It is very common for families to need support before and after adoption. Pre and post adoption services can help families with a wide range of issues. Experience with past adoptive families has shown that all family members can benefit from receiving some type of pre and post-adoption support. Nightlight offers unlimited free counseling to birth parents who have placed for adoption with us, and for all birth parents on a sliding scale. Counseling services are available to adoptive families. To get connected with adoption related counseling, call (512) 717-4433 or email heather@nightlight.org.
Entering into the adoption process can be frightening, and some people feel they need a sense of balance and certainty. Counseling can help. In addition, sometimes families have issues that must be resolved before the integration of a child, who may have emotional and behavioral needs that could be challenging for even the most stable family. This counseling can help you focus on your specific needs, such as family-of-origin issues or having experienced abuse.
These needs can be met through: Educational Workshops, Support Groups, and Family Counseling Services
Even when children have a positive adoption experience, they often feel some level of separation and loss or possibly even abandonment. They may need support in working through their feelings, mourning their losses, and accepting who they are.
“Who am I? How am I different from my parents? How am I like my birth parents?” Helping children understand who they are for themselves in their own person.
Adoptive parents sometimes experience loss and grief, maybe about infertility, maybe because the adoption is not going as they expected, all of which can cause a strain to a marriage and/or the family. Counseling may help the individual and the family.
Adoptive parents sometimes experience loss and grief, maybe about infertility, maybe because the adoption is not going as they expected, all of which can cause a strain to a marriage and/or the family. Counseling may help the individual and the family.
Often children who have come from foster homes or orphanages have special nutritional needs as well as issues with food. Meals are at least a three-times a day event, so the relationship your child has with food can often affect your child’s attachment with you as well as their overall physical growth and health. Many families need help with food-related issues.
Sleep is also an everyday event, and parents can often become exacerbated when their child has difficulty sleeping. We can help provide you with some practical tips as well as determine if there may be more serious issues at hand.
Some families do not need counseling or therapy, but rather need coaching on how to handle the day-to-day behavioral issues of a child who may have had a harder start in life. Phone/Skype counseling and in home consultations in which suggestions and resources are provided can assist with that. Coaching can help parents with the following:
Feeding issues, sleep problems, managing behavioral problems at school and at home, and working as a team with your spouse.
Post Adoption Counseling
Nightlight offers in-person counseling at all of our 10 offices. We also offer video counseling to people living anywhere.
Fees on sliding scale from $50 to $125/hour based on income.
Adoption is a blessing, start your journey today.Get Started
