adoptive Sibling
We have an eight-year-old biological child and a six-month-old we adopted as a newborn. Our younger son has several biological siblings—and I'm wondering how to explain this to my older son.
A Labor to Listen: Auditory Processing Disorder
If the sounds of the world are too much for your child, he may have an auditory processing problem. Learn how to figure it out and find help.
“Getting Past Working-Mom Guilt”
A new mother learns that she can go back to work and still retain the title of "Mom."
7 Ways to Give Your Child a History
When a child is adopted from foster care at an older age, he needs to understand his story up to placement and the significance of his joining a new family forever. Here are hands-on activities you can use to start this conversation.
“I Was Afraid to Adopt. I Was Afraid Not to Adopt.”
"It's hard to believe how reluctant I once was to adopt. In hindsight, I can see how much I needed this all along." — Dennis Kneale
Ask AF: How Grandparents Can Support Older Child Attachment
My son and daughter-in-law recently adopted a five-year-old from Ethiopia. They told us we cannot hold, hug, or kiss our grandson.