The Forever Child: A Tale of Loss and Impossible Dreams

[artsymominnc]

The Forever Child: A Tale of Loss and Impossible Dreams
fairy tale by Nancy A. Clark; parenting guide by Bryan Post
ISBN # 0-0726830-0-5

summary: A little girl named Bella and her 6 brothers and sisters are living in a terrible state of misery and neglect because their parents are unable to care for their most basic needs.  The parents are eventually arrested and the Social Worker Agency randomly pairs up the children and places them in foster care.

The parenting guide addresses how early childhood stress and trauma have a powerful and long-lasting impact on the brain and a child's ability to form and maintain healthy emotional relationships.  It challenges the assumption that once a child has been placed in a safe environment, he/she should no longer feel fearful or threatened.  A child's high levels of stress have a dramatic effect on his/her functioning and behaviors...and this has a tremendous impact on a family's stability, especially if a parent has his/her own unresolved trauma history. 

Core strategies addressed in the parenting guide:

--The adopted child is your forever child

--The foster child longs for consistent care

--Dissociation as Fear and Self-Soothing (the difference between "acting out" and "acting inwardly"--withdrawing)

--The Parentified Child (the child who is left in a position of having to care for a younger sibling or sibling group and how that affects their behavior and processing when they are eventually put in a situation where someone else assumes the role of care for the sibling/s)

--Fear: Protective vs. Negative Control (perceiving controlling behavior as fear communication rather than a mechanism for controlling others)