BOOKS FOR ADULTS

There are many great books available on fostering and other related topics. Here are just a few you might consider reading.

ADVICE, TOOLS, AND HANDBOOKS

Wounded Children, Healing Homes: How Traumatized Children Impact Adoptive and Foster Families by Jayne Schooler, Betsy Keefer Smalley and Timothy Callahan
Wounded Children, Healing Homes provides help for adoptive and foster parents of children who have been emotionally wounded by abandonment, rejection, and other traumatic events. Often parents enter into an adoptive or foster experience with high expectations, lots of love to give, and expecting love in return. But often the case is that traumatized children need special handling and parents need education on how to handle their challenges. This book offers solutions and encouragement for parents as they lead their new child toward healing and wholeness.

The Foster Parenting Manual: A Practical Guide to Creating a Loving, Safe and Stable Home by John DeGarmo
The Foster Parenting Manual is a comprehensive guide offering proven, friendly advice for novice and experienced parents alike. DeGarmo describes what to expect from the process, how to access help and how to ensure the best care for your child. He tackles thorny issues such as children’s use of the Internet and social media, managing contact with birth parents and how to support your child at school. Most importantly, he provides advice designed to help your child feel safe, secure and loved.

Love and Logic Magic When Kids Leave You Speechless by Jim Fay and Charles Fay
For years, parents have asked Jim Fay and Dr. Charles Fay for specific words they can use when kids leave them speechless. The book is finally here! Twenty-three chapters include parent-child dialogues and plenty of information about how to handle the most frustrating things kids say.

The Middle Mom by Christie Erwin
Every foster parent knows how hard, yet rewarding, it can be to care for a child with a difficult past and an uncertain future. Christie Erwin has been a mom, in the middle, for countless children over nearly two decades. In this poignant and insightful book, she honestly shares the reality of making yourself vulnerable to the pain and indescribable delight of giving your heart away to a child. If you have ever considered foster parenting and just aren’t sure you have what it takes, let Christie’s inspiring, faith-filled story assure you that there is One that can and will equip you with all you need.

Practical Tools for Foster Parents by Lana Temple-Plotz
More than half a million children today live in out-of-home care, and many have special problems. The need for well-trained, loving foster parents has never been greater. With this book, Girls and Boys Town offers these committed people the professional tools they need to not only care for foster children but to actually help them get better.

The Connected Child by Karyn B. Purvis, Ph.D., David R. Cross, Ph.D., and Wendy Lyons Sunshine
Written by two research psychologists specializing in adoption and attachment, The Connected Child will help you:

• Build bonds of affection and trust with your adopted child
• Effectively deal with any learning or behavioral disorders
• Discipline your child with love without making him or her feel threatened

For Lasting Relationships by Jim Fay and Dr. David B. Hawkins
The Love and Logic approach is the foundation for this book. This approach has helped millions of people raise wonderful, responsible children. Now we’re taking all that wisdom, which works so well with kids, and applying it to adult relationships. * Do you feel like there has to be a better way to interact, instead of arguing, with co-workers, significant others and any other adult in your life? * Do you ever struggle in your relationships with friends, family, co-workers, or significant others? * Do you feel like relating just shouldn’t be this hard? This book gives you a powerful toolbox filled with tried and true techniques that have proven useful to millions of people. It is guaranteed to make a profound difference in the way you communicate with others in your life!

MEMOIRS

Thin Places, a Memoir by Mary E. DeMuth
In this moving spiritual memoir—Thin Places—Mary DeMuth traces the winding path of thin places in her life, places where she experienced longing and healing more intensely than before. From surviving abuse as a latchkey kid to discovering a heavenly Father who never leaves, Mary’s story invites you to a deeper understanding of your own story. She calls you to discover new ways to look for God in the past so that you might experience him more profoundly in the present.

Three Little Words, a Memoir by Ashley Rhodes-Courter
An inspiring true story of the tumultuous nine years Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent in the foster care system, and how she triumphed over painful memories and real-life horrors to ultimately find her own voice.

Another Place at the Table by Kathy Harrison
The story of life at our social services’ front lines, centered on three children who, when they come together in Harrison’s home, nearly destroy it. It is the frank first-person story of a woman whose compassionate best intentions for a child are sometimes all that stand between violence and redemption.