I wish we’d had more training on behavior management before accepting a foster or adoptive child. Now that I have opportunities to work with other foster and adoptive families, I hope to make that a big part of what I can share. I’m certain that more knowledge and tools can be a huge help to families working with children that have special behavioral needs. One technique that most parents have heard of is time out. Here are some thoughts and ideas on time out.

Three types of time out

1)... more

How do kids deal with loss? There are as many ways as there are children who’ve had loss! The most common method for the kids in my house is ANGER. I’m often asked if having so many children in one home makes things difficult for the children. Don’t they feed off of each other, increasing anger and poor behavior? In my family, this is not the case.

Kids who come to our house have not made a straight-line journey to get here. Rather, most have come from other adoptions that have been dissolved. For some... more

Father’s Day is coming quickly! What are your plans? How will your adopted child honor the fathers in his life?

Around Mother’s Day, there were many blogs posted about all of the many issues that challenged adopted children during the “season” of Mother’s Day. For some reason, this doesn’t seem to be the case for Father’s Day. At least, within my own family, and in our experiences thus far, there have been far fewer troublesome issues surrounding Father’s Day.

This leaves us all more open and able to celebrate and honor the fathers... more

Summer time is here. We'll do some fun things. More often, we'll be doing a lot more of routine, dull things around the house. The kids are obviously thrilled about this!

Okay. So perhaps they aren't so thrilled. I am always on the lookout for new ideas to keep us all motivated. At our house, these are called "Tidy Tasks". With many adopted children at various places on the road to attachment and family belonging, their responses to helping with home and family aren't always predictable. I keep a lot of ideas ready so that I can vary... more

New Tidy Task ideas are not for routine, daily chores, but designed for extra chores and/or extra fun to add a boost to the monotony of daily chores. They also can add fun to a family while doing things that really are pretty mundane.

Parents, particularly adoptive parents, should remember that children want to become a part of something fun. A child won’t want to become a part of something boring and difficult. Children seek to be included and find a sense of belonging in things that are positive, happy or fun. When we think... more

Tidy Tasks are fun ways to motivate our children to help with house chores. Two previous blogs mentioned some fun ideas. One blog introduced Box o’ Socks, “Stop, Drop and Clean”. Another blog gave a lot of ideas for fun charts to use.

Using a cycle chart is another fun way to keep kids interested in otherwise mundane tasks, learning responsibility,... more

Every mom wonders, at one point or another, how to motivate a child to help with taking care of the house. We all know it’s not only about the actual doing of the chores. Gosh, in most cases, it’s a whole lot easier for a mom to do the chore than it is to teach the child how to do it and to follow up on that. Worrying over chores is far more about teaching the child responsibility, personal care, and, eventually, how to live on his own.

In adoptive homes, there is an extra aspect to consider that presents even more importance to helping... more

With kids coming home for summer, how can we keep our homes from getting out of hand? Mix things up! Tidy tasks is a phrase that I use to encompass all sorts of fun, easy and novel ideas for keeping kids motivated to help keep our house looking nice.

With a house full of children, keeping things fun is one key for keeping things successful at the same time. We pick ideas that sound like they might help get the job done while keeping levity at the same time. Who likes to do chores anyway? Most kids... more

I recently returned to work outside of the home. (Going Back to Work After Adoption)

I worked outside the home when I had birth kids. What is different, then, about working outside the home now that I have adopted children?

What can I do to make this a successful experience for all of us?

1) Adjust age level expectations for your child. Your child might be chronologically ten, but emotionally 3. Remember to respond to... more

Today, I went back to work. Things are wild on the home front tonight! I honestly had not realized aspects of the impact it would have on some of my kids.

Were they not ready for mom to go out to work? Will they ever be ready? How can an adoptive mom know?

I’ve worked before, but it has been a couple of years. (Even then, my part-time schedule was so varied and odd that I think some kids weren’t even aware that I had an outside job!)

Two years ago, we moved to a new city. My husband returned to school... more