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When Dr. Gary Matloff reached out halfway around the world in Brazil to adopt a pair of brothers as a single father, already a seasoned child psychologist, he thought he was prepared in ways most adoptive parents might not be. But the journey that ensued for the three of them was fraught with life lessons of love, patience, and humility none of them had bargained for.
After many years dreaming, then more years persevering through one
door slam after another in seeking to adopt, this single dad-to-be found
waiting for him brothers, Matheus and Davi on the other side of the equator.
Well-practiced in working with maladjusted children, Dr. Matloff thought he was
supposedly knowledgeable, and equipped to manage children with emotional
disturbances and their temperamental behaviors. Yet he discovered all too soon
that textbook prescriptions and a personal storehouse of professional skills in
working with other troubled children and their parents in the past did not
necessarily apply to his own sons. As their three strong-willed personalities
navigated together the all-too-formidable twists and turns of forging a new
family, transient language and cultural barriers quickly gave way to
reinterpretations of relationships, love, and the rekindling of life’s
potential.
Dr. Matloff is a licensed psychologist with his Ph.D. in school
psychology. He has specialized for the last fifteen years in counseling
children and adolescents, including many who had been adopted or were in foster
care. He is well-versed in handling a variety of their behavioral and emotional
challenges, and has been successful in helping their parents to work through
many of these challenges. Dr. Matloff has had original studies and literature
reviews published in academic journals, and has presented at local, state, and
national conferences on a variety of psychological issues pertaining to
children’s mental health and emotional adjustment. Yet he is anything but the
perfect foil for the unpredictable attitudes and behavior of his two adopted
sons; Dr. Matloff is just an ordinary person who is eager to share the joys of
bringing up these boys, and the challenges of picking up from where their lives,
as they had known it, had been taken from them. But his experiences as a
professional in child behavior make this more than simply a memoir.
