What is a "rebirthing" ceremony?

Isabel

True rebirthing is a form of alternative medicine (think yoga, New Age medicine, etc.) consisting of breathing techniques. Nothing to do with children or adoption, really.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing-Breathwork

Unrelated therapies sometimes called Rebirthing, also go by the names compression therapy, cuddle time, holding nurturing process & is for the treatment of attachment disordered children and families.

"Holding Nurturing Process, children are provided with structure, attunement, empathy, positive affect, support, reciprocity and love. The HNP is a therapeutic relationship...which promotes secure attachment via social releasers, safe containment, corrective touch, access to "old brain" functions which control attachment behavior, and the development of a secure base in which positive developmental changes occur."
http://www.attachmentexperts.com/corrective.html

If it is a therapy to help a child with attachment disorder, I can see looking into any therapy that might help the child heal. I think the name "Rebirthing" seems a bit smarmy, though.

ETA: there are other methods besides the one used in the case of the 10 year old girl who was tragically killed. That was freakin' sick!

kitta

Maybe you are talking about rebirthing therapy. It is really sick. A child died that way. It is illegal in some states. And it does not work either.

It is supposed to make a child think he/she is being re-born to the aps.

ETA: the therapists who killed Candy are still claiming they didn't do anything wrong

Kim

Here's an article about the girl who died. It gives a description of the process.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/LAW/04/05/rebirthing.trial/index.html

From what it describes, the child is wrapped in blankets and pillows, then squeezed to simulate "contractions." The child has to fight his way out of being wrapped up, to be "born" and placed into his adoptive parents' arms. The little girl in the story suffocated.

The mere thought of it makes my stomach turn. I am not sure why anybody would think this would be a helpful "treatment" for anything.

kateiskate

My reaction is disgust. It sounds completely disrespectful of the childs origins, history, and first family. As if they are trying to make it as if all of that might not exist and their child will really "belong" to them if they rebirth her or him.

eta: i googled it and found this...it's from the book "Parenting Your Adopted Child"

"Of course no one means to abandon common senes, but sometimes we listen too much to others and not enough to our own knoweledge of our child. In extreme cases this can be dangerous. One adoptive mother didn't think she had developed a good attachment with an older child she had adopted. In apparent desperation, this mother contacted a therapy team in Colorado who recommended a "rebirthing" ceremony in which the child would force her way out of the "womb"---actually some heavy blankets. This misguided idea ended tragically, with the child dying."

cantstopLinnyG

PLEASE tell me you are joking. PLEASE!!!!!

I would hope an a p would NEVER do this. Oh.My. God.

***ETA*****
please post a link to this. I just cannot see how an ap could be so cruel.

IDK!!

A joke I hope.

icehockeymom7

Sounds completely gross and creepy. I've never heard of it.

Nameless

It is similar to simulating being born to an adopted child y wrapping them up and pushing on them to simulate uterine contractions. The idea is to make the child "reborn" to the adoptive family. It is highly controversial because idiots who don't know to let a child out when they say they can't breathe have killed children and it expects that a child who is reborn can just forget the major part in their life the original family played.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebirthing_(attachment_therapy)

Proud AP!

I am AP and that just sounds weird. It is like you are trying to put it out of your mind that YES the child is adopted, and that it somehow can magically come from you? Creepy.

HappyMomAnna

Re-birthingg is an Unacceptable form of Attachment Therapy which is pushed by a small minority of Quacks... Parents who actually research and want to provide a child with healthy therapy would not consider this at all---but, they are often coerced into believing the only way to Cure their Child's RAD is to use unethical therapy.

To see a Video about how awfulthis type of therapy is....just visit one of my blogs where I try hard to Educate parents NOT to go to these measures...

Please Remember Candace and watch this Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZg1IYoxvNo

http://newmemories.blogspot.com/2009/01/small-clique-of-control-freaks.html

`

myst1998

Yes I have heard of it and it is revolting. Children have even been killed in the process as it can suffocate them...

Sick, sick, sick

yeahright

The origins of this are NOT from adoption though I could see nutty folks engaging in some quacky version of this. The origins was from a quack who said there was trama in birth that needed to be set straight or there was RAD--and it is NOT practiced with the long arm of the law jumping in since a death occured some years back. NUTTY people.

Jennifer L

Only thing I can think of is that rebirthing "attachment" therapy.

As I understand it, the child is wrapped like a burrito in blankets and the "birth" is simulated. I think that after the "birth" the child or teenager is held like a newborn, trying to recreate that experience.

Of course there has been high-profile cases of children needing medical attention or even dying of suffocation due to this "therapy."

I think it's quacks trying to take advantage of adoptive parents that feel they have no other recourse. There is simply not enough resources and support for adoptive parents of children with severe emotional issues, like RAD.

The idea is that this will somehow cure RAD by bringing the child back to the newborn stage of development, then bonding with the adoptive parent.

Utter nonsense.

Serenity71

No...it sounds weird.

The only re-birthing I knwo about are dolls that people buy and do up to look like real babies... Or christians, but thats personal and it has to do with enlightening and other things I'm not going into here, not pretending to give birth to a baby.

I wasn't there when my children were born, but I don't feel that something is missing because of it. Thats just other peoples ideals on how you should love your kids and besides. I'm not into pretending that I 'gave birth' to my kids in order to bond with them and love them unconditonally.

You know if one of my other friends (adoptive parents) said they we're going to do something like that I would ask them why... but then again they'll probably think its a strange thing to do as well. I'll have to share that one with them, they'll get a laugh out of it thats for sure...

Jackie B

I wonder why they weren't charged with just more than reckless or negligent abuse. I vaguely remember hearing about this when it happened. Does anyone know what the verdicts and sentences were?

Anha S

I googled it , and the only things I could find on it related to a spiritual rebirth of the person, and about ridding the body of "toxins" through a specific breath pattern. But somehow I suspect that this differs from what you are talking about, and it really gives me the willies.

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