It's really important for families with children who they are fostering or adopting to understand
that if a child has become available to come into your family they're going to have a complex set
of issues you need to be prepared for and you need to be aware of they're going to be if a
child just had malnutrition if a child just had prenatal stress if a child just had the
loss at birth of a native land or if a child had neglect or trauma or abuse there are a profound
set of changes to their ability to process sensory data profound changes to their ability to trust
profound changes to their brain and their brain chemistry we have children who come
to us who have been in treatment for learning delays and in treatment for sensory issues and
in treatment for attachment and behavior and reading and an entire range of interventions
what we try to say to families is you have to create a holistic environment that shows
respect for your child's history I love to use the example of a brownie if I invite you to my
house for brownies and when you arrive there are all these little dishes on the counter and I ask
you to lick your finger and put it in the flour put it in the sugar put it in the cocoa and then
the eggs and the buttermilk and the soda and the salt and then lick your finger and I would tell
you that was a brownie you would know better and I suspect if I invited you to my house
for brownies again you'd bring your own bag of Oreos and and our families are spending money on
the same services in the same way and there are no environments that are holistic and so what
we ask parents to begin to do is to think about your child's environment think about your child's
environment as a brownie ingredients that need to be baked they need to learn to trust they need to
learn how they can find safe people they're going to need some help making their way to
you because they've lost an attachment figure even if they came to you at birth they have a
loss and you have to be insightful about help helping them grieve that loss and you have to
be insightful about the ranges in their brain and the changes in their brain chemistry we
have dramatic success with children all over the world this environment can be created in
the church nursery it can be created in a school nursery a school classroom it can be created in a
residential treatment facility we've helped create this environment in orphanages internationally it
is most natural the environment for the home but we have to think about our whole child there's an
analogy that we would use in our work when we say body soul and spirit and I love the passage where
the fathers and the Hebrew culture would would turn and face the east and they would cry out
here o Israel the Lord our God is one and you'll love the Lord your God with all your heart and
all your soul and all your strength we have to come to our children looking at them body soul
and spirit mind will and emotions and we have to create environments that gives respect for them