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Becoming a Family -
Book Review
Becoming a Family - by Lark Eshleman, PhD
Reviewed by Vicky Kelley, LCSW, MHA, PsyD, ATTACh Board
Member
Taken From: Focus on Resources - (September 2003)
This new book sensitively captures the risks and blessings
of adoption, especially of children with histories of
institutional care. Too often, international adoption has
been heralded as an easy way to adopt a young, healthy
child. Then adoptive parents too often find themselves
unprepared to make sense of their children's struggles and
maladaptive responses. So many of these parents have ended
up feeling alone and somehow at fault for their children's
problems.
Dr. Eshleman's book fills a crucial niche for these parents.
John A. Biever, MD, begins the book with a comprehensive,
yet easy to understand review of attachment theory that is
very accessible to the reader. This chapter ends with
specific recommendations of issues for prospective adoptive
parents to consider. Knowledge and preparation are
emphasized as critical prerequisites to successful
adoptions.
Dr. Eshleman then builds on this beginning by addressing
critical issues that adoptive parents face. For example, one
chapter entitled "How do I know what's normal?" provides
guidance for parents as they integrate attachment concepts
into an understanding of their particular child's strengths
and challenges. Another chapter explains how the child's
early experiences result in hard-wired reactions of
persisting fight or flight responses even in the face of
new, very nurturing actions by the parent.
Another chapter, by Elizabeth Goff, MD, a pediatrician and
adoptive mother of two girls from China, offers sensitive
information on the process of homecoming and adjustment.
Other chapters provide practical suggestions for parenting
to promote attachment, handling school issues, and getting
needed treatment.
Throughout the book, there are poignant case examples that
highlight important concepts. Parents of children with
attachment difficulties often feel overwhelmed when
traditional parenting strategies fail to work with their
children. This book not only gives very practical
suggestions, it grounds these suggestions in attachment
theory.
Attunement, the capacity to read another's clues and
sensitively respond, is fundamental to attachment. This book
is a poignant experience of attunement, in that the reader
is able to appreciate both the child and parent
perspectives. But the reader's experience is even more than
that. I was reminded of Winnincott's concept of "holding
environment" -- the steady nurturing relationship that
supports development through withstanding, and ultimately
helping to organize, an individual's powerful feelings.
Readers of this book will feel "held" in this way, as they
experience this sensitive attunement to their struggles and
yet are buoyed by realistic hope that healing can be
possible. |
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