Articles
Healing from Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
When a Child Is Being Bullied: Support and Guidance for Caregivers
It is hard to watch a child you love get hurt by other children. Many caregivers feel worried, angry, sad, or helpless when they learn a child is being bullied. Some children tell adults right away. Others stay quiet because they feel embarrassed, afraid, or unsure if...
Why Is My Relative Child Hiding Food? What It Means and How to Help
You might notice something that feels confusing, or even a little worrying. Food is tucked into a backpack. Snacks are hidden in a bedroom. Wrappers are stashed under the bed. If you’re raising a grandchild, niece, nephew, or another relative, you might find yourself...
How to Build Self-Care Practices that Support Self-Regulation
Caring for your relative’s children—especially children who have been through hard things—takes a lot of energy, patience, and heart. Many caregivers are told, “Take care of yourself.” But what does that really mean? Self-care is not about pampering yourself with...
Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Drugs
5 Ways to Help a Child with Sensory Challenges
Many of the grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other kids you care for have been through hard things, such as neglect, abuse, loss, or exposure to alcohol or drugs before birth. These early experiences can shape how a child’s brain and body respond to the world...
Do You Need Help with Your Relative Child’s Tantrums, Rages, and Meltdowns?
Does this sound familiar? Your grandchild starts yelling, crying, or storming off in the middle of the grocery store. Your heart starts racing, and you feel like all eyes are on you! Do you need better tools to handle your grandchild's or other relative child’s...
Maintaining a Relationship with Your Relative Child’s Parents
When a parent struggles with substance use, it can shake the whole family. Often, grandparents, aunts, or uncles step in to raise the child. This is a loving and brave choice, but it is also painful. You may feel sadness, anger, or guilt as you take on this role. You...
Challenging Behaviors
What is Self-Regulation and Why Does It Matter?
Caring for your grandchild, niece, nephew, or cousin can bring powerful emotions to the surface for everyone involved. This may be especially true when this child has experienced stress, trauma, or big life changes before joining your home. Many caregivers want to...
When Kids Can’t Sleep
Sleep struggles are common among families raising grandchildren, nephews and nieces, or other relatives. When a child wakes often or comes into your room every night, everyone feels it. Lack of sleep can affect everyone: moods focus behavior patience at home family...
Tips to Help You Raise a Child with Prenatal Exposure to Drugs and Alcohol
Across the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, family has always stepped forward for family. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, and cousins often take on the role of caregiver so children can stay connected to their people, their stories, and their land. That...
ADHD
5 Ways to Help a Child with Sensory Challenges
Many of the grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and other kids you care for have been through hard things, such as neglect, abuse, loss, or exposure to alcohol or drugs before birth. These early experiences can shape how a child’s brain and body respond to the world...
Helping Your Grandchild with ADHD Succeed at Home
Raising a child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) can be challenging, but with the right strategies and support, you can help your grandchild (or niece, nephew, or other relative) manage responsibilities at home effectively. These practical tips can...
How to Support a Child with Executive Function Delays
You may hear from your grandchild's teacher or your nephew's pediatrician about their "executive function skills," you might wonder, "What exactly does that mean?" Executive function is the set of neurological processes that helps us organize and supervise our...
Disrupting Birth Order
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Helping A Child Heal from Sexual Abuse
Helping a Child Cope with the Impacts of Sexual Abuse
When a child is sexually abused or assaulted, one of the most damaging impacts of that traumatic experience is shame. The weight of shame and self-blame can lead to years of negative self-talk, depression, anxiety, self-esteem struggles, and more. These impacts make...
3 Ways to Help a Child Heal from Sexual Abuse
It is painful to consider that your grandchild (niece, cousin, or friend) was sexually abused. You might fear the path ahead and worry if they will ever overcome the pain and stigma of the abuse. The good news is that kids can and do heal from this type of abuse if...
School Issues for Foster & Kinship Kids
Preparing Your Relative Youth for Adulthood: College or Vocational School
When your grandchild or another young relative starts talking about life after high school, it can feel both exciting and overwhelming. You’ve already helped them through so much, like school projects, doctor visits, hard days, and big dreams. Now it’s time to help...
A Relative Caregiver’s Guide to Back-to-School Time
Raising your grandchild, niece, nephew, or other relative and navigating their school experience with them can bring new and different challenges your way, especially if things are different than when you raised your own children. Whether it’s your first school year...
What Do I Do? My Grandchild Refuses to Go To School Every Morning!
What is School Refusal? Many kids will complain about headaches or stomach-aches to try and stay home from school and watch cartoons. You might have even faked a tummy ache as a child to spend the day at home! When a child is trying to avoid a one-time event like a...
Technology/Internet and Our Kids
Teaching Kids to Protect Themselves Online and on Social Media
Your grandchildren are growing up in an era unlike any you’ve witnessed before. Technology is as familiar to them as breathing – they’ve never known a time when tablets, iPads, phones, and laptops were not accessible every day. Schools have come to rely heavily upon...
13 Common-Sense Rules for Internet Use in Your Home
The internet is a fantastic tool for research, entertainment, and connection. Children are getting phones, laptops, and tablets at younger and younger ages. The ease of access to the internet, literally in our back pockets, can make parts of our lives incredibly easy...
Tips for Safe Technology and Internet Use for Tweens and Teens
Are you raising a grandchild (or nephew or cousin) who spends countless hours scrolling on their phone? Do you know what they’re doing on their tablets, laptops, or cell phones? How do we navigate the issues of internet safety, social media culture, and screen time...
Self-Care for Kinship and Foster Parents
How to Build Self-Care Practices that Support Self-Regulation
Caring for your relative’s children—especially children who have been through hard things—takes a lot of energy, patience, and heart. Many caregivers are told, “Take care of yourself.” But what does that really mean? Self-care is not about pampering yourself with...
Caring for Your Adult Relationships While Raising Relative Children
Sometimes the strongest support in your home isn’t only the adults caring for the children. It’s the connection between those adults. When relatives step in to raise children, daily life can quickly revolve around school meetings, doctor visits, court dates, and...
Start Where You Can: Small Ways to Care for Yourself Without Guilt
Raising a grandchild, niece, nephew, or other relative means full, busy days! You may be working, cooking, helping with school, and trying to get the kids to lessons, therapy, and practice. Keeping this household going is its own full-time job, isn’t it? By the time...
Relationship with Child’s Parent
How to Build Your Family’s Resilience
We all want the children we love to be able to face hard times and cope with them successfully. The ability to “bounce back” from life’s challenges can be part of a child’s naturally wired temperament. However, other kids may need help learning how to develop their...
Working with Your Grandchild’s Parents is Good for All of You!
Welcoming a grandchild, nephew, or cousin to your home while their parents seek treatment or get back on their feet can be a rewarding and fulfilling experience. After all, you are giving this child a safe space to land when their parents need time to get back on...
Supporting Your Grandchild’s Parents to Succeed
Helping raise your grandchild, nephew, or other relative gives you a unique opportunity to offer nurture and support to the child's parents. The parents may feel shame or guilt about not being able to parent this child. And it's not unusual for your pre-existing...
Working Together For the Good of the Child In Your Care
Welcoming a Child to Your Home as a Relative Caregiver
When a child in your extended family can’t live with their parents, it often falls to someone like you—a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or cousin—to step in and offer the safety, love, and stability they need. Bringing this child into your home is a powerful act of care....
Why Your Grandchild Needs Mentors
Raising a grandchild or another young relative often means you may need additional creative ways to set them on a path to successful adulthood. When a child has experienced the trauma of being separated from their parents -- due to substance use, unstable housing, or...
Life Skills to Build Capable Young Adults
When you're raising a grandchild, niece, nephew, or other young family members, you're not just stepping in — you're standing in the gap. Many of these kids carry heavy stories: trauma, abuse, family separation, prenatal substance exposure and more. You hold dear the...
Raising Adolescents (tweens/teens)
Helping Kids Avoid Marijuana and Vaping
Raising kids has never been simple — and today’s world brings some challenges many caregivers didn’t face growing up. Marijuana and vaping are easier to hide, easier to get, and often seen by young people as “not a big deal.” Don’t Underestimate Your Influence If you...
Recognizing Signs of Depression and Anxiety in Tweens and Teens
Raising a tween or teen relative in your home can feel very different from caring for a younger child. Bodies are changing, emotions can feel bigger, and independence starts to matter more. For relative caregivers — grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings, or...
Tips for Welcoming a Tween or Teen Relative to Your Home
When your tween or teen relative can no longer live safely with their parents, moving to a relative’s home can bring many mixed feelings. They may feel relief, fear, anger, or guilt. The feelings are mixed for you, too: uncertainty, hope, or even overwhelm. All of...
Supporting Healthy Relationships/Attachment
What If My Relative Child Doesn’t Seem to Love Me?
There is a question many relative caregivers quietly carry: "What if this child doesn't love me?" Maybe you've felt it when the child in your care pulls away from a hug. Maybe they seem distant, angry, or uninterested in spending time with you. Maybe they talk about...
When a Child Is Being Bullied: Support and Guidance for Caregivers
It is hard to watch a child you love get hurt by other children. Many caregivers feel worried, angry, sad, or helpless when they learn a child is being bullied. Some children tell adults right away. Others stay quiet because they feel embarrassed, afraid, or unsure if...
Learning to Be Kind to Yourself: Understanding Self-Compassion
If you’re raising a relative’s child, you are likely used to putting others first. You show up. You solve problems. You keep going, even on hard days. But there is something many caregivers struggle with: being kind to themselves. Does that feel familiar? What Is...
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This website was supported with funding from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families’ Children’s Bureau through the Improving Child Welfare Through Investing in Family grant #HHS-2021-ACF-ACYF-CW-1921. The purpose of this grant is to provide an array of kinship preparation services and ongoing kinship supports, and provide shared parenting to build trusting relationships between all out-of-home caregivers and parents of children/youth in foster care to ensure parents and families remain actively involved in normal child-rearing activities.
This website is supported by Grant Number 90CW1149 (HHS-2021-ACF-ACYF-CW-1921) from the Children’s Bureau within the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Neither the Administration for Children and Families nor any of its components operate, control, are responsible for, or necessarily endorse this website (including, without limitation, its content, technical infrastructure, and policies, and any services or tools provided). The opinions, findings, conclusions, and recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Administration for Children and Families and the Children’s Bureau.