Setting up realistic expectations of foster children can make them or break them. When you work with therapeutic foster care this is something you learn to understand pretty fast. These children have to feel like they can accomplish things but the reality is that that most of them cannot meet the expectations that we set for our birth children or other children.

Some of these foster children have suffered so much that they struggle with their emotions, anger, how to communicate with others, depression, rage, etc. that they struggle to maintain any sort of appropriate behavior. Setting unrealistic expectations is setting the child up for failure and can lead to behaviors to continue... more

In foster care you hear so many negatives about children that struggle with life long issues. Children get lost in the system, and on, and on. It is easy to get caught in all the pain and heartache that comes with foster care. There are successful foster children and others that have learned to manage their pain, grief, and struggles in life they have faced.

A former foster child is working towards making foster care better for other children. Lily did have her fair share of struggles in foster care but she chose to work hard and overcome them. She was like many other foster teen and dealt with multiple placements.... more

In my next post I’ll get back to my vision for ATN, but for now I want to share a conversation I had with Beth today before we both crashed for a much-needed nap. Bear in mind she was exhausted so she was even more emotionally fragile, but still, what she said was incredible …

She attended camp last week with a neighborhood friend and classmate. Apparently they had some difficulties, as they discovered that living with... more

In my last post I wrote about some of the reasons why sleep can be a challenging issue for parents of newly adopted children.

In this post, I am going to offer some suggestions to help ensure that you and your child get as much sleep as possible in your early days together.

- Know what you child is used to, and as much as possible, make things familiar. Is your child used to sleeping with several other children in his bed? If so, he may sleep better in a room... more

When families decide to adopt from Ethiopia, often their eyes are opened to the tremendous need there. That need is way too enormous to be addressed through adoption alone. Currently there are 4 million orphans in Ethiopia. In 2006, 732 children came to new adoptive families in the U.S. Though adoption was a great solution for those children, it is obviously not helping the vast majority of the needy people in Ethiopia.

So what can a family do? Some adoption agencies have programs that help the community from which children come. Adoption Advocates... more

Nancy Grace, pregnant with twins at 48, is giving hope to career women all over the country, but making me very grateful to have it behind me now. My 25 year career in the public school system and my motherhood adventure of adding 39 children to our family has put me in a place where I’m now very happy and quite satisfied, while also planning new challenges and looking at many wonderful options as I turn 53 soon.

When I was the age of Nancy Grace, just 5 years ago, my oldest... more

In one of the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute E-Newsletters, there was an article about slowdowns, major changes and possibly shutdowns in the three major countries Americans adopt the most from: China, Russia and Guatemala.

This will make “tsunami” sized waves in the international adoption world. In 2006, over... more

I picked Beth up at camp this morning … I feel complete again! She’s tired and badly in need of a bath, but can’t take one until the plumber gets here and fixes our not-yet-a-year-old sump pump that quit and has caused flooding in our basement. Sigh … that same basement that is nearly (but not quite) finished on one side and piled high with stuff we have yet to unpack on the other side. Piled high is the key word right now, as we have stacked everything on top of everything else. Just what I wanted to do on my Saturday afternoon.

Beth... more

Here's the flip side to the camp-to-adopt story I told you about this morning: summer camps for Russian children--sometimes orphans--held in Russia and staffed, at least in part, by American volunteers.

Adoption Ark, based in Buffalo Grove, Ill., just wrapped up its fifth annual summer camp in Russia. It took 120 children, ages 6 to 16, from nine orphanages in the Ivanovo region to a three-week camp in the nearby town of Kleshevka. No, they didn't get to experience life... more

I almost forgot about the craft post for this month until a reader reminded me of it! This month’s craft is a very simple, fun, and easy craft that you could do yourself or you could do it with your child(ren).

I will be showing you how to embellish plain and inexpensive photo frames. Adoptive moms and their children could jazz up a simple frame for the child’s birthmother and birthmoms can make a fun frame to hold a special photo of themselves and their child. I made three different frames, all using the same method, but each different and... more