Adoption Counseling

Do you wish to fortify your connection with your child?

Do you wish you understood more about your child’s experience pre-adoption?
Are you locked in a power struggle with your tween/teen child?
Does your child struggle with feelings of loss of their birth family or their birth culture?
Do you wish you could better bolster your child’s self-esteem and soothe their shame reactions?

You grew your family through adoption -- it was beautiful but never easy. Your child, especially if older when adopted, had a complex experience that may have included grief, loss, and shame. Getting you and your child counseling support can make a huge difference. Counseling can accelerate your child’s healing and facilitate the creation of new, healthy family patterns.

I am here to hold space for you, your child, and your family as you process your experience.

South Boulder Counseling Baby feet cradled in adults hands

As a former in-house therapist at a Chinese foster home, as well as a long-time mental health volunteer at a Chinese governmental orphanage, I have unique insight to offer. I worked with children pre-adoption, and bore witness to the full complexity of their emotions at leaving behind their lives.

In working with your family, I will begin with getting as full a history as possible regarding your child’s pre-adoptive living situation. For children adopted from China, simply the name and location of the institution will give me a lot of information about your child’s likely experience.

During my three years in China, I worked in, did training for, and visited dozens of versions of orphan care -- including hospital-based, foreign-run, government-run, and religious.

I was lucky to have gained access to all these institutions and homes. It taught me so much about child development pre-adoption. It is my great honor to be able to pass along this learned knowledge to my clients in the U.S. Unfortunately, for many families, their child’s pre-adoptive experience is a bit of a mystery.

I strive to demystify your child’s pre-adoptive life. And I will support practical changes in your child’s current family life to offset their pre-adoptive experience.

In general, I found that babies and toddlers in the foster homes (usually foreign or church supported) were the most psychologically well-adjusted. These children often had bonded deeply with their surrogate “mamas.” However, both the children and their caretakers faced trauma during their sudden separation.

The babies that were most developmentally and psychologically delayed usually came from institutions that lacked this attachment pattern. While some institutions were better funded or fancier, the outcomes were usually linked to caretaking staffing choices more than any other factor. Were the caretakers live-in and full-time with the same babies, or were they working rotating shifts across the orphanage? Were the caretakers instructed to maximize physical care and undervalue emotional care? Did each staff member have a manageable number of children under their care? Were children held, cooed at, and encouraged to explore by their attachment figure? When the child cried, did a caretaker respond with empathy?

Unfortunately, for most institutional orphanages, the answer to all these questions may be “no.”

My job as your child’s therapist is to develop family awareness and insight as to how these pre-adoption conditions may be underlying difficult behavior.

Adoption counseling integrates parenting therapy, child counseling, family therapy, trauma therapy, as well as CBT. I use all the tools in my toolbox for these cases, and draw from multiple external resources to bolster our work together. I am passionate and dedicated to getting your family the help you need.

Perhaps you have more questions about Adoption Counseling?

Who comes to adoption therapy?

My therapeutic style is to rotate sessions between parents, children, and families. Adoption therapy is not just for the adopted child.

South Boulder Counseling Rocks in a calm lake

For parents, I support processing your own discomfort with your child’s early suffering. You may have had their own trauma along the way: the uncertain and long wait for a match, the fear and stress of adoption day, and the slow grind of the subsequent attachment process.
For children, we carefully and slowly process the pain that came before adoption and any subsequent difficult experiences. With younger kids, we engage in play therapy not unlike the program I developed in a Shanghai foster home. For teens, we use talk therapy and CBT to explore otherness, alienation, race, developmental difference, microaggressions, or the experience of language acquisition.
For families, I strive to elevate empathy and improve communication. If behaviors are seen as attention-seeking or trauma-based rather than “bad,” everyone in the family gains patience with each other. I wish to be a conduit for both children and their families to have ‘aha’ moments about each other’s patterns.

Pre-adoptive families are also encouraged to seek support and treatment.

How long will it take?

For pre-adoption coaching, interventions are usually brief and focused. I will reinforce parenting skills that may be taxed once Adoption Day comes. I prepare siblings for their upcoming role. Usually, we only need 6-8 sessions to lay this foundation.

For post-adoption counseling, interventions can last anywhere between months and years. While my aim at South Boulder Counseling is always to support the parents as the child’s best therapist, some adoption cases require ongoing or long-term intermittent professional interventions. I am here for you for as long as you need me.

Are you an adoptive mother?

As an adoption counselor, I get asked this question all the time. I decided before going into this field that I was not going to adopt myself. Working with institutionalized children in China, it would have been too difficult to put up therapeutic boundaries if I had held any intention of adopting. So much of what I am able to offer as an adoption counselor comes from having had this professional objectivity and some detachment from the emotional weight of this field.

Most adoption coaches out there are adoptive parents. While support from parents in the adoptive community is incredibly important (in fact, that is one of the first recommendations I make to pre-adoptive families), I would caution against working with any “coach” without significant training and experience in child psychology. As I witnessed in China, pre-adoptive traumas are real and complex, and an untrained professional may underestimate the psychological impact of your child’s experience.

Reach out today for real expertise in adoption counseling.

If you would like to schedule an appointment or discuss your needs, you can call or text 720-310-0570, email help@kairoswellnesscollective.com, or send a message here. Feel free to reach out by text or phone whenever is convenient. We will get back to you shortly to discuss goals, pricing, and schedule.

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