Adopting an Older Child

Adopting an Older Child: A Survival Guide for the First Year

*Plus an 8-Worksheet First Year Workbook.*

Three weeks after placement, the child you fought so hard to bring home will not make eye contact, hides food in his backpack, and flinches when you raise your voice to call him for dinner. Every parenting book on your shelf was written for someone else's family.

This is not a parenting book written for someone else's family. It is the guide adoptive parents wish existed before placement day: the trauma-informed research behind why an older child tests you hardest right when you are trying hardest to love them, and a practical, first-year roadmap for building trust, advocating at school, and holding your family together while you do it.

Inside, you get:

• The real reason your child pushes away the people trying hardest to love them, and exactly how to respond in the moment
• A realistic month-by-month timeline, so you finally know what "normal" looks like in year one
• School enrollment and IEP/504 request scripts, so paperwork never costs your child a grade
• The words to use when your child asks about their birth family, or a classmate asks why your last names don't match
• The signs that mean it's time to call a therapist, and the signs that mean you're just in a hard week

A complete first-year system, not a blog post stretched into a PDF.

You already gave this child a home. This guide makes sure you can keep it standing.

PLUS: The First-Year Workbook 

The guide gives you the plan. This workbook is where you put it to work.

Fifteen pages of tools you will actually use: a weekly connection tracker, a reusable behavior and trigger log, fill-in-the-blank scripts for the conversations you are dreading, and two ready-to-send school advocacy letters, records request and IEP/504 evaluation, already written for you.

Included with every purchase.