By: Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Friday, March 8, 2013This video collection contains ten short video interview sessions with Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe, offering helpful insights and practical advice in response to many of the the questions that are commonly asked by adoptive and foster parents.
Watch the first video in this series – How Do I Handle Manipulation & Control – or click here to watch all ten videos.
By: Michael Monroe
Tuesday, March 5, 2013Parents can often feel pressure to respond to each of their children with ‘sameness’ instead of true ‘fairness’ based on individual needs and development. Watch as Michael Monroe offers helpful insights about the important question of ‘fairness’ and encourages parents to focus on meeting the unique needs of each child in order to help their children heal and grow.
By: Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Thursday, January 17, 2013Adoptive and foster parents often need to look to professionals to help them and their child. But how do parents know which professionals to turn to?
Watch as Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe offer practical insight about how parents should view the role of professionals and which criterion they should use in selecting the right professional to come alongside them in order to help bring about healing for their child.
By: Michael Monroe
Tuesday, January 15, 2013People who make things look easy really get on my nerves. You know who I’m talking about. Ever watched one of those cooking shows on TV? You see them making some recipe in 10 easy steps and it always comes out looking hot, beautiful, and delicious. So you try it at home and all you end up with is a giant mess of something ugly and inedible. Or maybe you’ve watched one of those home improvement shows where the host can build, repair, or decorate just about anything and it turns out great, all on a shoestring budget. So in a fit of inspiration you make a trip to Home Depot, spend twice as much as you wanted to, come home and four hours later all your spouse can say is “maybe we can call someone to come fix it tomorrow.” Why does it seem to be so easy for some people? Why are so many things in life easier said than done?
By: Michael Monroe
Tuesday, December 11, 2012“Who are you?” I remember thinking this unthinkable thought as I looked into the face of my young son only a few years into our life together as an adoptive family. He did not share my DNA but he was every bit ‘mine.’ Yet while we were both made in the image of the same God, I was becoming aware that we were two very different reflections.
In that moment I began to be confronted by much of what I had brought into the journey of adoptive parenting – most significantly my expectations about my child and how this journey would unfold. In reality I hardly knew my son, still that did not stop me from creating expectations about the things he would like and how he would act and think. On top of that, I expected that the adoption path God had led us down would be relatively easy and straightforward once we were home. I convinced myself that adoption was little more than a historical fact of how we came to be, rather than an ongoing reality of the journey that lay ahead.
By: Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Wednesday, September 26, 2012Knowing how best to handle lying is often a significant challenge for adoptive and foster parents.
Watch as Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe offer insights to help parents effectively respond to lying while remaining connected with their child.
By: Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Wednesday, September 19, 2012Watch as Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe talk about the importance of meeting your child’s needs with an appropriate balance of nurture and structure in order to prepare them for success later in life.
By: Amy Monroe, Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Thursday, September 13, 2012What if becoming the parent God has called you to be to your child from a hard place means that you need to un-learn as much or more than you need to learn? What if many of the popular approaches to parenting and discipline, many of which are regarded as “biblical,” actually aren’t best for your child given his background and history and what he needs to heal and grow? What if the parenting program you previously used, even with great success, when raising and training your other children needs to be significantly altered or even discarded for the child you adopted? What if the parenting techniques that most of your friends are using or that you grew up with are likely to be ineffective in achieving long-lasting change for the child you now love and desire to connect with?
I believe that parents need to seriously consider these and many similar questions as they set the course for how to best relate to and parent children from hard places.
By: Dr. Karyn Purvis, Michael Monroe
Wednesday, September 12, 2012In response to meltdowns, emotional outbursts, extreme neediness, and many other behavioral challenges, adoptive and foster parents are often left asking: “why won’t my child act his or her age?”
Watch as Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe address this important question, offering insight about the needs of adoptive and foster children and how parents can effectively meet those needs to build trust and develop a stronger connection.
By: Michael Monroe
Friday, September 7, 2012Possibly one of the most practical and useful tools Dr. Karyn Purvis teaches parents is what she calls “Total Voice Control.” This tool equips parents to focus on how they use their own voice when interacting with their child.
Watch as Michael Monroe talks about how parents can use this tool to focus on how they say what they say, and as a result more effectively promote connection and understanding between themselves and their child.