Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

Latest Episodes:

Potty Training a Child With Prenatal Exposure - Weekend Wisdom Aug 02, 2025

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How do you know your child with prenatal substance exposure is ready to potty train? How do you start potty training a child with impacts from prenatal substance exposure, like developmental delays? This Weekend Wisdom offers practical strategies and encouragement to help you stay motivated and keep up the good work.
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Please leave us a rating or review. This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.
Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

Weekly podcasts
Weekly articles/blog posts
Resource pages on all aspects of family building

A Glimpse Into the History of Creating a Family Jul 30, 2025

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Join us for a look at where CreatingaFamily.org - and this podcast - began and where we are heading from here. We talk today with Dawn Davenport, the founding Executive Director of the organization, as she prepares to retire from Creating a Family.

In this episode, we discuss:

Tell us how and why you started Creating a Family. Why start a non-profit?
- The Complete Guide to International Adoption: The Step by Step Guide to Finding Your Child
Do any significant moments stand out from those early days of setting a path forward?
Who were the hands-on folks behind the scenes in those early days?
What were some of your hopes and dreams for this new venture when you started podcasting?
- What were some of your most memorable challenges?
How has the world of podcasting changed in the 18 years since you launched this one?
Were there one or two “big fish” you were excited to get?
How have you seen the Creating a Family podcast impact the families we serve? The professionals?
What are the most significant challenges you see facing our community of listeners / adoptive, foster, and kinship families in 2025?
Do you have any lessons you’ll take from this season of your life – as a professional and/or as a parent?
What are you most excited about for the future of CreatingaFamily.org?
Do you have any retirement plans?

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Failed Adoptions in Foster Care - Weekend Wisdom Jul 26, 2025

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Question: I have a question that may be well suited for a weekend wisdom episode. I'm aware of the reasons that a domestic infant adoption may fail, but I've also read about foster children having failed adoption(s) and then aging out of the system. What are some of the main reasons that a foster child experiences a failed adoption? How does that look different than (or the same as) a failed domestic infant adoption?

Resources:

Failed Adoptions:
Failed Adoption Matches:
- Predicting and Coping with Failed Adoption Matches
- How Common are Failed Adoption Matches?

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Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Trauma-Informed Therapy: Finding the Right Fit for Your Family Jul 23, 2025

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What should you look for when you are considering therapy for your child or your family? How do you find the right fit for your child's needs? We talk today with Kelly Raudenbush, Executive Director of The Sparrow Fund, a non-profit that provides therapeutic services for foster and adoptive children and their grown-ups. She is a child and family therapist with an MA degree in counseling and a certificate in clinical infant and early childhood mental health. She's also an adoptive mom.

In this episode, we discuss:

What are some of the common reasons families seek therapy for their child or family unit?
When is it time to seek a therapist?
What types of professionals can provide therapy?
Is there a difference between therapy and counseling?
What makes a therapist trauma-informed?
What’s the difference between being adoption-competent and adoption-informed?
What should parents look for to determine if a potential therapist is competent to handle the trauma, adoption, or foster issues they are facing?
Where can parents or caregivers go to find a therapist with the lived experience of being adopted? What might the benefits be in seeking a therapist with this lived experience?
Can you list the more common therapeutic models of treatment that adoptive, foster, or relative caregiver families might consider?
When should therapy with our kids involve just the child, or the child and the parent?
What questions can parents or caregivers ask to determine if the therapist is a good fit for the child and family?
Are there additional or specific considerations for therapy that should be addressed if our child has experienced sexual abuse?
What is home-based therapy and what are the advantages to this type of therapy for adoptive, foster, or relative caregiving families?
Is therapy via tele-health or via teleconferencing as effective as in-person for our families?

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How to Prepare Sibling for an Infant Adoption - Weekend Wisdom Jul 19, 2025

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Question: My husband and I adopted our daughter in 2019, and she is now 5. As of a week ago, we were matched with a birth mother who is due in six weeks. We have explained the process to our daughter (we made a book about our life, and one day someone will pick us), but now that we’ve been chosen, what is the best way to approach this with my daughter? We have several of the books from your (wonderful) book list, but not many pertain to same sex parents who are bringing home an adopted sibling. How do we prepare our daughter for the possibility of having a sibling, while also being open and honest about the possibility that this baby might not be ours to take home?

Resources:

Prepare Children for the Adoption of a Sibling (Suggested Books)
Books for Transracially Adopted Kids (Suggested Books)
Talking with Kids about Adoption (Resource page)

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Attachment-Informed Tools for Working with Kids Jul 16, 2025

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Are you looking for practical strategies to build attachment with your child? Jeanette Yoffe, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in adoption and foster care with over 20 years of experience treating children with complex trauma. Her new book, The Traumatized and At-Risk Youth Toolbox: Over 160 Attachment-Informed Interventions for Working with Kids and Families in Foster Care and Beyondoffers specific strategies and tools parents and caregivers can build into their family rhythms to promote regulation and healing in their homes.

In this episode, we discuss:

Overview of trauma’s impacts on the brain, on learning, regulation, and on the ability to trust.
What does co-regulation look like between a caregiver and a child with a trauma history?
What are some simple, everyday things caregivers can do at home to support a child’s self-regulation?
What practical tools – activities or routines – will help us build emotional safety in our homes?
Why is play such a powerful tool for connection and healing?
Trauma often mimics ADHD or overlaps with it. How to help teachers understand what’s really going on.
How can parents or relative caregivers support our kids for homework, without turning the evening into a power struggle?
What kinds of professionals should we look for?

Resources:

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Resource pages on all aspects of family building

How to Normalize Adoption for the Child? - Weekend Wisdom Jul 12, 2025

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Question: My wife and I adopted a newborn baby almost 3 years ago, and we could not be happier. Now that he is getting a little older, he is talking and starting to understand things. My question is, how can we best normalize his adoption with him? I know it is better for kids to grow up with everyone being open with him and his adoption so it feels like now is a good time to start. But I am not sure how to that with an almost 3-year-old. For context, we do not have any contact with the birth family. We send updates and pictures to the agency, but they have not expressed interest in having contact with us. This always seemed like an avenue to start that conversation (you have a birth family and an adoptive family). Without that, I’m not sure how start talking to him about this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Resources:

Talking with Kids About Adoption (Resource page)
Talking with Kids About Birthparents (Suggested Books)
Adoptee Voices (Resource page)

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Weekly podcasts
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Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times Jul 09, 2025

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Are you looking for practical strategies to help your kids face the challenges of a scary world? Join us for a conversation with Melinda Wenner Moyer. She is an author, contributing editor at Scientific American, a regular contributor to The New York Times, and a former faculty member at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Her new book is titled Hello, Cruel World: Science-Based Strategies for Raising Terrific Kids in Terrifying Times.

In this episode we discuss:

Why is raising kids in today’s world is so challenging and potentially terrifying for parents.

What are the fears kids are feeling in today’s culture?

What are some of the clues parents and caregivers should look for to tell us our kids might be struggling with fear or anxiety?

How does a parent or caregiver’s fear impact our ability to raise our kids in what feels like a terrifying world?

How do we balance protecting our kids from the world with equipping them to handle the hard things about today’s world?

When and how do we start “lifting the shield”?

The book’s framework for raising kids in these challenging times includes these three pillars: coping mechanisms, connection techniques, and cultivation practices.

Coping Mechanisms
- How to manage anxiety and fear.
- Self-regulation
- Emotional literacy
- Examples of coping strategies for one or two ages
Connection Techniques
- Parent-child attachment as a protective factor
- Importance of being emotionally available and validating
- Routines, rituals, and conversations that build trust
- Examples of fun and playful connection techniques
Cultivation Practices
- How to practice optimism, gratitude, curiosity, and moral reasoning
- Encouraging healthy risk-taking and autonomy
- Examples for how we parents can model ethical and resilient behavior

What additional or special considerations for those of us raising kids impacted by trauma? How can we adapt some of these strategies?

Examples of how a parent’s approach should evolve as their child grows in age or ability by age/stage:

Infants & Toddlers (0–3)
Preschool (3–5)
Elementary (6–11)
Tweens & Teens (12–18)

Resources for Parents & Caregivers:

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Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Reunification of Foster Child Logistics - Weekend Wisdom Jul 05, 2025

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Question: My 15-year-old foster daughter, “Anna”, is scheduled to move back in with her mom at the end of the school year. She is currently on my phone plan. I also pay for her access to Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu. Should I ask her mother now how she wants to transition Anna onto her phone plan? Do you recommend continuing to pay for a 3-6 month period until the mother figures it out? Should I just keep her on my account for Spotify, Netflix, and Hulu as long as it doesn't cost me anything extra? She also has some of her own furniture that doesn't fit in my car. Should Anna's mother be responsible for getting those pieces to their home? She is going to live almost 3 hours away.

Resources:

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Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Common Special Needs in International Adoption Jul 02, 2025

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Are you considering international adoption? If so, this interview will help you decide which special needs are a good fit for your family. We'll talk with Dr. Dana Johnson, MD, PhD. He is a Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Neonatology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. Dr. Johnson founded the International Adoption Clinic at the University of Minnesota. He is a dad and granddad by birth and adoption.

In this episode, we discuss:

International adoption has become overwhelmingly a special needs adoption program from all countries. Prospective adoptive parents are required to fill out a form stating what special needs they will accept.
Most common special needs. What are they and how involved is the post-adoption care?
- Cerebral Palsy
- Heart issues
- Craniofacial
  - Cleft lip/palate
- Developmental Special Needs
  - Autism
  - Down syndrome
  - Developmental Delays
- Hepatitis B and C
- HIV
- Orthopedic special needs
  - Clubfoot
  - Limb or digit deficiencies
- Albinism
- Hearing loss
- Vision Loss
- Urogenital
  - Kidney abnormalities
  - Urethra issues
  - Bladder issues
  - Imperforate anus
  - Ambiguous genitalia
- Emotional/Trauma
- Older kids
- Sexual Abuse
- Prenatal Exposure
How can adoptive parents support and advocate for children discriminated against due to physical, cognitive, and other disabilities?
What type of special needs do you see from the major placing countries?
- India
- Colombia
- Bulgaria
- Ukraine
- South Korea
- Haiti
- African countries