PUBLICATIONS

The Family Focus provides information, inspiration, and support to FRUA members. Published quarterly, it seeks to meet the myriad needs of members, with articles on a broad range of topics, from health and development to education, culture and heritage, and general adoption material.

The Family Focus is a benefit of membership in FRUA.  If you're not yet a FRUA members, here is a sample of what you're missing:

Noted Expert Offers Advice on What to Do When Children Ask, 'Will You Send Me Back?

In addition to the counseling she does through her practice, Nurturing Attachments, Deborah Gray lectures throughout the nation. She is the author of two books, “Attaching in Adoption: Practical Tools for Today’s Parents” and “Nurturing Adoptions”

Article Authors range from the pre-eminent experts in the adoption community and related fields to FRUA members with particularly compelling stories to tell. Practical tips for parents are highlighted, and a list of additional resources often accompanies an article.

Among the standard features of The Family Focus:

• Focus on Research: A new feature that will be expanded to highlight research into topics of interest to our families.
• Focus on Health and Development:  A look at issues affecting the physical, developmental, and emotional well-being of our children.
• Focus on Education: In-depth exploration of developments that affect the often-difficult struggle of our parents to ensure appropriate school services for their children.
• Focus on Adoption: The heart-warming stories of how our “forever families” came to be, as well as a look at the challenges that can face all adoptive families – international and domestic.
• Focus on Orphanage Support:  Articles that zero in on the many innovative ways that FRUA, its chapters, and its individual members devise to amass financial support and manpower to take care of the children left behind in orphanages.
• Focus on Teens: A new feature geared to our teens and their parents, spotlighting issues of particular importance to them, such as getting a driver’s permit, planning for college, and Internet safety.
• Focus on Leadership: FRUA news and reports on special initiatives by regional chapters, as well as profiles of FRUA leaders.
• Focus on Culture & Heritage: Articles on the customs and traditions of our children’s birth countries.
• FRUA Cook’s Tour: A longtime, popular column that highlights savory dishes from our children’s birth countries.
• Kids’ Page: Poetry, essays, visual art, and other works by our children -- part of a sustained effort to include them in The Family Focus.
• Family Album: An always popular section that highlights the faces and successes of our FRUA families.
• Kino Focus:  Reviews of films made by natives of our children’s birth countries, which can help give our families a better understanding of the country.
• Book Nook: Reviews of books of interest to our families, from those focusing on parenting to those aimed at children or at helping our children understand their lives.
• Regional News: Summaries of recent activity by FRUA’s regional chapters around the country.

A Sampling of Recent Family Focus Articles:

Celebrate Your Name Day!

Supreme Court Decision Gives Parents Support in Dealing with School Districts

Our Fall issue cover story  on the Supreme Court’s special eduction decision, by Larry Altman.

Do you have a story to tell about your fight to get get appropriate school services for your child? Send your story to FamilyFocus@frua.org.

Go With All Your Heart

Adoption story by C.B. Nolen.  From miracles to the mundane: Each family’s international adoption story is unique, but, collectively, our stories share common threads, which are poignantly illustrated here in one parent’s account of the journey to becoming a “forever” family.

Will you share your adoption story with us? Send it to FamilyFocus@frua.org.

FRUA Cook’s Tour – Country Life

A showcase of the cuisine of our children's birth countries by Mara Kamen.  Do you have a favorite recipe showcasing the cuisine in your child’s birth country? Send it to familyfocus@frua.org.

What's Your Story? 

We’d like to hear from you! Do you have an article idea, a story to tell, a book to be reviewed, a family photo to showcase, a recipe, a child’s prized drawing to share? Please let Editor-in-Chief Marjorie Green know. Contact her at familyfocus@frua.org. Copy deadlines are:  Jan. 15 for the Spring issue, April 15 for the Summer issue, July 15 for the Fall issue,  Oct. 15 for the Winter issue.