Local author, Kari Weber Young's 'Hear Me Roar' is challenging traditional parenting norms and offers a compassionate approach tailored to her adoptive daughter. 

"This book is different. I always tell everybody because people want to run out and support you, which is beautiful. But this is not a typical book that you're going to find in local chapters," said Weber Young.

Hear Me Roar is a book born out of the real-life experiences shared between not only Weber Young, as a respite caregiver and an adoptive parent to her daughter, Delaney, born with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) and opioid addiction but also the village of teachers, community members, friends and her family. 

"The biggest mistake I made was, like most people, I said I am going to love Delaney like she is one of my kids and I am going to treat her the same. That was when we started to have problems. Finally, I met this amazing woman who said I think maybe we need to look at treating Delaney a little differently, raising her a little differently."

The book is about teaching others that adoptive children have rights, and the reason that they have rights is because they have different needs.

"She (Delaney) has a whole set of things that she goes through, so whether she can have dinner when she's hungry versus most of us want to bring our foster care kids into our family dinner table. It's more about us tagging along with them and learning their needs." 

Weber Young plans to get this book into the hands of foster care families.

"So, when the children come to the home, the book accompanies them and then in the back of the book, there's a contract that says we're going to sign this and says when this little kiddo comes into the home within the next 72 hours, they'll read the book."

Weber Young made her journey so public because of watching her daughter go through life day to day. 

"When she was an adult and went back into foster care as an adult, she went into living with adults that have FASD so that she could learn how to adult, and they learn better, I learned that even as she is an adult I need to be her liaison and be her person. I started thinking about all the kids who maybe their adoptive parents don't have that same confidence level to do that." 

Hear Me Roar can be purchased on Amazon and in the book's description Kari Weber Young writes, "By sharing this book I hope that a special quality time of safety and the beginning of bonding will be shared as soon as a child is placed in care. The mystery of routines and a child’s rights will be uncovered upon a sit-down reading together of Delaney’s story, Hear Me Roar. This will empower the displaced child and move them into a place of much-desired connection." 

book'Hear Me Roar,' Book by Kari Weber Young.

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