YSO Insights

Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

The Most Important Rule for Kids Trying to Figure Out Who They Are
ByDebbie Ausburn October 24, 2023

I’ve been talking recently to older teens who are struggling to find their identity. It’s a common question for that age group, trying to figure out where they fit in the world. I’ve been struck by the common thread in most of the advice they’ve repeated to me, specifically that they need to figure out who they are before they can have a healthy relationship or accomplish goals in life. I think that advice is exactly backwards. In my experience, young adults find their strongest identity in serving and caring for other people. In other words…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Ten Ways to Teach Our Kids the Art of Respectful Disagreement
ByDebbie Ausburn October 19, 2023

This week is Free Speech Week, celebrating our country’s unique rights to express our opinion. Perhaps because I’m a lawyer, or perhaps because I’m just argumentative, I think the right to freely discuss ideas is an essential foundation of a free society. Unfortunately, much of our society uses that freedom to yell angrily at each other, and schools seem to actively encourage students to demonize some opinions.. It is more important than ever that we parents teach our children how to respectfully discuss their point of view with people who have a different opinion…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Research

How to Help When Your Child Acts Like a Bully
ByDebbie Ausburn October 17, 2023

I’ve been traveling out of the country, so I’m republishing one of my more popular blogs in honor of National Bullying Month. I’ll be back later this week with fresh content. Another problem that we can face with traumatized children is that they can become the bully in a given situation. Children who have…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Research

How to Help Your Child Who Is Being Bullied
ByDebbie Ausburn October 12, 2023

I have been traveling out of the country, so I am republishing one of my more popular blog posts in honor of National Bullying Month. October is National Bullying Prevention month, so we will hear a lot about the topic over the next few weeks. If we parent children who have suffered trauma, our children are at high risk of being bullied. Their trauma…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Research

Is There a Difference Between Conflict and Bullying and Does it Matter?
ByDebbie Ausburn October 10, 2023

I have been traveling out of the country, so this week I’m re-publishing one of my more popular blog posts in honor of National Bullying Month: Bullying is an ongoing problem for many of our kids, and with the focus of October as National Bullying Prevention Month, we’ll see a lot of suggestions about how to prevent bullying. Contrary to what many parents (and children) think, not every insult or disagreement is a bullying situation. Sometimes…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Three Reasons Why and Six Ways How to Pick Your Parenting Battles
ByDebbie Ausburn October 5, 2023

I’ve written earlier about how challenging it can be to step into a child’s already-existing story, which is what we stepparents and foster parents do. One of the best principles I’ve found for making that transition work to any degree is to learn how to pick your battles. We don’t need to correct every mistake that our children make (assuming that the actions really are mistakes) or join every argument. Most times…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Why and How Logical Consequences Can Help Provide Structure for Our Kids
ByDebbie Ausburn September 28, 2023

My last blog post explained how we need to concentrate on nurture ahead of structure for our kids. However, structure is important. If our children don’t have a sense of strong structure in our family, they won’t have enough emotional security to grow and learn. Balancing that need to provide both nurture and structure has usually led me to the principle of letting my kids suffer the logical consequences of their decisions. That technique both keeps my fingerprints off the consequences and lets kids learn in the way that they learn best…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Why Our Children Need Nurture More Than Structure and How to Provide It
ByDebbie Ausburn September 26, 2023

Being a stepparent or foster parent is a challenging task for many reasons, but the highest hurdle may be knowing how and when to provide strong structure for our children. There is no doubt that structure and predictability are important foundations for families. However, there are many reasons we need to make nurture a higher priority for our relationships than enforcing structure…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Five Important Principles for Single Foster Parents
ByDebbie Ausburn September 19, 2023

I often hear questions from single people who are interest in being foster parents, but who are worried about whether a single parent can realistically foster. My experience is that single parents can be excellent foster parents. I started out as a single foster mom, and then after I married, I again fostered with my husband…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

Seven Reasons to Help Children Master Small Tasks
ByDebbie Ausburn September 12, 2023

I am a sucker for off-beat holidays, and yesterday was National Make Your Bed Day. It reminded me of Admiral McRaven’s 2014 commencement speech advising UT Austin graduates how to change the world. His first piece of advice was…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

Why and How We Should Quit Taking Responsibility for Our Kids’ Happiness
ByDebbie Ausburn August 31, 2023

I’ve been thinking through the study I mentioned earlier this week, as well as previous research showing that children generally need less adult involvement in their decisions. Yet we are heading into a season where our instincts and current culture will take us in the opposite direction…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

Six Important Ways to Help Our Children Learn Resilience from Failure
ByDebbie Ausburn August 24, 2023

Last week, I discussed how to help our kids develop problem-solving skills. This week, I want to dig a little deeper into one of the principles I mentioned, specifically letting our kids learn from failure. Letting our children risk failure is one of the most difficult and most necessary ways to help our kids develop resilience. The principle is just as important, or perhaps even more important, for kids who have suffered childhood trauma.

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About YSO Insights

Evidence-based ideas and resources for youth-serving organizations and Plan B families, written by Debbie Ausburn, J.D., Donna Caudell, Ed.D., Gena Hood, Ed.S., Amber Jewell, LSCSW, and Tom Rawlings, J.D.

→ YSO Academy - Online courses and CE credits
→ Child Protection & Well-Being Trends -- Tom Rawlings' Substack about policy and best practices in child protection
→ Caudell Educational Solutions - consultation and testing for public, private and homeschool students
→ Hood Educational Services, LLC - training for teachers and student teachers
→ Amber Jewell - blog and speaking/training services
→ Youth Services Law -legal insights from Debbie Ausburn for youth-serving organizations