Many adoptive parents and foster carers feel they have children in their care who have attention difficulties. They wonder about the relationship between being in care/adopted and having an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. They are confused about how they can best manage the behaviors of these difficult to live with children. Teachers too are concerned about how to handle such distracted and behaviorally demanding students. Both adoption/being in care and attention difficulties are still widely misunderstood by parents, schools and even social workers and therapists. Searching To Be Found is about children who are adopted or looked after and who present with attention disorder and behavioral difficulties. It differentiates itself from other ADHD/ADD books because its premise is that understanding more about adoption/being in care, about attention deficits, and about brain development will help adults to become more attuned to why these children may be behaving the way they do. In turn, this awareness will enable the adults to devise more effective and sensitive approaches for helping children to manage both their attention disorder and their behavior. This is not a book about jargon, labels, formulae or answers. It is a book about learning how to understand and to help children and their families, teachers, therapists, relatives and neighbors live a more compatible and compassionate life together by implementing individualized, down-to-earth, research based knowledge and management techniques. Contents 1) The Adopted/Looked After Child with Attention Difficulties; 2) Understanding the Effects of Maltreatment on Early Brain Development and the Consequences for ADHD/ADD and Adopted/Looked After Children; 3) The ADHD/ADD Adopted/Looked After Child at Home and in the Community; 4) The ADHD/ADD Adopted/Looked After Child at School; 5) Social Development in the ADHD/ADD Adopted/Looked After Child; 6) Conclusions. About the Author: Randy Lee Comfort obtained a Doctorate in Educational Psychology from the University of Denver. She has worked for over 35 years in the fields of family counselling, learning disorders, and adoption and fostering and is the mother of both biological and adopted children. She moved to Bristol, England, where, in 1998, she opened Our Place: a Centre for Families who Foster and Adopt. In addition to running Our Place, she continues to lecture internationally on the topics of learning disorders and adoption/fostering. She is the author of The Unconventional Child, Teaching the Unconventional Child, The Child Care Catalog, numerous journal articles, and chapters in edited books. Since the late 1980s, she has taught teachers and social workers about attention deficit disorders, adoption/fostering issues, and social dysfunctions.
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