Easing the Transition Back to School

It is hard to believe that the summer is almost over and our kids will soon be returning to school.  In my household, the anticipation of starting a new school year is usually met with a mixture of excitement, anxiety and fear of the unknown.  The days of sleeping in, staying up later, and relaxing at the pool will soon be replaced with alarm clocks, bedtimes, and after-school activities and homework.  Letting go of the carefree days of summer and transitioning back into schedule driven school mode can be challenging for children and parents.  Even children who genuinely enjoy school tend to feel anxious about things as simple as what to wear and finding their classroom on the first day, to more complex issues like being popular and making good grades.  

Here are some things parents can do to make the remaining days of summer more enjoyable, and the return to school a little less stressful.

I knew I wanted to adopt when I was really young.  When other little girls were playing with pillows under their shirts, I was playing adoption.  My father was a child advocate and we constantly had children around us who had been adopted – it was standard, normal.

Common among adopted children, food issues can be one of the many challenges experienced by adoptive parents.  Issues can include things like a strong aversion to eating certain foods, being extremely picky or fixated on certain foods, binge eating, or food hoarding.  The reasons underlying eating and food issues are complex and different for each child.

It’s July!  Can you believe the year is half over? 

With six months behind us and six months to go, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to share with everyone what we’ve been up to here at Adoptions Together and what we have in store for the second half the year.

Adoptions Together hosted a Book Reading and Signing event with the author of Adoption Nation, Adam Pertman at Huckleberry Fine Art in Rockville, MD last Thursday July 14.  Adam Pertman is also the Executive Director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute and is considered to be one of our country’s leading experts on adoption.

ATTACh has recently published a new book – “Hope for Healing:  A Parent’s Guide to Trauma and Attachment.”  This book is a valuable tool if you are parenting a child who has experienced trauma and who has a disorder of attachment.

It is normal and quite common for children to feel anxious in response to life stressors.  Anxiety in children can stem from external events or situations (problems with peers, changes in the family, too many activities, or moving to a new home) or internal feelings and pressures (wanting to do well in school, feeling different from peers, a fear of making mistakes).  Because children may not always recognize or clearly articulate that something is bothering them, it is important for parents to recognize the warning signs of stress and anxiety.

I don’t usually like reading or watching the news.  More often than not, the news is negative –

Today’s top news stories on my phone:
NM wildfire forces evacuation
5 people still missing from tragic Amtrak Crash
Militants kill at least 25 in Nigeria
TSA defends removing adult’s diaper for pat down… 

But, sifting through all of that is worth it when a good inspirational story comes across my screen.  So, I’ve put together a few of my favorite articles from the past couple of weeks.  Enjoy 🙂

Meg Cox, author of The Book of New Family Traditions: How to Create Great Rituals for Holidays & Everyday, led our Kids Connection workshop last year with a focus on creating powerful, personal family traditions.   We all had a fantastic time and are excited that Meg is now writing a revised/expanded edition of her book!  In this new edition, she will expand on the topic of special rituals and celebrations specifically for adoptive families, both for special occasions like “gotcha days” and everyday rituals like dinner and bedtime.

Open adoption brings up many feelings within all members of the adoption community. It can elicit fear and uncertainty as well as comfort and hope. Many adoptive families are concerned that open adoption can lead into a situation that feels like co-parenting. To address this, adoption professionals (social workers, attorneys, adoption agencies) work to support adoptive parents as the parents of the child, and the birth parents as important people in the child’s life. No two open adoptions are alike, and adoptive families can work together with their adoption professionals and birth family to come up with an agreement that works for everyone.