Parenting Beliefs Create a Mindset and Guide Our Actions

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The coaches at GIFT work to help families acquire the skills and knowledge that will enable them to succeed at Growing Intentional Families Together. We believe in being intentional and conscious about the values and beliefs that guide the way we live and raise our families. Our parenting beliefs create a mindset and guide our actions so it is essential that we examine and carefully define them. Parents should identify areas of consensus as well as conflict and then hammer out a compromise.

Readers of this blog know we write with a consistent point of view that holds adoptees at the hub. We also recognize that adoption does not exist in a vacuum. It unfolds within a context of relationships between the adoptee and his parents (first/birth and adoptive) and the people he or she encounters in the world at large.

Our coaching primarily focuses on this relationship dynamic. We coined a word for this approach—Adoption Attunement—and incorporated it into our tag line: Your Adoption Attunement (AQ) specialists providing coaching and support before, during, and after adoption.” AQ includes fifteen basic points.

(We also have delineated twenty-five foundational principles and beliefs of our adoption philosophy and this document is posted on our About Us page.

The coaches at GIFT Family Services are committed to educating and raising awareness about Adoption-attunement. Adoption-attunement℠ infuses all of our coaching whether is it done person to person, in a family/group, or via podcast, video, webinar, conference presentations, workshops, blogs, interviews, articles, and books. We firmly believe as people understand more about adoption complexity, they can update their ideas and beliefs about adoption. This empowers them to parent better, to build stronger connections within their families, and to provide the support which their children so sorely need.

GIFT is dedicated to serving the adoption community regardless of an individual’s faith, culture, or gender identity. We are also mindful of the strong interest of the Christian community in encouraging adoption and believed this would be an important arena into which we could introduce the Adoption-attunement principles. We asked ourselves how families can integrate their faith beliefs with Adoption Attunement (AQ) in a way that honors both. Two of our coaches decided to write a book to answer this need.

The result is an award-winning book, Reimagining Adoption: What Adoptees Seek from Families and Faith. The premise is tilted toward the Christian community yet the fundamental principles would be useful to anyone connected to adoption. You can listen to Sally’s interview discussing the book with a Christian podcaster. Note: this particular interview represents a particular faith point of view.