Author: Patty Cogen
Usefulness Rating: 10/10
Referral: I think our social worker recommended it during the homestudy process.
Source: Purchased from Amazon
Books I've read this year: 132
This book has been sitting on my bedside table for months. I tackled the memoirs about adoption first, and saved all of the hard, serious books, the ones about politics and parenting, for later, when traveling to China and getting our baby were actually on the horizon. I've decided that it's time to tackle the hard books (and besides, I think I worked my way through all of the memoirs), and so I did a cursory reading of Parenting Your Adopting Child. It reminded me a little bit of when I read What to Expect When You're Expecting before the baby actually arrived. It was interesting, but not really relevant yet. I can tell that when it is finally relevant, the book will be useful. So I read all of the early chapters and skimmed through the later chapters (about older kids and teenagers) since I won't be dealing with an adopted older kid or a teenager for many years.
In this reading, however, Cogen did a great job pounding one thing into my brain-- although I'm concerned about Rose's physical needs right now, those will be easy to fix, and the ramifications of losing her parents, then losing her caregivers in the orphanage, and not having opportunity to spend significant amounts of time bonding as a baby will be things that we'll have to work through when she arrives. Even though she'll be a baby who doesn't walk or talk, we'll still have to work through helping her connect and knowing that we'll be her forever family. It made me glad that I'll be done with school by the time she arrives, because she's going to need to have my focus for a while, and I feel fortunate that I'll be able to give it to her.
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