One essential and hard-to learn skill is knowing how to respond when our kids are angry, unhappy, having a meltdown, or simply reject us. Children who have suffered trauma are particularly liable to react in all of these ways. The best thing we can do as parents of those children is…
As the school year ends, many of us will face the conundrum of high school graduates who don’t plan to continue in school or college graduates who come back home while they search for a career. On the one hand, most graduates are legal adults, with the right to manage their own lives. On the other hand, few young adults in…
Schedules are crowded these days, and most of our kids have their days structured from bedtime to bedtime. It’s easy to forget the power of just hanging out together. I had a strong reminder of that point recently. These days, my husband and I are taking a break from foster care in favor of mentoring young…
One of the hardest parts of blending families can be getting two sets of children to form a family, or even be willing to try. Few, if any, blended families find themselves in “Brady Bunch” territory. Fortunately, a few important principles can increase our odds of having our kids get along. This week of National…
Therapists and other relationship experts talk a lot about the importance of communicating with our kids. Experienced parents who aren’t mental health professionals (like me) agree that open communication is important. It can be very hard to do that, though, particularly when our kids tell us something that we…
This Saturday is Tolkien Reading Day, so it’s time for my annual look at what one of my favorite authors can teach us about raising other people’s children. This year, I’ve been thinking about how to stay optimistic in the face of all of our and our kids’ challenges…
It’s retro-Thursday, with the second in my earlier series about how to step into the lives of children who have joined our families. For a thorough exploration of the topic, download my free ebook (and sign up to get these blog posts in your Inbox) here…
I’m fighting a virus this week, so I’m recycling two of my earliest posts about stepping into the history of a child who has joined our family, either through foster care or forming a new stepfamily. For a thorough exploration of the topic, download my free ebook (and sign up to get these blog posts in your Inbox) here…
I ran across some wonderful parenting advice in an article that has nothing to do with parenting. The curator of a model railroad museum explained that hobbies can “really bring that extra spark, the extra ingredient to bring that fulfillment. When you have that, that is a happiness you earn and that is the most…
As we start a new year, it’s a good time to think about how to evaluate the multitude of advice that we get about parenting children who have suffered trauma. We hear about attachment theory, trauma-focused parenting, and a multitude of other ways of parenting from just as many experts. Having parented…
One of the most difficult challenges of parenting bonus or foster children is dealing with all the drama. Our kids’ lives are not what they want, and many of our kids have trauma reactions that can be hard to manage. It also seems that, even when our kids are…
One never-ending controversy during this most difficult time of year is whether and how to help our foster children and stepchildren buy presents for their biological parents. As a single foster mother, I never questioned that I needed to help my children strengthen…