Your child comes home and says a kid at school “won’t leave her alone.” Maybe it happened once. Maybe it’s the third time this month. You have about ten seconds to decide whether this complaint is ordinary conflict or bullying that requires you to step…
Tom Rawlings and I will speak at the Christian Legal Society’s General Counsel Forum in Denver, Colorado, on October 8. We’re joining a panel on Trey’s Laws. Those laws are the state statutes and pending federal bill addressing settlement confidentiality in abuse cases. If you…
A Fresh Start A few mornings ago, I was out in the neighborhood, walking off my previous indulgences with sweets, when I saw a sight I had not seen in a while. A school bus. The Cheese. It was the first day of school for…
Every fall, I pack cases with pop-up displays, books, and a tablecloth with our logo on it. Then I drive or fly to a conference so large it fills an entire building, packed with strangers who already understand why I’m there. I don’t have to…
September is National Kinship Care Month. It exists to recognize caregivers who take in a relative’s child, a group that gets far less attention than foster or adoptive families, even in child welfare circles that specialize in this work. I spent several years fostering my own…
September is National Kinship Care Month. It’s a great time to recognize the people who do the tough job of caring for children within their extended families. It’s also a good time to recognize the legal gaps that many such caregivers can fall into. Picture a grandmother…
On September 24 at the CAFO Summit in Atlanta, Tom and I are leading a workshop called “Start Planning Now for a Crisis.” It’s built for youth-serving organizations that want a real plan in place before something goes wrong, not a scramble after it does….
You read the books. Sat through the training. You can explain, in accurate clinical language, why your child’s brain reacts the way it does. You know the word for it now. It isn’t defiance. And then it’s 7pm, your kid is screaming over a shoe,…
Our free live training on handling trauma-based struggles happens on September 29. It’s called “You Understand the Trauma. Now What?” and it’s for foster, adoptive, kinship, and stepparents. You already know why your child struggles. This training gives you specific steps for the moment you have to…
For many families, September 11th brings back fear, loss, and disbelief. Adults who watched the towers fall often relive that morning every year, even decades later. Foster, adoptive, and stepfamily parents recognize this pattern from a different angle. Our children have hard anniversaries of their…
The first weeks of school went fine. Better than fine. Then, somewhere along the way, everything changed. The easygoing kid who did homework without complaint now fights bedtime, melts down over math worksheets, and talks back to the teacher who was “the best” a few…
September 4 is Lazy Mom’s Day. I don’t love the name, because nothing about raising a child from a hard place is lazy, even on the days we do less. But I like the permission behind the day. Plan B parents feel a particular version of…