The Connected Child: Bring Hope and Healing to Your Adoptive Family

This is a must read for anyone who works with children who have faced the challenges of being adopted, being in foster care, or experienced adversity. The author offers understanding, support, and many useful ideas.

This is THE #1 BOOK that I recommend to other foster and adoptive parents, or any parent for that matter. It's the practical "how to" manual of parenting kids from hard places (TBRI). This book transformed my parenting with both both my bio son and foster kids. It was one of the first books I stumbled on 5 years ago as I began to consider fostering. After reading 20+ books on trauma, foster care, and parenting and this book still stands apart with its holistic approach and the numerous concrete, specific, actionable techniques. You can find bits and pieces in other books, or you can read this one and get a thorough introduction to optimal parenting for your foster or adoptive kiddos and the wide variety of challenges you may encounter together. I come back to this book again and again and find my hope renewed and my skills expanded each time. Foster parents and agencies that I know seem to consistently recommend TBRI, and this book is the place to learn. Karyn Purvis also has videos on the TCU website and Youtube that further illustrate the concepts in this book. For parents of older kids and teens, start with this book (The Connected Child) but also see Dr. Purvis' other book, the The Connected Parent, specifically the chapter on applying TBRI with teens! For food and feeding issues, see the book Love Me, Feed Me.

This. This. This. If you are a foster parent, adoptive parents, or just any parent trying to connect, I couldn’t recommend this book more! It’s an easy read but packed with information and things to try with your child. It’s very applicable and if I could hand this out to all parents I really would just to work through some of the tougher times!

This book was recommended to me by my adoption caseworker and by other adoptive moms in a public forum. I strongly recommend it! We are about to adopt siblings and, even though they don't have any current behavior concerns like hoarding or RAD, this book has still been helpful in parenting any children who have experienced trauma. The book has lots of examples and lots of specific ways to help connect and support your children. I'm about halfway through the book now (I read half and then re-read half with a pencil, making notes and underling parts I wanted to remember) and the chapters on "Felt Safety" and "Teaching Life Values" have been the most helpful so far - well, that our struggles are not ours alone - others have had them and many have surpassed them. Karyn Purvis is an expert in the field - and after reading this book, I understand why her name is so well known. Her work is realistic, down to earth, and filled with hope. If you are adopting or work with foster or adopted children, this is a great read. The book's main points are: - The key is to treat the whole child - and we'll help you do that! - Start where your child is - Compassion is key - Focus on nurturing and structure / connecting and correcting - "At-risk youngsters are capable of making tremendous strides toward overcoming early hardships and limitations."

Great book, really insightful and helpful. I truly learned a lot. My one critique is that it assumes the child in question is small. If you have a pre-teen or teen, the principles still apply, but none of the examples are helpful. The pre-teen in my house would not have a positive response to being told “Good asking with respect!” And while I offer that as a bit of a silly example, I was genuinely left wondering how to apply a lot of these techniques to my pre-teen foster without making them feel patronized, as a lot of the examples just don’t translate well to older kids.

I was afraid the book would tell me to just be more patient and understanding, because I was so maxed out and stressed with the constant screaming and fits. To my utter relief, there are strategies that WORK. My little guy is 2, so I can't speak for older kids and kids from different situations, but these strategies produced IMMEDIATE results!! We still have a long way to go. The behaviors haven't stopped, but they are much less frequent and shorter in duration. Hallelujah!! I'm also using these things with my other kids. I've changed the way I treat my 11 year old by offering more eye contact. My other two year old used to cry at nights, repeatedly. Now, I use one of the phrases the book gave me and we can resolve whatever it is and she doesn't cry again. Wow! I think every parent would LOVE this book.

Hope to learn from this book

There is not a better book out there for adoptive parents. Dr. Purvis has presented the background, and techniques to really bring healing to a wounded child's brain. First, she gives the science behind why their brain is in need of healing. Then, she goes onto share ways to facilitate that healing. This book is good to read before adopting, and then again at 6 months home, and then again, and again. Then again with a group of adoptive parents. It's perfect blend of giving an accurate and realistic description of what wounded children are dealing with, while offering HOPE for healing and improvement that is based in scientific fact and years of experience. While this book is certainly the central piece for adoptive parents, I also love the free study guide that goes along with this ("Created to Connect") and also her videos. The videos are so helpful because you can actually watch her implement these techniques and see the change in the children she works with. It's amazing.

Da leggere, rileggere, studiare. Molto chiaro e con tantissimi esempi ed istruzioni utili.

Great book very insightful

Amazing book. Well explained, and easy to follow. But the methodology and emotion behind this book is definitely the best part. A must have for adoptive or foster parents.

A lot of information crammed in here that may require re-reading as time goes on. An excellent addition to the training we have already received. A few of the notes I took: - put aside your preconceived expectations about your child's behaviour relative to his or her age. - past traumas encoded within their brains are easily reactivated - matching or mirroring your child's actions can be an effective tool for establishing relationships with your child, in part because it offers companionship and a feeling of safety - the importance of a "re-do" and re-enacting an event in a positive way - your goal is never to be punitive, always to be corrective - "Do you want to ask me for a compromise?" - If a child growls, rather than confronting them ask "Are you a lion?" - enact a puppet show before an event to demonstrate both positive and negative types of behaviour There were a lot of great examples in this book with real world situations which I appreciated. There were a few too many references to foreign orphanage adoptions. Near the end it also got a little too into the medical components of child behaviours. But overall a valuable resource I will come back to again.

This book is an unexpected gem, and likely to become my top recommendation for adoptive parents who are struggling with some aspect of their child's behaviour or emotional life. Like Daniel Hughes ('Attachment Focussed Parenting') and Amber Elliott ('Why Can't My Child Behave?'), the authors take disrupted attachment patterns as the key to understanding these children. People familiar with the 'Theraplay' approach will also find much they recognise here. Each of these approaches has its own strengths, but this book is especially good at explaining how adversity in infancy translates into chronic problems with anxiety, aggression and intimacy. And it is excellent in describing practical ways that will help children recover. Although the kind of 'reframing' verbal explanations with the child are important, and are highlighted in Hughes and Elliott's books, what I particularly appreciate is that here there is added emphasison non-verbal reparative experiences. For example, it stresses sensitivity to sensory triggers like touch and taste, and how these senses can be used in a therapeutic way. The authors recognise that, by the time they reach for a book like this, parents will have already exhausted many more 'obvious' behaviour modification approaches. They rightly reject 'time outs' and 'star charts' and see medication (typically for 'ADHD') as likely to be helpful only when combined with sensory, emotional, and behavioural changes. There are weaknesses. The one most likely to cause trouble is probably the insistence on direct eye contact, which many children with attachment difficulties will find overwhelming. Similarly, the use of explicit, 'full on' praise and acceptance of fault by the child is likely to provoke avoidant or acting-out behaviour in some children unless it is sensitively applied. I would like to see more emphasis in these cases on the use of emotional reflections, helping the child to understand what is happening for them and how it might be better managed. Finally, I would like to see more emphasis on the importance of therapeutic life story work - unresolved and confused understandings of their own history is commonly a cause of many emotional difficulties in children who have been adopted or are in long term foster care. However, overall, I think this is a good resource, filled with practical ideas and flexible and inclusive enough for the vast majority of adoptive parents. It is reassuring to see that, despite the easy-to-read, conversational tone, the references cited are extensive, authoritative and current.