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

Latest Episodes:

Adopting or Fostering a Child Who Identifies as LGBTQ+ Mar 15, 2023

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Have you wondered if you could be the right place for an LGBTQ+ youth or child to land? Join us to talk about how to be an affirming and supportive home for LGBTQ+ youth. Or guest will be Angela Weeks, the Director of the National SOGIE Center at the Institute for Innovation and Implementation. Under the Center, she directs the Center of Excellence for LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity and the National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for LGBTQ2S Children and Youth in Foster Care.
In this episode, we cover:

Why are these young people over represented in child welfare?
LGBTQ+ youth are 1.5 -2 times more likely to have a foster placement failure. Why?
What does the research indicate about how sexual orientation and gender identity are formed?
Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely to have a mental health diagnosis or behavioral issues.
Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely than heterosexual or cisgender young people to sexually abuse or otherwise pose a threat to others, including children?
How to help youth evaluate the safety of their communities, schools, social networks, and homes to decide whether to disclose their LGBTQ+ identity, when to do so, and to whom.
Parents often think, especially with younger kids, that this is just a phase. And kids are coming out (acknowledging their sexual orientation/gender identity to themselves and others) at younger and younger ages. And there is some fluidity. So how’s a parent to know how to handle?
- Studies by the Family Acceptance Project have found that most people report being attracted to another person around age 10 and identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual by age 13 (on average). Most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by age 4
Sexual orientation vs sexual behavior.
How can parents create a welcoming and affirming home?

Additional Resources:

Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth: A Guide for Foster Parents https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/lgbtqyouth.pdf
Glossary of Terms (Human Rights Campaign)
The National SOGIE Center. The National Center for Youth with Diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, & Expression provides a centralized site for accessing resources on providing culturally responsive care to children, youth, and young adults with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGIE) and their families across systems, including child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health (including school mental health), substance use systems, and housing and homelessness. https://www.sogiecenter.org/
Family Acceptance Project® LGBTQ Youth & Family Resources To Decrease Mental Health Risks & Promote Well-Being https://lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org/
Learning About Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression (SOGIE) (Video)
A Guide for Understanding, Supporting, and Affirming LGBTQI2-S Children, Youth, and Families
Support for LGBTQ Youth Starts at Home (Video)
Be True and Be You: A Basic Guide for LGBTQ+ Youth
Sharing Our Lived Experiences: 22 Tips for Caring for Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ Youth in the Child Welfare System

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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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Navigating Sticky Birth Parent Situations Mar 08, 2023

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How do you handle a birth parent showing up to a meeting with the child stoned or drunk? What do you do when a birth parent often breaks promises to the child? Join us to talk about nine sticky situations that adoptive parents often find themselves in. Our guest is Lori Holden, the author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole.
In this episode, we cover:

What do we mean by openness and why is openness or some form of a relationship considered best for adopted kids?
Difficult/Sticky Situation #1: Birth Parent Addiction to drugs or alcohol.
- How to handle things when a birth parent shows up for a meeting with a child high or stoned.
- How to set healthy boundaries with birth parents who are addicted? How to set these boundaries when you have an open adoption with a birth parent dealing with addiction?
- Explaining drug addiction of birth parents to children.
Difficult/Sticky Situation #2: Failing to show up for meetings/visits or showing up late?
- Determining the cause.
- How do you protect your child from disappointment?
- How to handle it if the parents are struggling with substance abuse disorder.
Difficult/Sticky Situation #3: Making promises they can’t or won’t keep.
Difficult/Sticky Situation #4: Should you maintain any type of relationship with a birth parent who abused or neglected the child?
Difficult/Sticky Situation #5: How should parents deal with the obvious difference between openness in multiple adoptions within the same family?
Difficult/Sticky Situation #6: DNA testing. If the birth parents have not told others about the child, what obligation do you have to their desires regarding DNA testing on the child? What if there are medical reasons for doing the testing?
Difficult/Sticky Situation # 7: When the adoptive parent is the problem. Over-reacting, assuming the worst intentions, etc.
Difficult/Sticky Situation #8: Birth family doesn’t want contact.
Difficult/Sticky Situation #9: Birth siblings being parented by the birth parents.
Why should parents try to maintain relationships with the birth family in difficult situations?

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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Handling Screens and Technology as a Family Mar 01, 2023

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When should your child get a smartphone? What can you do if your child spends too much time playing video games? How can we protect our kids from the downsides of social media? Join us to talk about parenting and technology with Krista Boan, co-founder of the nonprofit Screen Sanity.
In this episode, we cover:
Digital Health:

Screen Sanity’s 5 Rules of Thumb.
Ride, practice, drive” approach for device and app introduction.
How to handle a foster, adoptive, or kinship placement of a child that has already gone down that slippery slope of too much screen time and tech. How do you establish reasonable boundaries?
Is it still recommended that parents establish a "no expectation of privacy" policy for online activity? At what age/stage should that start to change?
How to handle when your family has vastly different rules from your child’s friend’s families when you don’t want your child to feel left out?

Screentime:

What is a reasonable rule of thumb for how much screen time a child should be allowed by age?
What is considered screen time?
- School work?
- Facetime with family or friends?
- Drawing or coding games?
- Social media?
How do we handle cell phones and tablets when we see more negative behavior from any usage?

Smartphones:

At what age should a child be given a smartphone? What questions should you ask before you give a child a smartphone?
What are the alternatives to a smartphone? What are good starter phones?

Video Games:

How to manage the addictive nature of video games?
How to strike the balance between limiting the time of video games when this is where many kids socialize.
Screen Sanity’s Video Game Decision Tree

Social Media:

What are the pitfalls, and how can we protect our kids?
When should kids be allowed to be on social media?
How can parents keep up with what their kids are doing on social media?
The Social Media Playbook is a parent-child workbook for starting powerful conversations about social media. Families are prompted to dig deeper into the purpose of social media in their lives and question the false standards it places on its users.

Pornography:

How do we protect our kids and youth from pornography?
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures book

Screen Sanity has parent guides, training, webinars, and study groups.

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Trauma-Informed Parenting: Practical Applications of TBRI® Feb 22, 2023

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Kari Dady joins us to talk about applying the guiding principles of Trust-Based Relational Intervention® to typical parenting situations. Kari Dady is a Regional Training & Consultation Specialist with the Karyn Purvis Institute of Child Development. She is also an adoptive mom who uses the TBRI® approach daily in her family.
In this episode, we cover:

What is parental attachment style, and how does it influence how we parent?
How does trauma affect the developing child?
What are some of the different types of trauma that impact a child?
What are the core principles of Trust-Based Relational Intervention®(TBRI®)?
TBRI® talks about parents needing to make a mindset shift when looking at challenging behavior. What is this mindset shift?
How can parents apply Trust-Based Relational Intervention®(TBRI®) to the following common behaviors:
- Inability to accept rules, restrictions, or the word “no”
- Tantrums,
- Whining
- Sleep issues
- Lying
- Stealing

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How to Raise an Intense Child Feb 15, 2023

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Do you have a child that is more—louder, more energetic, more argumentative, more everything? Intense children can be harder to raise, but their intensity is a gift as well as a parenting challenge. We talk with Howard Glasser, creator of the Nurtured Heart Approach to parenting. He is the author of Transforming the Difficult Child and Transforming the Intense Child Workbook.
In this episode, we cover:

What do you consider to be an intense child? My child was “more”—more loud, more energy—their reaction to most things was simply more. They go from 5 mph to 60mph in about a second. How to raise the intense child.
What are the labels and diagnoses that intense children often accumulate? ADHD, ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), conduct disorder, PTSD, anxiety disorder, depression.
What makes some kids more “intense” than others?
What do you mean by energy-challenged kids? Unable to handle or effectively control their physical, cognitive or emotional energy. They have a disorder of self-control. They have more energy than they have self-control.
Energy is a gift as well as a challenge.
You mention in Transforming the Difficult Child that many intense or difficult kids love video games—more so than the average child. Why?
Structure-while I think all children need structure, the high-intensity child really needs structure. Positive forms of structure vs. negative forms of structure
Traditional parenting techniques did not work well for my intense little wonder. Your approach to raising an intense child is based on your Nurturing Heart Approach as outlined in your book, Transforming the Difficult Child and Transforming the Intense Child Workbook. What are the basic principles of this approach to parenting? The 3 strands.
Strand 1: Refuse to energize the negative. What are some of the challenges parents face when applying this? What are some common ways we might accidentally energize the negative?
Strand 2: Energize the positive. active recognition, experiential recognition, proactive recognition, creative recognition.
Is there a problem with too much praise?
Strand 3: Absolute clarity on limits and consequences. How to set limits?
Intensity is not something that a person outgrows.

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Impact of Fostering and Adoption on Kids Already in the Family Feb 08, 2023

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Do you worry that your decision to foster or adopt will hurt the kids you are already raising? Check out this podcast with Dr. Jana Hunsley, an Assistant Professor of Instruction at the University of Texas at Dallas, trauma therapist, TBRI® Practitioner, and founder of Project 1025.
In this episode, we cover:
Fostering

What are some of the common impacts of fostering on children already in the family? Both potentially negative and positive.
What does your research show on how significant and how often children already in the home are negatively impacted by fostering?
Should you Include kids in the decision to foster? If so, how does that look at different ages?
For children already in the home, is there a better age to start fostering because of their ability to understand what the family is doing?
Is it harder to introduce a foster child when there is only one existing child in the home. Do only children have a harder time adjusting?
How much information about the new child should you share with the other kids in the home?

Adoption

How do the impacts of adopting differ from the impacts of fostering?
- With adoption you usually have more time.
- The child may already be living with you.
- Adoption is for forever, while fostering is usually temporary.
- You may care more about creating a lasting sibling relationship between the children.
How much of a say should you give kids already in the family over whether you adopt?

Common Worries

The new child may have developed behaviors that helped them survive in their prior home or are the physical symptoms of the trauma they experienced, such as tantrums, stealing, cursing, etc. Parents worry that these behaviors will rub off on their child.
How to handle possible behaviors that could be harmful to kids already in the family. For example, acting out sexually with the other kids.
New foster kids and some kids being placed for adoption have often had a diet higher in processed foods. How to handle this difference if you don’t want the kids in the family to eat too much processed foods.
The lack of time and attention will hurt kids already in the family.

Tips for Parents

How can parents lessen the impact and increase the benefits of fostering or adopting for kids already in the family.

Prepare children in the family in advance. What do children in the home need to be prepared for? (Differs significantly depending on the age of all the children involved)
How to handle rule differences and behavioral expectations.
How to handle the differing privileges and expectations that may have been assigned to kids by age in the past but age may not be the best measure or gauge now. For example, staying at home alone while dad runs to the store. Or bedtimes. Or visits alone to grandparents.
How to prepare your children for the time commitment a new child will require to avoid feeling of jealousy? How to find time for all the kids.
How to avoid secondary trauma in existing kids and how to recognize it.

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Identical Twins Separated at Birth Feb 01, 2023

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What happens when identical twins born in Vietnam are separated by adoption, with one adopted by a US family and one adopted by a Vietnamese family? Join us to talk with Erika Hayasaki, a journalist and author of Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity and the Meaning of Family.
In this episode, we cover:

The story.
Twin studies.
Adoption studies.
The similarities of the twins in your story and in twin studies.
The differences between the twins in your story and in twin studies.
Reuniting
How did the twins' reunion affect them, their family in Vietnam, and their adopted family in the US?
Complications that the disparate degrees of wealth caused.
Adoptive parents’ role in reunion.

Twin studies referenced:

Polderman, T., Benyamin, B., de Leeuw, C. et al. Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies. Nat Genet 47, 702–709 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3285
Website based on the research cited above: MaTCH. This website provides a resource for the heritability of all human traits that have been investigated with the classical twin design. The traits have been classified into 28 broad trait domains, as well as according to the standard classification schemes of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) or the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10). Currently, the database includes information from 2748 papers, published between 1958 and 2012, reporting on 17804 traits on a total of 14,558,903 twin pairs. https://match.ctglab.nl/#/home

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Picky Eating and Other Food Issues Jan 25, 2023

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Have mealtimes become a battleground in your house, is your child a picky eater, or do you have a child who eats too much? We provide lots of tips in our conversations with Dr. Katja Rowell, a family doctor and author of Love Me, Feed Me, 2nd edition, and Helping Your Child with Extreme Picky Eating. She has a special interest in supporting foster and adoptive parents.
In this episode, we cover:

What are some of the typical food issues for adopted or foster kids, especially those who have experienced trauma?
How does trauma impact feeding?
Responsive eating leaves space to recognize what the body needs.
What do you mean by felt safety and focusing on connection?
What is a responsive and flexible framework for feeding kids with brain-based differences?
How to best deal with kids who are significantly underweight.
How to best handle extreme pickiness.
How to handle children who are eating too much, emotional eaters, or who are overweight.
Why do kids from foster care or institutional settings often become larger than optimal for their health?
Practical tips for establishing healthy eating patterns in adopted or foster kids
- modified family style serving
- supporting nutrition
- sensory support at mealtimes
- food “exposure” therapy

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2022 Adoption Tax Credit Jan 18, 2023

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Are you planning on claiming the Adoption Tax Credit when you file your taxes this year? If so, this is the podcast for you! We talk with two of the top experts in the US on the Adoption Tax Credit: Becky Wilmoth, an Enrolled Agent and Adoption Tax Credit Specialist with Bill’s Tax Service, and Josh Kroll, the Adoption Subsidy Resource Center coordinator at the North American Council on Adoptable Children (NACAC).
In this episode, we cover:

What is the Adoption Tax Credit for adoption being claimed on 2022 federal taxes?
How to advocate for refundability?
What is a “credit” and how does it differ from a deduction or some other form of tax savings?
If you get a tax refund every year, how would you use the Adoption Tax Credit?
If you don’t have any federal tax liability, should you still apply the credit to your federal income taxes?
What types of adoptions are included or excluded? Stepparent adoption? Embryo adoption? Same-sex partner second-parent adoption? Unmarried heterosexual second-parent adoption? Surrogacy?
Can you get credit for each adoption you complete even if completed in the same year? What about adopting siblings at the same time?
What is a Qualified Adoption Expense for purposes of the Adoption Tax Credit 2022?
When can you claim the Adoption Tax Credit?
- Domestic private adoption
- International Adoption
- Re-adoption in the US for international adoption
- Foster Care Adoption
How does the Adoption Tax Credit work with kinship adoptions? What if the child never was involved with foster care?
Special Needs Adoption: How does the Adoption Tax Credit differ for adoptions from foster care? What does the IRS accept as proof of “special needs”?
$0 subsidy agreement
Special needs child for international adoption
Can you reclaim your expenses for an attempted adoption that did not result in a placement? How?
What income level (Modified Adjusted Gross Income) is excluded from claiming the Adoption Tax Credit in 2022?
How long can the credit be carried over?
Are you able to amend the previous year's tax return to claim the adoption tax credit? Is the adoption tax credit something you can amend, and if so, how do you amend and how many years back?
Will the Adoption Tax Credit offset self-employment tax?
How does the Secure Act impact claiming the Adoption Tax Credit for 2022 taxes?
What should you do if the child’s Social Security Number is not available when you file?
- Should you use an Adoption Taxpayer Identification Number (ATIN #) if you don’t have the child’s social security number?
How does the Adoption Tax Credit work in conjunction with employee adoption benefits? For special needs adoption?
Qualified Birth or Adoption Distribution from Qualified Retirement Plan without penalty. Under Secure Act.
If you adopt, can you still get the Child Tax Credit?
What do you need in order to get the Child Tax Credit for your adopted child?
Do you need to send to the IRS any documentation for the Adoption Tax Credit when you file your taxes? What type of documentation should you keep in your records?
How to find a tax specialist knowledgeable on the Adoption Tax Credit? https://adoptiontaxcredit.org

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How to Adopt in 2023 Jan 11, 2023

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Are you thinking about adopting this year? You don't want to miss this discussion of how to adopt and current trends in private infant adoption, foster care adoption, and international adoption. Our guests are Chris Peszka, MSW, Regional and District Supervisor at Adoptions From The Heart Adoption Agency, and Robin Sizemore, Executive Director of Hopscotch Adoptions.
In this episode, we cover:

Domestic infant private adoption in the US
- What is the process?
- What are the reasons that pregnant moms are placing their child?
- Open adoption
- Expectant parent choice
- Special needs of children available
- How long does it take? What factors influence this time?
- How much does it cost? What factors influence this cost?
- Adoption agency and adoption attorney
- What is the first step prospective adoptive parents should take if they are interested in adopting a baby?
Adoptions from foster care in the US
- What is the process?
- Adopting your foster child
- Adopting a waiting child
- What are the reasons that children are available for adoption from foster care in the US?
- What age and race of child is available for adoption from foster care?
- Special needs?
- How long does it take?
- How much does it cost?
- What is the first step prospective adoptive parents should take if they are interested in adopting from foster care?
International adoptions to the US
- What is the process?
- What type of children are available for adoption from abroad?
- How long does it take? What factors influence this time?
- How much does it cost? What factors influence this cost?
- What is the first step prospective adoptive parents should take if they are interested in adopting internationally?
- What are some of the shifts in adoption in the last 5 or so years?
- What are some of the changes anticipated for 2023 and beyond?