Event

Webinar: Adoptive Parent Learning: Been There Done That—What We Learned That Could Help You

Start time/date:	Jan  29, 2020 11:00 AM
End time/date:	Jan  29, 2020 12:30 PM
Place:	Webinar Call-In Instructions Will Be Emailed After Registration

Adoptive Parent Learning: Been There Done That—What We Learned That

Could Help You  

This workshop provides lived experience from educated, experienced adoptive parents that will include tips that we wished our younger selves had known and understood earlier. You will receive practical guidance on how to create a plan for parenting that includes managing the unknowns. We will cover topics including: handling your own fears, understanding how children understand & experience adoption, why the words we use matter, why beginning with a child’s birth makes sense, how to talk about first/birth parents, responding to difficult behaviors in children (and ourselves), answering and anticipating children’s questions, whether they ask them or not and reworking parenting expectations such that children don’t receive the message that we are disappointed in who they turn out to be. Experiences include same race adoption and transracial adoption, kinship adoption, foster adoption, infant adoption, closed adoption and open adoption. Expect honest conversation about the challenges and the joys and remember hindsight is often 20-20. This webinar is appropriate for pre-adoptive and adoptive parents as well as professionals working with these families.

Educational objectives:

Participants will be able to:

1. Create a plan for initiating a conversation with adopted children about their adoption that includes specific language related to being born, having birth parents and complex circumstances that led to their placement with a new family.
2. Identify developmental milestones related to children’s understanding of adoption and placement.
3. Describe their own feelings about difficult conversations and give examples of how to distinguish between parent’s and children’s feelings.
4. Identify approaches that will be useful, particularly when children are exhibiting behaviors that challenge their parents
5. Recognize the reality that parenting is challenging and requires bravery and honesty about ourselves, that we, as adoptive parents, are not always anticipating.

Instructor: Beth Hall

Experience: Beth Hall is an adoption educator who, co-founded Pact, An Adoption Alliance, which is a multicultural adoption organization dedicated to addressing essential issues affecting adopted children of color. Pact offers lifelong support and placement services for birth and adoptive families with adopted kids of color. A national speaker, she is also the author of numerous articles and a book, Inside Transracial Adoption, which is filled with personal stories, practical suggestions, and theory, and delivers the message that race matters, racism is alive, and families built transracially can develop strong and binding ties.

Pricing Description:

$36 per person non-member

Special pricing Pact member receive 25% discount.

Please choose carefully when registering for Pact events. Pact is not in a position to refund workshop or event registration fees.