Foster and Adoptive Parenting by Kenneth A. Camp
It is absolutely impossible to take this author seriously or as any sort of authority on fostering or adopting from foster care. He and his wife had exactly one placement, a baby that came to them at 8 months old and they adopted before the child turned 2 and was only 5 at the time the book was written. They do not have any biological children. He makes himself sound like a terrible, selfish father who only chose to foster/adopt for Savior status (he actually says in it that they expected any children they fostered/adopted to be grateful for the better life they gave the child… cringe). It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had included lots of stories from more seasoned foster/adoptive parents, but there were only two or three brief ones. He presented himself as the expert, which he is definitely not. He has very little experience with small children, adopted or not, and it shows. He falls into the trap of thinking every behavior is foster/adoption related. The thing is, even kids who are or were in foster care are still kids and will have behaviors that any child regardless of if they are in their original home or not have. Much of what he describes and attributes completely to his son having been placed in foster care and subsequently adopted are simply kid behaviors, particularly with a father who doesn’t really know how to parent (reading a lot of books and taking a lot of training does not make you good at parenting). I felt like the book was mostly an ad for his blog and Podcast. There were many links to those encouraging readers to go there to learn more. The writing was pretty poor, on a very basic level and not very good at actually getting his points across. The only good part about the book is extensive quotes from actual experts. Save your time and skip this book and go straight to the books he quoted from.
1 (out of 5) Stars
Books Read in 2021: 63
Pages Read in 2021: 19,452
Mama Reader 