Parenting Abused and Neglected Children

Children adopted from foster care or from an orphanage abroad have likely experienced some level of trauma from abuse, neglect, or malnutrition. What can adoptive parents do to help? Host Dawn Davenport will interview Dr. Bruce Perry, child psychiatrist and founder of Child Trauma Academy, and author of The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. Dr. Perry has been consulted on how to help children involved with the following high profile incidents involving traumatized children such as the Branch Davidian siege in Waco (1993), the Oklahoma City bombing (1995), the Columbine school shootings (1999), the September 11th terrorist attacks (2001), Hurricane Katrina (2005), the FLDS polygamist sect (2008), the earthquake in Haiti (2010), the tsunami in Tohoku Japan (2011) and the Sandy Hook Elementary school shootings (2012).

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Hit the Highlights

What types of behaviors are typical of children that have experienced the trauma of abuse, neglect, or institutionalization?
How can parents distinguish between attachment issues and behaviors causes by experiencing trauma?
How long should therapists and parents wait until they make a diagnosis of an attachment disorder?
Does the age the child experienced trauma influence her ability to recover?
What can parents do to make their adopted child feel safe?
What parenting techniques are effective for children who have been abused and neglected prior to adoption?
What can adoptive parents do to maintain their stress levels?
Should adoptive parents encourage their child to regress developmentally?
What is “parallel bonding” and what are the advantages and disadvantages of it?
Why some children are greatly damaged by abuse and neglect, while others seem to recover well?
What type of therapist and therapy are most effective to help abused and neglected children?
Should psychotropic medications be used with abused children?

For more information from this show and a discussion of this topic, check out Dawn’s blog on the show: Older Child Adoption: Parenting Many Kids in One Body. Please join the discussion or leave your thoughts about the show in the comments on the blog.