Every year increasingly larger proportions of both internationally and domestically adopted children are arriving in their families not as newborns a few hours or days old, but at several weeks or several months or even several years of age. They arrive in loving, idealistic, but often ill-prepared families who may or may not have received all of the background information they need. The children carry the good and bad baggage of prior placements in foster care or institutions, sometimes with scars of pre-natal exposure to harmful substances or from neglect and abuse in birthfamily or in substitute care.

Today's typical adoptive parents need help to understand how prior experiences and changes in caregivers, in culture, in language, and more can create challenges for children needing to form attachments to their new parents. They need advice about how to obtain proper diagnosis, how to build a caring team for helping their child learn about relationships, how various approaches to parenting and teaching can make a difference, and how to find a therapist adequately informed, prepared, and experienced in the challenges facing these families.

Attachment therapist Deborah Gray's Attaching in Adoption provides thorough and up-to-date information, sensitive encouragement, calming support, and practical tools for just such families and those who work with them, using vignettes and anecdotes to demonstrate how suggested techniques can work to effect positive change. Here is a book destined to become a 21st century classic in the field of adoption and fostering.

Deborah Gray, a clinical social worker who specializes in counseling on attachment issues, presents in "Attaching in Adoption," a comprehensive and practical guide for adoptive parents at any stage in the adoption process, as well as for mental health professionals. Parenting today's adopted child takes an enormous amount of caring, courage and commitment, but also an unprecedented level of skill. Unwitting or idealistic parents can quickly find themselves in deep waters. "Attaching in Adoption" sends a clarion call to adoptive parents but, more importantly, it gives them the parenting tools they'll need to nurture a healthy attachment with their child.

Although some 390 pages in length, the book's clear organization and non-technical language makes the content very accessible. The overall tone is candid, supportive, and encouraging. The author uses brief but compelling story vignettes throughout the book to bring key situations, concepts, and skills to life.

The main goal of the book is to give parents a broad understanding and insight into the attachment process: what it is, why it's important, what happens when attachment is healthy and when it is unhealthy, and warning signs parents can look for and how they can intervene.

Of particular interest is a chapter on the special challenges of adoptive families such as: the very different meanings the parents and children may have about family; children's deep sense of shame; children's conflicted need and fear of love, control and adults; children's mood disorders and developmental lags; and how these problems can affect parents. Grief and trauma, two major themes in the book, are explored in-depth in two separate chapters. Gray also discusses cultural differences as they relate to open adoption, body language, speech, religion and race. Another chapter is devoted to fairness, which explores adoptive and birth sibling relationships and parental self-care.

Balancing these sometimes overwhelming challenges is the author's inextinguishable optimistic goal, which is especially clear in several key chapters on how to promote healthy attachment, what progress looks like, building a repertoire for expressing emotions, and getting the right kind of support and professional help.

Attachment is such a fundamental aspect of human development -- it may be the emotional equivalent of DNA. Adoptive parents would agree there's always more to learn. Deborah Gray's positive, practical and realistic approach provides a wealth of information that should not be missed.

--Caesar Pacifici, Ph.D.

• Format: 390 page book
• Author: Deborah Gray
• Audience: Foster, kinship, adoptive parents and family care professionals
• Publishing Date: 2002
• Publisher: Perspectives Press
• Cost: $24.95

Attaching in Adoption is a valuable resource for parents not only as they contemplate building their family through adoption, but also as they travel their child's emotionally challenged path towards mental health and happiness. Deborah Gray has described attachment and all of the skills and responses that relate to an individual's attachment style and degree of attachment, and she has done so in a manner easily understood by non-professionals. The chapter on developmental stages is an invaluable tool for parents to assess their child's emotional age and determine what tasks have yet to be mastered. Parents who understand and implement the wisdom and methods described in this book will certainly strengthen their families!

- Nancy Spoolstra, D.V.M., adoptive and foster parent and Executive Director of the (ADN) Attachment Disorder Network

Deborah Gray has written an excellent book on parenting adopted children who resist being parented. It is not a cookbook, but rather a comprehensive book on parenting adopted children with attachment problems. That is why it is excellent. Deborah does not take the easy road of simply giving recommendations for various behavior problems. Instead she takes the more arduous route of first trying to help parents understand the meaning of their adopted child's behaviors. After helping parents to understand the reasons for their child's behaviors, she then gives them the tools for developing interventions that are most likely to fit their unique child.

Deborah asks us to go beyond concluding that an adopted child has Reactive Attachment Disorder because they manifest a list of symptoms. She asks us first to also understand the impact of grieving and trauma on a child's functioning. She also asks us to know more about the effects of anxiety, cultural changes, and various other diagnoses, such as ADHD, FAE/FAS, and Learning Disorders. Most importantly, Deborah teaches us about the seven stages of attachment, beginning at birth and extending through adolescence, and she helps us to be aware of various interventions that can facilitate development at each stage. Finally, she tells us about emotional intelligence, its failure to develop following early abuse and neglect, and the importance of understanding ways to facilitate it.

Deborah's contribution to parenting adopted children with attachment problems is substantial. It is based on understanding and having empathy for the meaning behind a child's symptoms, along with effective, sensitive, and well-matched parental interventions. At the same time, she addresses the necessity of parental self-care, if parents are to persistently provide the quality of care that their adopted child requires. After reading her book, many parents will feel certain that Deborah understands their child and their family. These same parents will also be likely to understand their child more deeply themselves, and at the same time be able to develop the unique practical skills that parenting their child requires.

- Dan Hughes, Ph.D., author of Facilitating Developmental Attachment and Building the Bonds of Attachment.

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