But, in the months and years that followed, she discovered that there was more than one way to build a family – and that there is a lot of joy to be found in life’s unexpected detours.In a raw and inspiring story of one woman’s journey through motherhood, family life and self-discovery, Lisa explores the many forms that family can take, and discovers the power of embracing your Plan B. For anyone who has ever found themselves facing the unexpected in life – whether that’s infertility, adoption, grief or any other personal challenge – this is an uplifting and honest account of finding love in unexpected places, and building your life on your own terms.

    Gently provocative, warm and convincing, this open adoption guide includes actual letters between adoptive parents and birthparents, and between the latter and the children they have

    Managing Emotional Mayhem lays a conceptual foundation, explores limiting beliefs, presents new adult skills and teaches us how to coach children in this transformative self-regulation process. 168 pages.

    Does your child decide they don't like a food before they've even tried it? Do they say 'Yuk' to foods they used to eat happily? Would they live off chips and ice-cream and never touch a vegetable again if given the chance? This little book provides easy-to-follow, easy-to-remember rules to help re-programme your child into a happy, healthy, adventurous eater.

    Parenting adopted children requires understanding the extra layer and this book helps in that understanding. Appropriate for the newly created family or the more experienced, Adoption Parenting looks at stumbling blocks to good parenting and standard parenting practices that arent appropriate for adopted children. It looks at the core issues all members of the adoption triad face, and at how it affects standard parenting challenges like sleeping through the night, discipline, and attachment. Adoption Parenting covers specific challenges families have faced: dealing with grief and loss, FASD, Trauma and PTSD, Sensory Integration, Speech and Language delays, and ways to effectively parent a post-institutionalized child or a child who has experienced trauma in their journey to you.

    Most of us co-parent or fly solo in the true sense of the word, relying solely on our partners and/or friends when more often than not, extended family are too far away to help on a regular basis. Our parents could look to their parents for the usual guidance and extra support, but our situation is new, modern and unique. We are winging it!This book isn't a guide or a parenting manual - it's more of a support group for parents who are having their children in their thirties and forties to get together, to celebrate, share experiences, laugh and find joy in what is still the biggest life changing experience any of us will ever go through. It's the book I looked for when I was pregnant, that spoke to me as a working parent and that I couldn't find so I've had a go at writing one myself.Featuring:- Expert advice from Zita West, Clemmie Hooper, Dr Sarah Jarvis, Mother Pukka, Zoe Williams, Selfish Mother and more. - Hilarious and heart-warming anecdotes plus tips and tricks from parents winging it too.We're re-writing the rule book and winging it, but we are winging it together!Love,Alex

    She finds solace in her anonymous blog, and in the daily chats she has with her mum's ashes (often the best conversations she has all day.)Despite the menopause, the invisibility of middle age and the daily self-esteem bashings, courtesy of her kids, Ciara manages to navigate the stormy waters of grief and family life - until her mask slips and she is cast out from the family bosom. She embarks on a mission to fulfil her mum's dying wishes to have her remains sprinkled from the top of the Empire State Building, finding company, distraction and - ultimately - herself in the process.If motherhood is a job - who says you can't resign?

    Step-by-step, you'll see how the best strategies from cognitive behavioral therapy are adapted for children.

    Her 3-year-old daughter Maya, whom she and her husband adopted months earlier from an orphanage in China, had transformed from a frightened, sickly little girl to a joyous being thriving in an environment where she knew she was loved. Watching her daughter play, Jenny was overcome with the desire to help the orphaned girls she couldn’t bring home. And that’s when Half the Sky was born.Wish You Happy Forever tells the story of China’s momentous progress in its treatment of orphaned and abandoned children. When Jenny began Half the Sky in 1998, determined to bring a caring adult into the life of every orphaned child, it seemed impossible that China would allow a foreigner to work inside government orphanages, let alone try to bring change. But gradually, after witnessing Half the Sky’s quiet perseverance and miraculous success, the Chinese government now not only trusts, but partners with Half the Sky to make life better for the children in its care.

    While the path to parenting through adoption is rich with rewards and fulfillment, it's not without its bumps. This compassionate, illuminating, and ultimately uplifting book is the first to openly recognize the very normal feelings of stress that adoptive families encounter as they cope with the challenges and expectations of their new families. Where do parents turn when the waited-for bonding with their adopted child is slow to form? When they find themselves grieving over the birth child they couldn't have? When the child they so eagerly welcomed into their home arrives with major, unexpected needs? Until now, adoptive parents have had to struggle silently with their feelings, which can range from flutters of anxiety to unbearable sadness. At last, Karen J. Foli, a registered nurse, and her husband, John R. Thompson, a psychiatrist, lift the curtain of secrecy from "Post Adoption Depression Syndrome" (PADS). Drawing on their own experience as adoptive parents as well as interviews with dozens of adoptive families and experts in the field, the couple offers parents the understanding, support, and concrete solutions they need to overcome post-adoption blues-and open their hearts to the joy adoption can bring.

    Baby becomes distressed at feeding times and refuses to feed or eats very little despite obvious hunger. Why won’t he/she eat? This is a question parents ask numerous health professionals while searching for a solution. Babies are typically diagnosed with one, two or three medical conditions to explain their aversive feeding behavior during brief appointments. Consequently, many parents don’t receive an effective solution from the health professionals they consult. This is why this book is so necessary. Rowena Bennett is an Australian nurse who holds professional qualifications in various nursing fields including pediatrics, midwifery, child health, mental health and lactation consultant. She has over 20 years experience advising parents how to resolve infant feeding and sleeping problems. Rowena has helped over 1000 babies get over their aversion to bottle-feeding and enjoy feeding once again. Parents claim the relief is life changing. In Your Baby’s Bottle-feeding Aversion, Rowena describes the various reasons babies display aversive feeding behavior, explains how the reader can identify the cause, and describes effective solutions. Included are step-by-step instructions on how to resolve a behavioral feeding aversion that occurs as a result of being repeatedly pressured to feed - the most common of all reasons for babies to become averse to feeding. Your Baby’s Bottle-feeding Aversion provides practical professional feeding advice that not only makes good sense, it works!

    In Blue Like Play Dough, she shares her unlikely journey from rebellious, pregnant teen to busy wife and mom with big dreams of her own. As her story unfolds, Tricia realizes that God has more in store for her than she has ever imagined possible.Sure, life is messy and beset by doubts. But God keeps showing up in the most unlikely places?in a bowl of carrot soup, the umpteenth reading of Goodnight Moon, a woe-is me teen drama, or play dough in the hands of a child.In Tricia's transparent account, you'll find understanding, laughter, and strength for your own story. And in the daily push and pull, you'll learn to recognizes the loving hands of God at work in your life? and know He has something beautiful in mind.

    After all, unless you have personally experienced adoption, you may know very little about how adoption works and what it means. Are you worried that your loved one may face disappointment? Do you find yourself wondering exactly what your role is going to be in the child's life? Does the term "open adoption" confuse and concern you? Just what are the privacy boundaries for families built by adoption: what is okay to ask about? "Adoption Is a Family Affair!" will answer all of these questions and more, offering you information about who can adopt, why people consider adopting, how kids understand adoption as they grow up, and more. This short book is crammed full of the 'need to know' information for friends and families that will help to encourage informed, happy and healthy family relationships.

    Too often, we only discuss or theologize the issues, relegating the responsibility to governments. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something; Christians are clearly called to care for orphans, a group so close to the heart of Jesus.Based on his own personal journey toward pure religion, Johnny Carr moves readers from talking about global orphan care to actually doing something about it in Found. Combining biblical truth with the latest social research, this inspiring book:investigates the orphan care and adoption movement in the U.S. today; examines new data on the needs of orphans and at-risk children; connects “liberal issues” together as critical aspects or orphan care; discovers the role of the church worldwide in meeting these needs; develops a tangible, sustainable action plan using worldwide partnerships; fleshes out the why, what, and how of global orphan care.

    The result is "To the End of June," an unforgettable portrait that takes us deep inside the lives of foster children at the critical points in their search for a stable, loving family.The book mirrors the life cycle of a foster child and so begins with the removal of babies and kids from birth families. There's a teenage birth mother in Texas who signs away her parental rights on a napkin only to later reconsider, crushing the hopes of her baby's adoptive parents. Beam then paints an unprecedented portrait of the intricacies of growing up in the system--the back-and-forth with agencies, the shuffling between pre-adoptive homes and group homes, the emotionally charged tug of prospective adoptive parents and the fundamental pull of birth parents. And then what happens as these system-reared kids become adults? Beam closely follows a group of teenagers in New York who are grappling with what aging out will mean for them and meets a woman who has parented eleven kids from the system, almost all over the age of eighteen, and all still in desperate need of a sense of home and belonging.Focusing intensely on a few foster families who are deeply invested in the system's success, "To the End of June" is essential for humanizing and challenging a broken system, while at the same time it is a tribute to resiliency and offers hope for real change.