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Hi. We fly home with our little boy, just turned 2, on Thursday from Eastern Europe. I can only imagine the whirlwind he's in right now with everything he's ever known as a comfort to him - gone.
But one thing we noticed during visits is that he is very impulsive and if anything is not going his way he lunges to head-but, bit, face-slap, whatever he can do to get at whoever he sees first. We knew this would be a challenge but he deserves a family and we are up to doing what we can to help him transition to family life.
He also does some self-injury behaviors if he's frustrated - bangs his head on the floor or bites his hand.
Oddly enough we've dealt with all these behaviors with our biological children for short spurts of time while they were babies and toddlers - but not quite so severe, of course. So we know how we discouraged such things from our other children - but those children were securely attached to us and familiar with our language from before birth.
This little boy is learning the most basic words right now, probably feeling very helpless and vulnerable. I am reading "toddler adoption" and I read another good adoption book and of course we had taken classes during the homestudy process. But I feel I need more. I need some real-life scenarios and good suggestions of what to do with a child this "age" - he's more like a "baby" even than a toddler. In some ways he's 6 months, others up to 12 or 13 months.
I would love to either read a book with stories from adoptive parents or talk to some other adoptive parents about what they have done to help their child transition and bond. I hope just becoming more relaxed and used to being in our home will help a little but I don't think this is just going to "go away" - I think we are really going to have to help this little boy learn some better ways (like language, etc.) to get his anger and frustrations out - I really dont' like head-but headaches - ouch.
Suggestions? Articles? Books?
-Rachel
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You want to keep his world very small at first, zero people over, or tiny number. No parties, etc. Few trips out. That's just tip of iceberg... however, all the experts agree on the basic list of what to do at first.I believe both of these sites have lists of what to do on arriving home, though I can't find them at the moment. At any rate, lots to read here:Dr. Ronal Frederici: [url=http://www.drfederici.com/]Family Therapy For Childrens Learning Disabilities - Dr Federici - Care for Children International[/url][url=http://www.danielhughes.org/]Home[/url][url=http://www.dyadicdevelopmentalpsychotherapy.org/]Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy Institute[/url]
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There's an excellent audio presentation by Heather Forbes and Dr. Ronald Frederici here:[url=http://www.beyondconsequences.com/asktheexpert/haiti]Ask the Expert Series[/url]Was in response to the Haiti earthquake, when many people were hoping to quickly bring in adoptive children. Covers the basics. I'm sure that's in print somewhere... lots of wisdom here.