Adopting a Toddler: What Size Shoes Does She Wear?. Denise Hoppenhauer. 2002. 244p. Writers Club Press. Finally, a childcare book written with the unique needs of adopted toddlers in mind. Written by an adoptive parent, Adopting A Toddler: What Size Shoes Does She Wear? is an indispensable guide to the wonderful world of toddler adoption. Filled with essential parenting information, Adopting a Toddler answers many questions that parents ask, including questions about changing a name, choosing a crib versus a bed, beginning potty training, and what size shoes to buy. Adopting a Toddler is easy to read and covers every aspect of adopting a one to four year-old; with sections on the toddler wardrobe, the nursery, child safety, mealtime, bath time, selecting a pediatrician, medical considerations, international adoption travel, pre- and post-adoption resources, and more. Adopting a Toddler provides the most up-to-date solutions for preparing for your new arrival. About the Author: Denise Harris Hoppenhauer is an adoptive parent and advocate. She is the Program Coordinator for an International Adoption Agency and the 2003 recipient of the Dave Thomas Advocate of the Year Award from the South Carolina Council On Adoptable Children. The Author is donating 10% of her proceeds to Shoes for Orphan Souls.

Adopting the Older Child. Claudia L Jewett. 1978. 301p. The Harvard Common Press. Claudia Jewett, who herself has adopted seven older children and has worked with hundreds more and their new families, sets forth the perils and joys, the trials and the successes of older- child adoption, explaining in straightforward language the special problems that these children are likely to have and presents practical, experience-based ways for dealing with them.

Families at Risk: A Guide to Understand & Protect Children & Care Givers Involved in Out-of-Home or Adoptive Care. Jodee Kulp. 1993. 400p. Better Endings. This book is a guide to understanding and protecting children and care providers involved in out-of-home or adoptive care. It is especially aimed at situations where there have been prior instances of abuse or current allegations of possible abuse. Families at Risk balances the need to protect children with concern for the well-being of families. Although originally written for foster-care situations, this book is directly applicable to older-child adoptions. By the Same Author: Our FAScinating Journey: The Best We Can Be: Keys to Brain Potential Along the Path of Prenatal Brain Injury (2002; 2nd ed., 2004).

Forever Family, A: A Story of Adoption. John Houghton. 2006. 272p. Faber & Faber (UK). John Houghton and his wife—middle-class, highly educated, well-travelled—learned that they could not have children of their own. Instead they adopted three siblings, two boys and a girl, who were looking for ’a forever family’, as the adoption agencies put it. What followed is all too common in adoptive families, but it is rarely talked about in public and has never been described with such transparent honesty as it is in the pages of this remarkable book. From the start, the children were difficult, but the scale of their problems only gradually became clear as the years went by. Strange fears and tantrums were accompanied by much more disturbing kinds of behaviour; the violence and rejection that the children had suffered were visited on their adoptive parents unpredictably and explosively. This is a story of desperate wanting, of anger and frustrated love. It is written with a kind of plain clarity that is both restrained and emotionally powerful. There is no triumphant victory over pain and loss, but there is, in the end, something like hope—a testament to the difference that two decent people can make by sustaining their commitment to an impossible situation.

Forever Parents: Adopting Older Children. James & Darleen Kloeppel. 1995. 120p. Adele Enterprises. What is it like to adopt an older child, a child who can remember birth parents, earlier life experiences and former home(s)? This book is the personal story of one family and their four children, ranging in age from four to nine at the time of adoption. Despite the parents’ preparation and good intentions, the children’s first months at home were far worse than expected. At times the parents wondered whether it would work out. But it did. Forever Parents is the story of people learning to live with and love one another through the creation of a family.

New Parents for Older Children. Alan Rushton. 1988. 140p. British Association for Adoption & Fostering.

No More Here & There: Adopting the Older Child. Ann Carney. 1976. vii, 88p. University of North Carolina Press. No More Here and There is a down-to-earth account of an older child growing into a family, as reflected in the diary kept by his adoptive mother, who subsequently developed this personal journal into a manuscript which the publisher hopes will be of real value to all those interested in the adoptive placement of children with special needs.

Nothing Good Ever Happens to Me: An Adoption Love Story. Caroline Hassinger Lindsay. 1996. 126p. CWLA. After six years of shuttling from one foster home to another, Lee Ann came to the Lindsay home bringing humor, good survival skills, and a host of problems. For the next ten years, her birth father was an intermittent presence in her life, preventing all attempts at adoption. This book is unsparing in its descriptions of Lee Ann’s own frustration and depression during this time period and bold in its frankness about the inability of her parents to fix the past. Nothing Good Ever Happens to Me is a moving and honest portrait of the struggles involved in adopting an older child.

Older Child Adoption. Grace Robinson. 1998. 177p. Crossroad Pub Co. Adopting a child over the age of two can present unique challenges and opportunities, even for experienced parents. It is one thing to understand about adopting an older child and quite another to live with that child. This book presents both the author’s personal experiences after having adopted three children (ages nine to twelve) and the results of her research of over thirty families who adopted older children.

Our Own: Adopting & Parenting the Older Child. Trish Maskew. 1999. 284p. Snowcap Press. Based on the author’s experiences as an adoptive mother and foster parent, as well as interviews with numerous adoptive families, adoption professionals and adults who were adopted, Our Own thoroughly explores both the joys and the challenges of older child adoption. Suitable for families adopting domestically or internationally, it covers such topics as: Evaluating whether you have what it takes to adopt a child who’s no longer a baby; choosing an agency and finding a child to adopt; dealing with school officials, language difficulties, and grade placement; recognizing how grief affects childrens behavior; deciding how much birthfamily contact is appropriate; teaching your child to deal with racism; handling difficult behavior such as tantrums and lying; testing for and treating attachment disorder, ADHD, posttraumatic stress disorder, hepatitis, parasites, and other mental health and medical issues.

Parenting Your Adopted Older Child: How to Overcome the Unique Challenges & Raise a Happy & Healthy Child. Brenda McCreight, PhD. 2002. 199p. New Harbinger Publications. This comprehensive guide by an adoption expert provides specific parenting strategies for the growing number of people who adopt children over two years old. Parents learn to identify their child’s needs, meet such challenges as aggressive behavior and attention deficit disorder, and create a sense of belonging.

Toddler Adoption: The Weaver’s Craft. Mary Hopkins-Best. 1998. 272p. Perspectives Press. Toddler Adoption is a resource designed to help adopting parents and placing professionals involved in adoptions of children in the unique developmental stage from ages one to three, usually referred to as toddlerhood. Books focusing on parenting an adopted infant, and those written for the special needs adopters of school-aged children contain little of relevance for those adopting a toddler. These children are up on their feet and walking, and have achieved cognitive growth providing a store of remembered life experiences with caregivers and age-peers to whom they have probably become attached, but the language and cognitive skills of toddler-aged children are still too unsophisticated to allow a toddler to make use of the therapies that can help smooth transitions and deal with losses. Toddler Adoption fills this gap admirably. Toddler Adoption is essential reading for anyone considering the adoption of a boy or girl falling within the one-to-three-year age bracket. — Midwest Book Review