As we learn more and more details of the Virginia Tech murderer, many questions are being raised about, “Why wasn’t something done? This was obviously a disturbed person.”

An adoptive mother called me yesterday in frustration. Her daughter, a sexual perpetrator, diagnosed with several mental illnesses is facing the magic age of 18, a legal adult. What will happen now?

She cannot go home as the victims of her abuse still live in that home, plus the family is finishing up a home study... more

"Parenting is an ugly job, and you find yourself faced with this, and if you don't do something, somebody else is going to," he said. "Rage and conflict don't just disappear."

This distressing article doesn’t really give any answers as there may possibly be none.

However the bottom line is that there are a great many juveniles who need psychiatric help.

This is universal, not an adoption problem in this article, but it strikes a chord in my world.

My family has impulse problems and poor... more

I’ve been reading and digesting Focal Point for two months now, feeling as if they must have taken notes from my house alone. The entire issue is devoted to traumatic stress and 38 of my 39 children fall squarely into that category. One does not lose one’s initial caretaker and not feel stress; most of my children were also abused and neglected.

My birth daughter and I have absorbed much of their stress, we’ve become nearly as traumatized after all these years of going between our family’s gratitude, resentment, happiness, grief and ten million other emotions, it has beat us both down over the years.

Moments of pure,... more

During our most recent family crisis, all eyes were on me. How will Mama handle this? What’s really going on?

I do not share the details, with my younger children, in many situations involving grown up children. Traumatized children have ultra sensitive radar systems and they pick up on every nuance of my behavior. They knew something wasn’t right, stress and tension etched in mama’s face, but mama’s still cooking dinner, taking everyone to soccer, providing structure and routine. The difference was the 19 month old grandbaby on her hip; where’s his mom?

“She’s taking care of a situation,” was my vague response as my cell phone rang constantly, the wall phone as well.

At... more

If you drove up to the front of my house, you might be fairly impressed by the size of it, the way it seems to rise out of a hill on one side; the height and breadth of it are singularly impressive. One son of mine claims though that we each only have enough square feet to breathe, the square feet of oxygen over our heads. He exaggerates because our house is huge.

So it looks good from the outside, sometimes it looks OK on the inside, but the giveaway to the fact that I parent traumatized children, comes from the faint odor or urine that seems... more

Many of our children today experience learning disabilities from time to time. How those issues are handled in school will often be the positive or negative that casts the shadow on how your child will view attending school altogether. This is why it is so very important for parents to sit down with their children at various times during the school year and actually do homework together.

There is no other way than hands on experience to know if your child is doing well in his studies or if they may be experiencing difficulties. If they are... more

Should I have done anything differently? Should I have paid more attention to the adoption checklists as to what issues I felt I could parent? I’ve always thought that I’d been pretty clear in my comprehension and understanding of issues. I’ve avoided several such as pet abusers, fire starters and children who are documented as those who sexually act out.

No surprise there, as those issues all scare me, I feel substantially unqualified to parent those.

I’ve also chosen to not deal with medical issues as I’m terribly squeamish, not a good thing when one has 21 rough and tumble sons.

What I’m really discovering is that as I provide security and stability, a sense... more

Nancy Spoolstra blogged about this article already, but I, as usual, have a few more thoughts.

This is what jumped out at me, considering I’ve adopted 31 out of my 39 children from the foster care system.

Nationwide, there are more than 500,000 children in foster care at any one time, and more than half have mental illness or serious behavioral... more

One of my four pregnant daughters sent me this from Baby Center. She sent me the article, not the link itself, and I find the information to be very distressing. No wonder behavior modification has no effect, no wonder love and logic seeps right past their radar.

MONDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) — Children who experience traumatic stress can suffer brain damage that results in a decrease in the size of the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in memory and emotion, research suggests.

The researchers... more

There is a young man in our area who is suffering from a condition with his heart that is very rare. When he was born, his heart was in an upside down position and he was not expected to live. He surprisingly has survived to a wonderful age of 17 and now he is in a difficult position.

Like many people who need heart transplants, he is on the list. His condition is getting hopeless if he is not matched with a donor heart soon.

My daughter called me in the middle of the night crying. She was so upset that I could barely calm her down and I thought... more