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

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Is It Possible to Raise a Well-Adjusted Adoptee? - Weekend Wisdom Oct 26, 2024

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Question: My husband and I are nearing finalization of our five-month-old adopted son. We don't currently have any other children. Throughout our time in the adoption process, I have spent time learning about adoption trauma and the complexities of adoption. I want to be well-informed as our son grows up and aware of the difficulties he may face. However, my question is, are there stories of adoptees, especially males, who have experienced emotional health and emotional success in life? I have heard many stories, both about and from, adoptees who have challenges with identity, maladaptive behavior, and experiences with other trauma, which make them at risk for suicide, addiction and depression. Are there any adoptive parents out there who are doing it right, whose adopted kids grow up to be well-adjusted adoptees, emotionally healthy adults who can form good relationships? Is our child doomed for a future of emotional trauma and struggle? I would love to hear their stories and learn from them as well.
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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:

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Late, Lost, & Unprepared: Executive Function Struggles Oct 23, 2024

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Does your child struggle with planning/organizing, time management, and impulse control? Join us for our interview with Dr. Joyce Cooper-Kahn, a clinical child psychologist who specializes in the treatment of children and adolescents with ADHD, executive functioning challenges, and other learning disabilities. She is the author of Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents' Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning.
In this episode, we cover:

What is executive functioning?
Example of executive functioning skills?
What is it like for kids, youth, and adults who struggle with executive functioning?
What is the experience of families with a child/youth with executive functioning difficulties?
Why do some kids struggle with executive functioning? What other disabilities often occur with this deficit?
At what age do we usually expect executive functioning skills to start developing?
Who can diagnose an executive functioning disability, and why is it important to get a diagnosis?
What can parents do to help kids improve their executive functioning skills or learn to live without them?
- Use real life to teach
- Teach rather than punish
- Collaborate with the child or youth
- Behavior modification
- Adjust expectations
When should you allow your child to experience natural consequences for behavior?
Practical tools for helping kids plan and organize.
Practical tools for helping kids shift gears or handle transitions.
Practical tools for helping kids with working memory challenges.
Practical tools for helping kids control impulses.

Additional resources:
Late, Lost, and Unprepared: A Parents' Guide to Helping Children with Executive Functioning

Boosting Executive Skills in the Classroom: A Practical Guide for Educators

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How to Lessen the Trauma for a 4-Year-Old Moving Into My Home - Weekend Wisdom Oct 19, 2024

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Question: My niece has been living with her paternal grandparents for two years. She is now four and they have decided that it is getting too hard for them. We’ve agreed to take her in. She knows us, but we haven’t spent much time with her. What’s the best way to move her to our home that will cause the least psychological damage to her. She is very attached to her grandparents.
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Talking With Kids About Adoption Oct 16, 2024

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Join us to talk about how kids understand adoption and how best to talk with them about adoption. Our guest is Camillia Whitehead, is a MSW and a licensed clinical social worker, and the Founder of Wise Care Consulting, LLC.
In this episode, we cover:

How does a child’s understanding of adoption differ by age?
- Toddlers & Preschoolers
- School Age
- Tweens/Teens
- Young Adults
How does openness or lack of openness impact a child’s understanding of adoption?
How does transracial adoption impact a child’s understanding of adoption?
How to talk about adoption at different ages?
- What are the important points you want to make sure your child understands at each stage?
What are some common questions children ask at different developmental stages?
- Why didn’t my birth parents parent me?
- Can I go back to my birth parents?
- Do my birth parents think about me?
- Did my birth parents love me?
- Who do I look like?
- Why did they parent my sibling?
- How am I like my birth parents, and how am I different.”
Why not wait for your child to ask questions and then talk with them?
What if your child shows little or no interest in their adoption story?
What to say when you know very little about the birth parents?
How can you talk about adoption and the role of the birth father with young children who do not understand the concept of sex?
How to handle the “You’re not my real mom or dad” statement?
How to handle hard birth parent stories?
What to do when your cultural or ethnic background is strongly prejudiced against adoption?
- Don’t outright lie.
- Think through carefully what you are afraid of by telling the child.
  - That the child will be rejected by extended family?
  - That you will be judged or rejected by extended family?
  - That the child will share the information to others in your community?
- Accept that the odds are extremely high that the child is going to find out from over-the-counter DNA testing or someone in the family will tell or from 8th grade biology assignment.
- Accept that at some point the failure to tell is the same as lying. When adult adoptees who were not told by their parents were interviewed later in life they almost universally say that it was the lie that hurt the most and did the most damage to their relationship with their parents.
- Start laying the groundwork at an early age.
  - Families are formed in different ways.
  - All types of families are good.
  - We had trouble having kids and we were so happy when you arrived.
  - Try to establish connections with other adoptive parents
  - Point out adoptive families when you see them in real life or TV or movies
- Review your reasons for not wanting to tell and decide on an age that you will tell.
- Explain their adoption story.

Find Resources on CreatingaFamily.org

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Should We Tell Our 5-Year-Old That the New Baby was Donor Conceived? - Weekend Wisdom Oct 12, 2024

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Question: Do you have any suggestions for articles or posts on telling a sibling that their new baby sibling is third-party conceived (e.g. donor egg)? We haven't told our 5-year-old son that we are pregnant yet, and I'm wondering if it is appropriate to tell him we used donor eggs at the same time we drop the big news that he will be a big brother. He will already have questions about conception. Too much info all at once?

Suggested Books on Adoption
- Books for Children Conceived Through Embryo Donation
More information on Embryo Donation/Embryo Adoption

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What Parents Need to Know About Today's Teens and Sex Oct 09, 2024

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Teens and sex are a scary topic for lots of parents. How can we impact our kids' decisions and what do we say? Join our conversation today with Dr. Debby Herbenick, a Provost Professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, where she leads the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. She is the author of Yes Your Kid: What Parents Need to Know About Today’s Teens and Sex.
In this episode, we cover:

What do you believe a parent's role should be in sex education?
How do you become an askable parent?
How to talk with our kids about sex without sounding overly judgmental but also convey your values.
5 minutes a week conversations.
The importance of having high-quality books on puberty and sexuality around the house.
When to start talking about sex with kids?
How to talk with young people about consent
Impact of technology (internet, social media, ubiquitous cell phones, etc.) on sexual development.
What are reasonable parental rules surrounding technology usage?
Taking and sharing sexual images--how common?
- How should parents even start talking with their child about nude images?
- At what age should we start this conversation
- How to share the downside
Pornography or sexually explicit media
- How common do kids access porn, and at what ages?
- Is viewing porn bad for kids?
- At what age should parents start talking with kids about pornography?
- What should parents say about porn?
- How to keep our kids from viewing porn?
- How to respond if we catch our kid watching porn or know that they have viewed it?
Having these discussions when we haven’t had a lifetime of raising this child?

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Is Fostering Going to Hurt My Kids? - Weekend Wisdom Oct 05, 2024

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Question: We are seriously considering becoming foster parents. We have 2 children by birth, and I am really worried about how this will affect them and what I can do to prevent some of the negative effects.
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Parenting Children Who Have Experienced Trauma Oct 02, 2024

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Are you often bewildered by your child's behavior? Check out this interview with Dafna Lender, a LCSW and a certified trainer and supervisor/consultant in both Theraplay and Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy. She is also an EMDR therapist. She is the author of “Theraplay® – The Practitioner’s Guide” and “Integrative Attachment Family Therapy: A Clinical Guide to Heal and Strengthen the Parent-Child Relationship.”

In this episode, we cover:
Impact of Trauma

What is trauma?
Trauma vs PTSD vs. Development Trauma Disorder
Neglect
How does trauma impact the brain?
How does this impact affect the child?
Does the age of the child, when they experienced trauma, or the type of trauma affect the degree to which the child will be impacted?
Impact of preverbal trauma- before the child has language and memory.
If a child is able to leave the abusive situation, can it lower the impact of trauma or PTSD?
Attachment trauma.

How to Best Parent a Child Who Has Experienced Trauma

What is a typical behavior for a child who has experienced trauma?
Internal working model formed with earliest caregivers that forms a template for future relationships with caregivers.
The children often “reject you before you can reject them.”
Importance of awareness of one’s own vulnerabilities and insecurities that may be triggered by caring for children with a history of trauma.
How to help our kids heal and attach? Tips and Techniques.

How to Discipline a Child Who Has Experienced Trauma

See behavior as developmental, not moral.
Don’t spin into the future by predicting the worst. Deal with your fears.
Recognize that ultimately, you can’t control your child. Understand what you can control, and you can only control yourself.
Provide a balance of structure and nurture.
Time-out?

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How to Get Reliable Info on Risk of an Expectant Mom Changing Her Mind? - Weekend Wisdom Sep 28, 2024

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Question: I wanted to bring up something about your article on the risks for an expectant mom changing her mind. You have a point that says any placement before five months into the pregnancy is a risk. We recently had a match with a woman who was only four months along. We asked about this, and our agency tells us that there is no correlation between the time of the match and disruption. What is the truth?
Resources:

Understanding the Birth Parent's Experience (Resource)
Evaluating Risk Factors in Adoption (Resource)
Choosing an Adoption Agency (Resource)

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Kinship Caregiving - Managing Relationships with the Child's Parents Sep 25, 2024

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One of the hardest parts of being a kinship caregiver is navigating the relationship with the child’s birth parent. We talk with Dr. Joseph Crumbley, a social worker, family therapist, and author of “An Overview of Kinship Care.”
In this episode, we cover:

Creating a Family listening sessions with kinship caregivers in rural counties.
What are some of the complicating factors in the relationship between kinship caregivers and the child’s parents?
Grandparents and other caregivers sometimes feel that the child’s parents will threaten them with taking the child away if they do something that the parent disapproves of.
How to not enable the child’s parent but still have a relationship.
How to set healthy boundaries for the caregiver’s and child’s best interest when you have years of experience not setting healthy boundaries?
How to handle others in the family who interfere with the boundaries you’ve established?
I don’t know if this is a question, but I really struggle with getting my kids opportunities to see their mom and siblings. All other siblings have been reunited, and I gather it’s painful for their mom to see the two that were adopted by us (she surrendered her rights). Although we live relatively close to them, we have only managed 2-3 visits a year, mostly because of long periods of no responses to my texts or last-minute cancellations of planned visits. Sometimes our adopted kids can’t even remember their siblings’ names and it just breaks my heart. I’d love for them to have a closer relationship, but I have only limited control.
How to handle the anger, shame, guilt you feel at the child’s parents?
How to support co-parenting when the child’s parent is still not in a healthy place?
How to support reunification?

For more information please refer to www.drcrumbley.com.

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