Mary Hopkins-Best
Biography
Mary Hopkins-Best, Ed.D. is a professor of education, but in her real life she is the mom of two: one by birth and one who joined the family as a toddler through adoption. Mary's experience as both an expert educator and as a competent and motivated parent still found her inadequately prepared for the complexities of parenting a child whose developmental age made it nearly impossible to help him put into words for working out the issues that came from having had many life experiences before he found permanency. Many adoption professionals and social workers seem oblivious to how adopting a child at the toddler developmental stage demands unique preparation far different from that provided for those adopting either infants or school-aged children. And so Toddler Adoption: The Weaver's Craft, a first in the field, was born.
Articles
The Unique Challenges of Toddler Adoption
Naively self-confident, my husband and I adopted a young child who had experienced severe neglect and many disruptions in his first year-and-a-half of life. After all, we reasoned, we both had... [more]
When Adopted Toddlers Reject Their Parents
More and more adopted children are arriving home between the ages of one and three, and many of these toddlers have been wrenched from a familiar setting, are grieving the loss of a known caregiver,... [more]
