What to tell Sam?

Now that I am out of the fog of neck high paperwork and our dossier sits on various desks in Haiti, I can focus on the preparation for being an adoptive mommy.  I want to educate and arm myself with the best tools for raising Sam into the man we know he can be - and the man that I'm sure his mother had dreamed he would become.

So I've started collecting books and -attempting- to read them in my spare time.  I know.  Spare time.  That's a mom joke.  However, I would really like to get a few knowledge-filled books under my belt before year's end.  Here's my beginners books:

                                               It's important to be prepared!
The main thing that I've picked up so far is that you cannot automatically treat your adoptive child like your biological children.  The language barrier will be a given but, because of his young age, this phase will be short lived.  The important tools that I'm reading about now are how to handle discipline.  Its a sensitive issue for a child that, like Sam, you don't know what kind of life he is coming from.  He may -even though he was an infant- have abandonment issues/feelings that would make such things as 'time outs' difficult.

What I do know is that we will need to parent with compassion and even discipline with compassion. 

My first, main, concern has been:  what struggles will he have as a young man (or even boy) because he was abandoned?  Quick back story of our Sam...

Sam was brought to a hospital in Port Au Prince in June 2012.  He was 8 months old.  I am told that he was brought to the hospital by a man, believed to be his father, and that Sam was very sick with pneumonia.  He was treated for the pneumonia but no one ever came back for him.  After 2 weeks, he was declared abandoned and transferred to Ruuska Village for adoption.

                                                          When he arrived at the orphanage
 I know that one day I'll be asked something along the lines of why did his birth parents abandon him.  After much thought and prayer, this is what I came up with....  Thankfully we have the opportunity to show Sam that he was -and has always been- loved.  His birth parents loved him so much that they brought him to a hospital to be cared for.  He could have been abandoned anywhere.  I just read a blog last week in Haiti about a newborn found in an outhouse.  But instead, they brought him to a safe environment, where he would be nursed back to health and cared for.

Its unfortunate that he will never have the ability to see or know his birth parents.  However, I want to make sure that their son (our son) will know that they loved him.  For that, I will always be grateful.

Do you have any book suggestions for me?