When your child learns differently, school can become an unrelenting daily struggle that eats away at the emotional strength of even the most resilient child. Every day, he hears messages from teachers, parents, friends, and even himself to “try harder” and “do his best.” Despite his efforts, he continues to fall further behind the other …
Adoption
If you’re hoping to adopt a child, becoming a foster parent is often a great way to bring into your home a child who may, under the right circumstances, become a part of your family. Each year, around 50,000 children are adopted from foster care, and there are over 100,000 children in foster care waiting …
Elisha sat across from me in a booth at a local restaurant, as we talked about the impact of foster care on her biological children. “Why is my six-year-old daughter, Alise behaving just like my new foster daughter, Sara, who is four? She is throwing tantrums and now is quite oppositional and defiant, just like …
Navigating an adoptive mother’s heart is an emotional journey. Regardless of whether the foster-to-adopt child has contact with their birth family, the mother’s heart will be emotional. When a woman gives her heart to a child in foster care, generally, she keeps a protective layer that prevents her from fully bonding with the child because …
Three-year-old Jake walked into the garage where his foster dad worked on a wood project. The loud sounds of sounds and hammering filled the garage. Almost immediately, Jake became agitated, putting his little hands over his ears. Jake noticed an old pair of earmuffs on the workbench, walked over to them, reached up, and put …
Cocooning is a fantastic opportunity to bond with a child who is new to your household. If the cocoon concept is new, consider it an adjustment and transition time for the entire family. There are a lot of different dynamics that may accompany a foster or adoptive child coming into your home. Some of those …
You may have wondered before, “What is kinship care?” If you are caring for a relative’s children, you may not have heard the term “kinship placement” before you welcomed them into your home. I once met a grandfather who told me, “I didn’t know anyone else who was raising their grandkids—or that there was a …
While attending a pro-life conference earlier this year, I listened to a lecture on adopting children from a different race. The two presenters were talking about a term they called “transracial adoption.” To my surprise, much of the presentation consisted of the two white women explaining, to a predominantly white audience, why it was concerning …
How do you know who you are? For many, the definitions of identity we build inside ourselves are created from our experiences. Charity Gayle wrote a song, “There is a New Name Written Down in Glory,” saying, “I am who I am because the I Am tells me who I am.” The question for many …
One way that we create order out of our unknowns is by sorting things into categories. Humans seek to find the connections between seemingly unrelated items. While this may work for kitchen organization, it can fall very short when looking at children, behaviors, and relationships. We tend to build buckets where we put things we …
