Do you remember Black Hawk Down? It's the story a helicopter shot down over Mogadishu, Somalia about 20 years ago. One of my favorite scenes is near the end of the movie when Eric Bana's character Hoot shares the following: When I go home people'll ask me, "Hey Hoot, why do you do it man? [...]
Category: Adopt
Tapestry Conference 2013
We are honored to be presenting at the Tapestry conference again this year. We have been asked to talk about the importance of birth families to foster and adoptive kids. Here is the summary of our session: Adopted and foster children share a deeply personal connection with their birth families regardless of the circumstances of [...]
The Wounds You Don’t See
I recently read a study that highlighted the difference between recalling images and words. There were two control groups. The first was shown a picture of a circle. The word "circle" was written down for the second group. The groups were re-convened 72 hours later and asked what they were shown. The group that saw [...]
Band Aids
Giving and receiving love may seem like an easy thing, but for many adopted and foster kids this is hard. They have given love to people only to have those people disappear from their life or not return their love. They have received love only to be moved to a new home, or the "love" [...]
Why is my Child Acting This Way?
I love this video because Dr. Purvis addresses a question that all adoptive parents ask. We all want to know if our child's behavior is because they are adopted or because they are kids.
Keep the Faith
Doubt is a terrible thing. I don't like feeling unsure of myself. I don't do well with it, I don't do well with it at all. It turns out that I like things being out of control even less. I have never thought of myself as someone with control issues. OK, I'll admit to some [...]
How do you Define Success?
Success is a strange thing because it means something different to almost everyone. Some people define success by the size of their bank account, the size of their house or the make of a car. Italian auto manufacturers have literally made billions focusing on this definition of success. Some people define success by their personal [...]
WOW! That’s a lot of Kids
One of the things about having a family as large as ours is that everywhere we go people will comment about our six kids. Usually it's something innocent like, "You must have your hands full" or "WOW! That's a lot of kids." And sometimes we have those less than nice interactions like "What's wrong with [...]
Family (Re)defined
I come from a pretty tight knit family. I have many childhood memories of family vacations together. I remember weekends with grandparents and attending sporting events with my uncles. I can't remember a single birthday growing up without my cousins. To say that I have many good, family childhood memories would be an understatement. One [...]
Tell Me a Story
One of my favorite things we do as a family is eat dinner together every night. And by together I mean everyone (including babies) sitting around the table sharing food and each other's company. There was a time when we would sit on the couch and the kids would "picnic" on the floor while watching [...]