independence

Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

Why It’s Best for Our Kids to Make Them Our Last Priority
ByDebbie Ausburn February 4, 2025

Being a foster parent or stepparent comes with unique challenges, but it also offers profound opportunities. One of the most critical lessons in this journey is understanding how to set priorities to create a solid foundation for your family. Over the next few weeks, I’ll post about why I think certain priorities come before others. Today, I want to give an overview and explain why I believe children should be last, instead of first in the order of family priorities…

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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 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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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Research

Is Less Supervision the Solution to Childhood Depression?
ByDebbie Ausburn May 18, 2023

The Journal of Pediatrics recently published an article arguing persuasively that a major cause of the current epidemic in childhood anxiety and depression is that we supervise our children too much. With the best of intentions, the authors argue, we are depriving our children of important opportunities to become self-confident and independent…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

An Object Lesson in How to Prepare Children to Handle a Crisis
ByDebbie Ausburn May 4, 2023

One story that has been all over the Internet recently is the 7th-grader who safely stopped a school bus after his bus driver passed out. Some background that hasn’t been getting a lot of attention are the skills that may have come into play when he needed them…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

Three Ways to Help Our Kids Learn Work Skills
ByDebbie Ausburn April 27, 2023

Today is “National Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day,” and a good time to think about what we can teach our kids about work skills. Schools can teach them content, but we may be the only people who can teach them the attitudes and soft skills they need. There are several important steps we can take to let…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families

How to Accept that We Cannot Control Our Children’s Decisions
ByDebbie Ausburn January 5, 2023

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…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

7 Ways to Teach Our Kids to Be Self-Reliant
ByDebbie Ausburn October 11, 2022

Parenting is unique in that, if we do it right in the long run, we work ourselves out of a job. Our most important responsibility is to teach our kids how to develop into adults who don’t need us. Yet, in today’s protective culture, it can be hard to teach our foster or stepchildren the essential trait of self reliance. It’s a…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

Four More Ways to Help Children Struggling with School
ByDebbie Ausburn August 25, 2022

In my last post, I discussed some important techniques that we can use at home to help our kids find more success in school. In this post, I’ll discuss three more important principles for helping our kids who show symptoms of anxiety or excessive worry about either school or life in general. As with all parts of…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

How to Build Resilience by Encouraging Our Kids to Take Risks
ByDebbie Ausburn June 28, 2022

One of my youth organization clients once had a three-year-old child sneak out of the facility, cross a busy road, and visit a toy store. Fortunately, he was not hurt, and the store owner called my client to come get him. I helped my client figure out where their system had failed and where it needed to be shored up…

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Foster, Adoptive, & Blended Families Resilience

5 Important Things to Remember about Our Teens and Summer Jobs
ByDebbie Ausburn June 2, 2022

One of the best ways to teach teenagers the life skills they will need as adults is to help them get a summer job. One of the silver linings of the current Great Resignation is that more employers than ever are willing to consider hiring teenagers. Now is a good time to help our teens take advantage of the job market…

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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