Youth-serving organizations that send staff to trauma-informed care training often come back with a quiet, unstated conclusion that consequences are now optional. A camp counselor stops enforcing the no-phones rule for a camper with a hard home life. A program director drops a three-strikes policy…
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…
Kids who come to us from hard places have real reasons for their outbursts. A canceled visit can wreck a morning. A new house rule can trigger a slammed door. We should understand where the behavior comes from. That understanding does not mean we should…
The men who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, had no idea how it would go. They were committing to a revolution whose outcome was genuinely uncertain. They could see what they were fighting for. They could not see whether it would…
Somewhere in the stack of training materials, agency handouts, therapist recommendations, and well-meaning advice you’ve collected as a foster parent, adoptive parent, or stepparent, there is research. Some of it has shaped how you think about your child. Some of it has shaped what you’ve…
The first time I tried a real vacation with a foster child, I planned it the way I would have planned any family trip. I researched the destination, planned the transportation, and made sure we had entertainment and snacks. What I had not planned for…
In working with kids who have suffered trauma, there are several important principles we need to keep in mind. One critical point we need to understand is that childhood trauma does cause major problems, but it doesn’t have to…
Parenting kids who have gone through hard times requires that we understand childhood trauma. After years of not understanding the topic, suddenly everyone who works with children seems to be talking about being “trauma-informed.” To help our kids move forward, we must understand what trauma is as well as what it is not…
Sometimes when raising other people’s children, it’s difficult to tell whether we are having any impact at all. Our kids often seem so mired in the aftermath of their trauma that we can’t see how to help them move forward. A recent study gives us hope that our simply being a supportive presence in our kids’ lives can make a profound difference…
Next Sunday is Groundhog Day, a holiday that, because of one of my favorite movies, has become forever linked with repeating the same day over and over. That’s a familiar sensation, whether we are foster parents, step-parents, or biological parents. Parenting often feels like a revolving door of reminders: “Say please,” “Don’t forget to wash your hands,” “We don’t hit when we’re angry.” No matter how many times…