Tomorrow is Father's day. I used to think about Father's day and Mother's day as being excuses from the card companies to sell more cards. More recently, I started seeing the day for Mom and Dad as a way to celebrate foster and adoptive parents.

Take a few minutes and look at your family. Is there a foster father, adoptive father, step-dad, or biological dad that has impacted your life in positive ways? Do you know a fost-adopt dad? Make the effort to THANK these people. It take a certain kind of person to join the fostadopt community. Our Dad's are a bit like a sunrise - bright and helping us see what new things the day might bring.

Encourage them - our kids need these guys.

Photo by Matthew Fang

This year we bought a fresh cage free turkey for American Thanksgiving. I chose to brine it and roast it wrapped in cheese cloth. It ended up being a ridiculously good bird - very moist and flavourful. It was so darn good, I thought I would write up the recipe I put together from several other recipes.

The Brine

The first step was to make a brine the morning before the day you plan on roasting the turkey. Brining a turkey is one of the best ways to produce and extraordinarily juicy and succulent meal.

2 cups of kosher salt 2 cups of sugar 1 1/2 gallons of water 1/2 gallon of orange juice 4 bay leaves 1 whole bulb of garlic various herbs and spices 2 teaspoons ground black pepper 1 whole lemon

Often the most overlooked people caught up in the typhoon of Reactive Attachment Disorder are the foster or adoptive parents. The fostadopt parent has done nothing but try and bring a child into their home with the intent of caring for and supporting that child. The fostadopt parent has had nothing to do with the child's previous experiences which were often brutal and neglectful. These experiences have twisted the behaviours of the child into strange patterns that bear little resemblance to a normal child but have to do with the child's survival mechanisms.

So what does this do the parent? Parents of the RAD child usually appear angry, rigid, emotionally distant, and rejecting. Friends and family may feel that the parent(s) overreact to the child's behaviour. What they don't know is that these parents almost never have a break from the child's behaviours which can include:

The Kite Runner is a film that parents of Children of Trauma will deeply empathize with. It represents, at its core, many of the things we need to help our children work through. It tells a story of horrific abuse - physical, emotional, and sexual. It explores the shame that comes with rape--and not just the emotions of the person who was abused. It weaves a narrative around loss of parents and loved ones. But it also tells a story of unabiding hope for the future.

Secondary Trauma is a phenomenon where a person or persons who have not experienced the trauma themselves show symptoms of the trauma. In the case of the Child of Trauma it is most often the care giver (foster or adoptive parent) who experiences this kind of trauma.