Parenting Children of Trauma: A Foster-Adoption Guide to Understanding Attachment Disorders

Do you ever feel confused about what went wrong in your foster or adoption story? Are you fearful about the future of your marriage and your children? Do you ever feel overwhelmed and desperate for help?

You are not alone.

Many foster and adoptive parents are raising children with complex emotional trauma, desperate for answers to heal their families. Caught off guard, these families find themselves with shattered dreams, shattered homes, and shattered hearts, with nowhere to turn for answers. Extended family members, friends, and the greater community don't understand the challenges and can sometimes add to the problems these families face, sometimes prolonging the healing process for all.

Attachment disorder is cruel.

This book is for the wonderful-hearted people who stepped into adoption with dreams of loving a child to wholeness, only to find that children who hurt sometimes hurt people. This book is for parents who feel overwhelmed, desperate, and depleted. Or for the friend or family member who has watched the adoption story of their loved one unravel and felt helpless.

Marcy Pusey’s family has lived their own version of hope and hell in learning what real love looks like for these children. It took their marriage to the brink, their own personal mental health to its limits, their family to some dark places—but they came out in a brighter place. They surfaced with the support of their community, their dedication to making it, and a whole lot of prayer. Before Marcy was raising kids with attachment disorders, she was therapeutically supporting families who were. And now she offers this hope and help to you.

Parenting Children of Trauma brings you everything she’s learned as mama, friend, and counselor, in a new and easy-to-understand way by:

• Demystifying attachment disorders and the impact of complex emotional trauma on our homes and society.
• Breaking down current treatment options for attachment disorders.
• Equipping you with information, strategies, and stories to know you are not alone or powerless in your own home.
• Resources specifically for the friend or family member who wants to support adoptive/foster families.

Whether you're already in this situation, thinking about stepping into it, or know someone who is in it, this book will help you set realistic expectations, redefine love, and walk away with actual tools to change the climate of your heart and your home.

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Marcy M. Pusey, CRC, is a graduate of Fresno Pacific University. She completed her postgraduate counseling education at California State University, Fresno with training in the application of counseling skills to assist individuals with physical, mental, developmental, cognitive, and emotional disabilities to achieve the best quality of life possible. She is currently a clinical counselor for an English-speaking community in southern Germany. Marcy's counseling work over the last twenty years has included children, adolescents, adults, families, and couples. She has provided care through private practices, group homes, foster family agencies, community-based services, and wrap-around programs. She is the author of the best-selling book, Reclaiming Hope: Overcoming the Challenges of Parenting Foster and Adopted Children. She also writes for children with books such as Speranza's Sweater: One Child's Journey Through Foster Care and Adoption, Tercules, and award-winning According to Corban. She uses a decade of experience writing and publishing for children and adults to edit, critique, and coach other writers in their publishing, specializing in children's literature. You can learn more about her work as an author, international speaker, editor, and writing and publishing coach at www.marcypusey.com.