2024 Volume 24 Pages 47-60
We conducted an interview survey of three foster or adoptive parents raising elementary school, high school, and college-aged children to investigate the behavior of foster and adopted children and the response of their parents in difficult parenting situations. Records from each interview were broken down into (1) children’s behavior, (2) children’s feelings, and (3) the response by the foster or adoptive parents, and then the KH Coder tool was used to extract words that occurred multiple times to create a co-occurrence network.
In all cases, during the early stages of the parent-child relationship, foster and adoptive parents spent time with their children and responded to their behavior with an understanding of the relevant context. Counseling services was helpful in developing an understanding of their children. Telling the children verbally how important they were helped stabilize the relationship with their children. While Japanese families typically develop a sense of psychological belonging non-verbally, expressing affection verbally may be important for building a relationship of trust with children who have experienced changes in caregivers.
