Some people may not think this is necessarily a holiday that foster children will react to, but that is not the case with most foster children. We have what I believe to be the traditional Thanksgiving dinner with a large amount of food (with lots of leftovers) and your extended family sharing the holiday with you. Foster children have always been surprised when we have Thanksgiving at our house, or at family members home.

They do not understand why I am preparing that much food. One foster son we had continually asked, “When are the other people going to get here?” After... more

Holidays are a time of celebration, family time together, and happiness. In foster homes holidays are all of these things, but also a time of stress, behaviors, acting out, sorrow, sadness, confusion, and an overall insecurity of everything. While I do realize most people to do not understand this in the slightest, it is just how things are. We have to find ways to make difficult situations easier and helping these foster children cope.

“Holidays are suppose to be fun”, is sometime I hear more than I would like too. Believe me; I do not want to be dealing with issues... more

In celebration of National Adoption Month and how important it is for foster care, I will be giving away a copy of the new book, “Forever Fingerprints” by Sherrie Eldridge. I purchased this book for my children and loved the book. So, I brought an extra copy to give away here in honor of the importance of this month to foster families that continue parenting children waiting to be adopted.

I am asking readers to share why they chose to be foster parents and continue doing it below. If you have chosen... more

Adopting Through Foster Care

By the time this beautiful girl was available for adoption we realized that parenting her was a huge undertaking and at times could be quite challenging. When the label of Reactive Attachment Disorder was placed on her I was a little thrown, but I had the attitude; “Okay, we will deal with it.”

Then there were the therapists, doctors, caseworkers, etc. painting this bleak picture that she may never bond with anyone and as she grows older she may struggle... more

When you are a foster parent you never know about the foster children that will come into your home. Some children capture your heart from the moment they walk through your door. The moment I saw my baby girl and held her in my arms, she had me. She was far from the ideal baby but that did not matter to me.

She was 13 months old when she came into our lives. She was unable to hold her head up or anything else because she had no muscle tone. She was still only taking a bottle with formula and spent her life in a crib with a flat head to prove it. Being held, cuddled, and loved was not something this baby girl had experienced in her short life. Any time she experienced human contact... more

With this being National Adoption Month in the hopes to have more foster children find adoptive homes I will be doing a few posts on adoption. While there are a number of images of foster children waiting to be adopted and hard struggles that adoptive parents face with adopting foster children for the most part of the images are negative. The truth is that a lot of the foster children waiting to be adopted do have serious issues from medical condition, behaviors, and serious mental... more

A favorite thing around our house when the weather turns cool, we drink hot chocolate together. The cool weather is here, time for the hot chocolate to come out and for a little relaxing at the end of the day. When the weather starts to turn cool, my children start asking, “Is it time for hot chocolate?” Every foster child that was been in our home and experienced a cup of hot chocolate love it. I love to watch a foster child’s face when she has not experienced hot chocolate before.

It is great to have everyone sit around in the evening talking about school, our plans... more

Every foster child will deal with abuse in very different ways. Abuse overshadows so much of a child’s life that some adults probably do not realize. As adults we struggle to wrap our minds around the abuse that a child has spent his entire life living with. These children learn early that adults in their lives have the power to hurt them and do unspeakable things to them (sometimes in the name of love).

These children lose so much of their innocence, being able to trust the people that are suppose to protect them. In some cases, nighttime is not for dreams; it is when the... more

It is the time of year for room mother involvement, field trips, parties, etc that take place in the school. What does that have to do with foster care? Well, it should have a lot to do with it since you are the acting parent for your foster children. This is an area that foster parents tend to overlook or maybe outright ignore.

My husband is a special education teacher and a few years back I also worked with special ed. students. We both have also worked or had knowledge of foster parents in the school we worked with and have been very surprised how many foster parents do... more

While preparing for the long awaited adoption of our baby girl I find my thoughts turning towards her birth parents. While her birth father was not involved much in her life and was not an active parent with visitation with his daughter, he had definite anger and violence issues. Her birth mother is a complete mess and lives a very sad life of sex, drugs, violence, etc that has cost her all of her children. The heartbreak of the situation is that her birth mother continues to her life of destruction. I had hoped that that the reality of her losing this precious baby after losing two others... more