Greetings!
We designed this site in order to keep in touch with friends and family who are far away and in order to communicate with other adoptive families from around the world.
When we first started researching this wonderful way to become a family we read everything we could get our hands on. Even though there are a lot of great books out there, nothing was as informative or touching as the blogs we found by adoptees, biological parents, and adoptive families. So we are writing this blog now in hopes of returning the favor. We hope that if you are dear to us you will enjoy keeping up with our adventures. If you are someone out there involved in a part of the adoption triad we hope you will find information and comfort here and provide us with some of your own!
If you would like to get in touch with us we can be reached at: becomingafamily@gmail.com
Feel free to stop by anytime. We're happy to share our family story.
Take care,
Brian and Rosemary
I've been reading
"Infant Massage: A Handbook for Loving Parents" by Vimala McClure. I really enjoyed this book tremendously. I love the focus it places on respecting the power of affection and touch to
show not just tell our children how much we love them. I became interested in infant massage as a way to aid bonding with Button a while back but I didn't know if it would be possible since he was a toddler. This book really encouraged me that it is never too late to begin showering our children with physical affection and having it received - eventually.
My favorite things about the book were that it has an entire section written directly to the adoptive and foster parent. I found this to be very helpful. It addressed a lot of the questions I had about our specific family needs. She also includes chapters about children with special and developmental needs and sibling bonding through massage that I think may be useful to many adoptive families. Another thing I really enjoyed about this book was that she dedicates an entire chapter to dads and how they can use massage to bond with their babies, which received the "Brian seal of approval". ;-)
Something I felt could have been done a bit better was that sometimes the author used rather over-the-top opinionated language in her supportive of massage. Even though I am also a strong proponate of the idea and intend to try it out in our family, sometimes I felt like she made too strong a case for the idea that loving touch i.e. massage was the only thing keeping children from growing up to be mass murderers. I just sort of skimmed those rather preachy paragraphs though and they were pretty rare.
All in all, I liked the book a lot and I felt like it was straight forward instruction with easy to follow pictures and sound advice. I am going to practice on a friend's baby this weekend!
--Rosemary
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4 comments:
This is something I believe in. I massaged my daughter from the day we met when she was 8 and a half months old. Before she was 2 she would yell for 'CEEM!' and that further convinced me how much she loved it too. Now at nearly 3 she still asks but now she calls it a massage! We had a relatively smooth transition, maybe massage helped, but it certainly didn't hinder.
I'm a sucker for massages, as the recipient, of course. But this looks like it would be beneficial for everyone involved. If I remember correctly, massage was something recommended in the Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child book too. I'd forgotten until you posted this. Thanks!
Hi Rosemary,
I'm a massage therapist and I really do believe in the power of touch. I talk with my clients regularly about using massage to connect with their kids, from birth and beyond. Several of my clients have even brought their very young kids into see me, and the children LOVED it! Kids love to give massage too(especially scalp). It can be a quiet time, or a time to talk about the day. Thanks for the book suggestion. I say do it! Take care. Gretchen (GandJ)
So many of our adopted kiddos have sensory issues and I would think this would really help. I did massage with Boo because we do it in Korea. Wish I had done it longer and more extensively - perhaps his touch senses would be better.
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