Healing From Trauma and Loss in Adoption

Some children come to adoption with the baggage of past loss and trauma, but adoptive and foster parents can help children heal. Attachment and bonding can occur after trauma with the right help. Host Dawn Davenport, Executive Director of Creating a Family, the national infertility & adoption education and support nonprofit, interviews Carol Lozier, a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in Louisville, Kentucky, with over twenty years of experience counseling children and families. She specializes in adoption and foster care issues, and is the author of The Adoptive & Foster Parent Guide.

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  • Is there a cut-off age where a child can be adopted and generally fair well? We generally think the younger the better the outcomes, do you believe this is true and if so, at what age does that start to diminish?
  • How can parents tell the difference between normal behavior for a particular developmental stage and behavior that related to adoption?
  • Does all good healthy attachment look the same? Is there room for individual temperament and personalities affecting the way healthy attachment looks?
  • What are the four basic styles of attachment for both parents and children?
  • What treatment modalities are most effective in healing trauma?
  • EMDR and IFS therapies
  • What are processing therapies to work on past loss and trauma?
  • What are some of the typical negative self-beliefs that some adopted children have that affects their behavior?
  • How can adoptive parents help a child who is unable to sleep well and has nightmares and frequently awakes at night?
  • How can adoptive parents help a child that hoards food or toys?
  • How can parents help heal our child’s past trauma. What are the first steps a parent needs to take?
  • How can adoptive parents help a child with frequent uncontrolled tantrums over not getting her way over seemingly trivial matters?
  • How to find competent therapist or counselors for working with adopted children struggling from past trauma and loss?
  • What questions should you ask a therapist before seeing them?

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Image Credit: Justin Kern

Show originally aired in 2012