In this completely revised and updated edition of Raising Adopted Children, Lois Melina, editor of Adopted Children newsletter and the mother of two children by adoption, draws on the latest research in psychology, sociology, and medicine to guide parents through all stages of their child's development. Melina addresses the pressing adoption issues of today, such as open adoption, international adoption, and transracial adoption, and answers parents' most frequently asked questions, such as:

How will my child bond or form attachments to me?

When and how should I tell my child that he was adopted?

What should schools be told about my child?

Will adoption make adolescent upheavals more complicated?

Up-to-date, sensitive, and clear, Raising Adopted Children is the definitive resource for all adoptive parents and concerned professionals.

Raising Adopted Children is a comprehensive source of practical, reassuring advice and intelligent support for the adoptive parent. [It is also an] excellent professional resource for social workers, physicians, teachers, therapists, and others working with adopted children and their parents.
--North American Council on Adoptable Children

Melina, an adoptive parent, writes both sensibly and sensitively on many critical issues faced by parents and their adopted children from infancy through adolescence.
-- Booklist

When to tell, What to tell, and How to tell

Children who are adopted have predictable and often unspoken concerns about themselves and how they joined their families. In this wise and timely guide, Lois Melina, author of the classic manual Raising Adopted Children, helps parents anticipate and respond to those concerns in ways that build self-esteem. Through sample conversations, reassuring advice, and age-specific activities parents will find answers to such questions as:

-- When should I give my child the letter her birthmother wrote?
-- How do I share information that might upset my child?
-- How can I know when my child is wondering about adoption?
-- What should I tell school personnel about my child's history? What about family and friends?
-- How can I be sure we talk about adoption enough, but not too much?

Whether parents adopted traditionally, as stepparents, or through donor insemination, surrogacy, or in vitro fertilization, Making Sense of Adoption will open the door to a lifetime of growth and understanding for adoptive families.

Sixteen essays - ranging from lyric essays to narrative journalism - address how we make sense of what we cannot know, how we make change in the world, how we heal, and how we know when we are home. Collectively, these essays convey the longing for agency and connection, particularly among women. They will resonate with readers of all ages, but perhaps especially with women in the second half of life, those dealing with aging parents, retirement, illness, and accompanying vulnerabilities. Here readers will find comfort within keen reflection upon life's ambiguities.

Covering leadership in the arts and humanities, this volume integrates critical theory with authentic leadership development, exploring the notion that leadership is both a discursive practice and a performative identity. Each year the International Leadership Association publishes a book that captures the best contemporary thinking about leadership from a diverse range of scholars, practitioners, and educators working in the field of leadership studies. In keeping with the mission of the ILA, the International Leadership Series Building Leadership Bridges connects ways of researching, imagining, and experiencing leadership across cultures, over time, and around the world.

Praise for The Embodiment of Leadership

Read this book to experience an artistic and more robust sense of leadership; to rise to the challenge to gain alignment in mind, body, and spirit; and to heed the call to heal the shadows we as leaders sometimes cast over our collective humanity. Read this book to become more whole.
--Shann Ray Ferch, professor of leadership studies, Gonzaga University

For once leadership experts consider the mind-body problem from the perspective of the latter--the body. Those with an interest in how the body is brought to bear on the exercise of leadership would do well to explore The Embodiment of Leadership.
--Barbara Kellerman, James MacGregor Burns Lecturer in Public Leadership, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University

The Embodiment of Leadership goes beyond the banal by using our body experiences as the point of departure in deciphering the leadership conundrum. Anyone interested in the study of leadership would do well to pay attention to this book.
--Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, Distinguished Clinical Professor of Leadership and Organiza-tional Change, The Raoul de Vitry d'Avaucourt Chaired Professor of Leadership Development, INSEAD

Leadership is a social construction. The Embodiment of Leadership presents a multifaceted approach to understanding how we, as a society, define, create, and contend with leaders and leadership. Serious scholars and students of leadership need to read this.
--Ronald E. Riggio, Kravis Leadership Institute, Claremont McKenna College