Adoptive Families

Adoptive Families

We offer a continuum of services throughout the adoption process to support your family’s growth.
Working with adopted children, children in foster care in pre-adoptive placements and their families is a true passion of our staff at Rennicke & Associates. Collectively, we have integrated what we have found to be the most effective attachment focused family treatment models in order to create a safe base from which you, your child and your family can heal and thrive.

Cultivating Connections: Educational & Experiential Seminars.

If you have completed mandated trainings but feel you’d like to go further in your understanding and practice of attachment parenting principles in a supportive group, you might be interested in Cultivating Connections…

Cultivating Connections is a time-limited series of discussions that are open to parents of adopted children and parents of children in foster care in pre-adoptive placements of any age and of any family of origin (e.g. domestic and international adoptions, kinship care, etc.). Cultivating Connections will give you practical skills and support to understand:

–    How attachment works in everyday moments with your child

–    How to parent using P.A.C.E. (Playful, Accepting, Curious, Empathic)

–    How to move from being reactive to reflective in response to your child

–    What strategies to use for your own respite and self-care

Cultivating Connections is a unique and thoughtful integration of Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP), Child-Parent Relationship Therapy (CPRT), Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT), Theraplay and Mindfulness Practices.

Note: If you are an adoptive parenting group and are interested in having the Cultivating Connections series presented to your group meeting, please note that this series can also be held offsite.

Pre- and Post-Adoptive Parent Consultations.

If you are considering becoming a foster or adoptive parent or already have adopted and are seeking more personal one-on-one coaching, private Parent Consultations might be a good fit for you…
 
Pre- and Post-Adoptive Parent Consultations can jump start the work of examining your own attachment history, assist in learning about complex relational trauma, and provide hands on practical coaching for how to best support a child entering your family that might have significant emotional, behavioral issues and/or learning disabilities.

Adoptive Parenting Support Groups

If you are an adoptive parent and are feeling isolated or depleted, our monthly Adoptive Parent Support Group might be a great way to get recharged and connected to a community of parents who “get it”…

Adoptive Parenting Support Groups can provide more than just helpful information. They can be a place to connect with other parents who are going through similar experiences, triumphs and frustrations. Our goal is to create a safe place, free of lectures or judgments, where adoptive parents can feel replenished by our staff and the other group members.

Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy (DDP)ⓒ

If traditional or evidence based treatments have not been effective in addressing your adoptive child’s emotional and behavioral issues, or you are specifically concerned about how to address your child’s adoption story, history of trauma, neglect or abuse, or the quality of your child’s attachment to you, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy might be helpful to your family….

DDP facilitates the child’s experience of being understood and accepted unconditionally by their adoptive parents, in order to develop their ability to cope more effectively with stressful feelings and to deepen their capacity to form close relationships. In DDP sessions, both the parent and child are present in the room together, so that there is more opportunity for hugs, eye contact, laughter, tears, and touch. Parents who have experienced significant frustration and lost time and resources with more traditional therapies that focus on addressing their child’s symptoms in individual treatment, have appreciated and valued the chance DDP provides to work on challenging issues together with their child.

Family Intensive Program

If you are an adoptive family in crisis or planning to adopt a child with a complex traumatic history or with significant emotional, behavioral or learning disabilities, our Family Intensive Program might provide the level of support you need…

Family Intensive Program is a 5 to 10 day multi-disciplinary approach to diagnosis, assessment and treatment of adopted children and their families that condenses 4 to 8 months of treatment into 1 to 2 weeks. We created the Family Intensive Program because at the heart of our passion for adoptive families is our hope that more adoptive families can stay together, not just physically in the same home, but feel emotionally engaged, supported, and delighted by each other’s company. Whether you are mindfully preparing for the arrival of a child with a complicated history into your home or trying to re-establish a sense of “normalcy” and peace after an adoption that has not gone the way you had expected, the Family Intensive Program might be a way to accelerate and deepen the impact of attachment focused treatment. If you want more information on the Family Intensive Program, click here.

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