Parenting to Build Relationships and Trust

Mabuhay (welcome/hello)!

What an amazing month July has been! For those of you who don't know (or don't remember 😊), July is our wedding anniversary. This year marked 6 years. It's hard to believe it's been that long. The time sure does go fast! We spent our anniversary weekend taking some time off work and just enjoying each other's company and some downtime at home. It was a great and refreshing long weekend for us! That said, we sure wish we were sitting on the beach in the above picture in the Philippines instead. 😊

During July, we met with our social worker to update our home study, which has to be renewed near the beginning of August. We also took some online training for trauma-informed intervention in parenting techniques. Specifically, the training covered at a high level a type of intervention called Trust-Based Relational Intervention. It is designed to help parents or caregivers form relationships with children while developing effective and healthy behaviors. It focuses on empowering, connecting, and correcting in a manner that builds trust.

• Empowering – addressing physical and environmental needs
• Connecting – addressing attachment needs and engagement
• Correcting – disarming fear-based behaviors

We learned so much through the course. The training covered at a high level some of the physical changes in the brain when a person experiences repeated trauma, especially early in childhood. It was extremely interesting to learn some about the science behind those changes. It helped us begin to understand that, as parents, we can build relationships with our children while helping them to learn how to regulate their choices, responses, and actions in stressful situations.If you're interested in learning more, check out the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development website.

We plan to integrate trust-based relational techniques in our parenting. A blessing of all the preparation required for adopting, especially adopting a sibling set, is that we have so many amazing resources provided to help prepare as us best as possible. Our adoption agency, Holt International, continues to point us to trainings, books, and other resources that can equip us to help our children succeed. We're excited that as new parents we can learn effective and healthy parenting techniques right from the start!

As an update on the adoption front – We continue to wait to be matched, as expected. However, we are praying over a particular sibling set on the Special Home Finding list. The Special Home Finding list are children and sibling sets that were unable to be matched through the standard matching process. Interested families can submit their name/file to be considered to adopt a child or sibling set on the Special Home Finding list. We received the list in mid-July and immediately a sibling set caught our attention and our hearts. In fact, we spent a good portion of our anniversary praying over them. While we can't share any details at this time, we're praying over them and ask that you would join us in prayer.

Our prayer requests this month – Lord, help guide us in this adoption journey. Help us to discern and trust your will. Lead us through each decision with your Godly wisdom. For the sibling set that you drew us to – help guide us in your perfect will. Whatever that may be, help us to be obedient. We pray for the kiddos that you would have your hand of protection and comfort on them. Help them to know their forever family is thinking of them – even if it isn't us. Lord, may we be so bold, though, to ask that we be the right parents for these kiddos. Let us be their forever family. Help the process to go quickly and help us to be patient.

Until next time – all our love!