The Openness Guide for Prospective Adoptive Parents: What You Should Know About Open Adoption

The message we often see in the adoption community is, "Open adoptions are good! Do them!" with little guidance on how to make it work. This guide and workbook bridges that gap and teaches adoptive parents how to navigate open adoption.

“The Openness Guide for Adoptive Parents" answers the tough questions about visit schedules with first family members, conversations to have with birth parents, and mindset shifts required for adoptive parents to navigate a healthy relationship with their child and their child's birth family. With over 90 pages of guidance for subjects like trauma-informed parenting and creating psychological safety in the home, with exercises to reinforce these concepts, readers will come away inspired and encouraged to transform the way they see their role of connecting their children with birth family members and culture.

Adoptive mom Regan Tall said, “This book is the resource I wish we had when we started our adoption process. Lanette does an incredible job of giving you a road map to navigate the language and nuance of the adoption journey.”

Maybe you're thinking about adoption, but you have big questions about openness. Or maybe you adopted years ago and want to create more openness in your family. Either way, this guide is for you — the one who wants to learn how to have a successful open adoption.

In addition to raising four children in open adoptions, author Lanette Nelson, MPA, co-host of the Open Adoption Project podcast, has collected advice from over 100 people connected to adoption — adoptees, birth parents, adoptive parents, and academics, to encourage adoptive parents in their open adoption journeys. The Open Adoption Project podcast has more than 50,000 downloads, with listeners in over 35 countries, and a library of over 100 episodes available for free on all major streaming platforms.