Wednesday, September 1, 2010

More Adoption & Back-to-School Links

Here are a few I ran across recently:

* Advocating for Your Child's School Needs: Basics about ECI, IEPs, 504 plans.

*  Triggers:  School:  Why and how a new school year can trigger adoption feelings, with some great suggestions for helping adopted kids.
School can be a trigger for any child, a source of stress. “New,” even though it can be positive, denotes change and change can bring on uncertainty. “New” can be exposure to previously unknown peers, a greater mix of students and personalities, and peer pressure. “New” can be a different schedule and teachers, movement between classes, more challenging classes, higher expectations.

And, for the child who has been adopted, the trigger can have a bigger impact-grief. “New” can leave the child feeling vulnerable to questions about adoption and how his or her family was formed. Triggers can cause the child who has been adopted to focus more on and question what adoption means, how being adopted has affected them, how they fit within their family and peers. All of this is going on while the child is busy searching for and forming their identity and being barraged with hormones. It can be complicated…
Adoption & Schools Seminar: If you're in the DFW area, the NTFCC is offering an Adoption & Schools seminar on September 12, at Pantego Bible Church, at 2:00-4:00 p.m.

1 comment:

Dee said...

Our DD just started 1st grade -- same school where she went to kindergarten. The beginning of the school year just seems to bring with it thoughts, or more thoughts, about her adoption. This year, her first homework assignment was to put three things of her choosing into an "all about me" bag. Then each class member presents her/his things to the class. So naturally, one of her things was a photo of her as a baby in China.

All this getting to know the new class members is tying in with her continued processing of her adoption story, including recent shared family readings of When You Were Born in China, by Sara Dorow.