Adoptive families: working with parent and child

The literature on parenting emphasises that, not only does parental behaviour influence child development, emotions and behaviour, but child behaviour influences parentsâ behaviour and well-being. Such dyadic interactions may be particularly important in the case of adoption, where research has shown that children are likely to have had difficult early attachments or separations and where parents are likely to experience unique stressors. Therefore, understanding the effects of parenting stress and understanding how to best work with early trauma are important in adoptive families. Paper A provides a systematic review of quantitative research on parenting stress in adoptive parents. Results showed adoptive parents to have parenting stress scores within the normal range. However, adoptive parents tended to have higher scores than non-adoptive parents, particularly if their child had lengthier exposure to adverse pre-adoptive environments, special needs or if parents perceived child difficulties. Paper B aimed to gather the experiences of adoptive parents who had undergone dyadic developmental psychotherapy (DDP), an attachment-focused therapy for families where the child has experienced complex trauma or attachment difficulties. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis revealed four superordinate themes: increased understanding, "it's a different method of parenting generally", the DDP journey and "it's a shared kind of experience you go through and come out together". Discussion of implications for clinical practice, policy and research is provided.