Question
We've had good success writing to you in the past, and we felt we were making good progress with our child. We decided to pursue an international adoption (I've wanted to adopt since I was 9 years old). We were seeking to be matched with a waiting child from the Philippines who is 14 months younger than our daughter. She questioned us on our parenting style and we answered that we were following an authoritative model by John Rosemond and following the advice of a parent coach through his service (we explained that we'd been mainly using the ticketing system with two concrete, target behaviors) we'd started a temporary early bedtime in response to tantrums. She made a comment that this type of parenting is isolating and not good for an adopted child, and that in her opinion, it's not good for any child.
We were upset, though not really surprised, the next day when we were told that we were not an appropriate match for this little girl or for any child in any of their programs, and it was all due to our parenting method, according to the email she sent us. She also told me on the phone, again, that it is not appropriate for my biological child.
The social worker recommended a book that seems to be the go-to for all adoptive parents, The Connected Child. I specifically asked if the techniques in this book were proven by long-standing research, and she said that yes, they were and they were based on brain science. Do you have any experience with this book, and do you recommend it for parenting? I'm just really stunned that we were rejected because of using parenting techniques by the most sought after parenting expert in his field, a man who has quite a few parent coaches with impressive resumes. If we were going to be rejected, we didn't think it would be for that.
