by GIFT Coach | Oct 19, 2016 | Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, Difficult Discussions, General Discussion, Post Adoption Challenges & Behaviors
How do cultural misperceptions and adoption stereotypes affect our children, ourselves as parents, and our family dynamics? When movies or books paint adoptees as a “bad seed” or unwanted inconvenience, how does it impact us emotionally and shape our...
by GIFT Coach | Sep 21, 2016 | Adoptive family life, Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, General Discussion
Would you enjoy a sundae made of the finest ingredients money can buy: rich, home-made ice cream, sprinkled with nuts, slathered with dark chocolate? Yum? Is your mouth watering? Wait! Let’s add one more topping: thick, gooey hot sludge. SLUDGE??? That’s...
by GIFT Coach | May 25, 2016 | Adoption-attunement, Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, General Discussion
To the marrow of our bones, adoptive parents understand what we’ve called in earlier blogs “our magnificent obsession”: the consuming desire for children. We pursued adoption with passion and dogged determination, leaped every hurdle and met every...
by GIFT Coach | Apr 27, 2016 | Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, Blogs by Gayle Swift, General Discussion, Strengthening Family Relationships
We love our kids unconditionally. To us, the absence of a biological link to them does not matter. Our children are the offspring of our hearts and souls though not of our bodies. We would do anything–everything–to keep them safe. When we hear that April...
by GIFT Coach | Apr 13, 2016 | Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, Difficult Discussions, General Discussion
For most of us the carefully wrought, precarious balance of our family systems depends on everything operating as expected. But what happens when an event smashes that equilibrium? Last week I had a come-to-Jesus encounter with that kind of disruption. I have...
by GIFT Coach | Mar 16, 2016 | Adoptee experience, Adoption-attunement, Adoptive Parenting Skills/Tool, Blogs by Gayle Swift, General Discussion, Strengthening Family Relationships
During this month folks who are Irish –literally or metaphorically– celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. Like many holidays, a non-sectarian sense of fun has overtaken the religious aspects of the day’s origins. So what does St. Patrick’s Day...
