Adoption Support Group

A safe haven for parents

• Is parenting your adopted child more challenging than you envisioned?
• Do you struggle with knowing how to parent effectively — or struggle feeling
  connected with your child?
• Do you wish you had more support and understanding from others about the
  challenges you face?
• Would you like to connect with other adoptive parents and explore ways to
  address adoption-related issues?

Mission

Although many parents are secure in their relationship with their adopted children, many are unsure and struggle. Some wonder if they have what it takes to parent their children — or even whether they made the right choice to adopt. Others feel confident about their choice to adopt but are unsure how to best balance the needs of their adopted child with other children in the home and their relationship with their spouse.

This group is designed to be a safe, non-judgmental place to provide support, education, and resources for the wide range of thoughts, feelings, and experiences faced by adoptive parents. If you are an adoptive parent who has experienced doubts and insecurities it helps to realize you are not alone. Your questions are normal and deserve recognition and support.

Adoptive parents are a unique group, bringing home children of various ages from various places in the world. Many children, even when adopted during infancy, arrive in their new homes with challenging developmental problems such as insecure or disordered attachment, regulatory disorders, and trauma. Parents also enter into the parent-child relationship with their own relevant histories. Adult issues such as infertility and unmet childhood needs, for example, have been shown to influence parents’ perception of their adopted children and how satisfied they are parenting them.

Facilitator

My name is Dr. Greta Zuck and for 18 years I’ve had the privilege of providing assessment and treatment services for adopted children and their families in my Raleigh practice, about two-thirds of which have been children adopted internationally and about one-third adopted domestically at birth or from foster care. Parent-child attachment has been a clinical interest since I began practicing, which lead me into adoption work. My doctoral dissertation explored how adult-related factors, such as personality type and attachment style, contribute to how satisfied adults are in relationships with their adopted children. I’ve learned further from the many adults who’ve trusted me to discuss their challenges and vulnerabilities about parenting their adopted children. Over the years I’ve seen tremendous value in adoptive parents sharing their common experiences with one another which, in turn, led me to develop this group.