Leveling Up

Explore Launching and Transitioning Adult Adoptees While Continuing to Build Healthy and Strong Family Relationships! Provide the Support That They Need While Focusing on Meeting Their Needs Through Attachment-Based Connection.

Adoptive families are unique and moving into the adult years with an adoptee is no exception. Dr. Christina Reese and Elaine Shenk have worked with adoptive families for almost 30 combined years and have been parenting adoptees for over 40 combined years. In this timely book, they share their experiences, learned and lived, with practical takeaways at the end of each chapter.

Adoptees, because of their attachment trauma, have a harder time trusting and resting in supportive relationships. For years, families have been working on building relationships that are strong and steady. When launching into adulthood, those relationships can become shaky and begin to crumble.

Looking through a lens of evidenced-based practice and adoption theory, chapters include using Trust-Based Relational Interventions (TBRI) into young adulthood, how the 7 Core Issues in Adoption cycle through this developmental stage and ways to use the 5 Love Languages to love your child well.

Avoid attachment ruptures by learning ways to provide the support that the adoptee needs. Understand how trauma changes the brain and what challenges the adoptee may face in the launching process. This book shares ways to meet the needs of the adult adoptee while also giving them wings to fly.

A gentle guide, this book walks through hard conversations and how to be supportive of adoptees with mental health, intellectual or physical disabilities. Christina and Elaine share personal experiences from their own parenting journeys that encourage and empower continued relationship building into adulthood with adult adoptees. Their humor, compassion, and commitment to this work of building healthy adoptive families makes this a relatable read and a worthy investment in strengthening your own family.