Articles
Healing from Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
When Siblings Harm Each Other
In this community, we value “family” as much bigger than just parents and children. This is one of the most common reasons that grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives step in to help raise a child when the parents can’t. The strength of kinship care helps...
When Your Grandchild Needs Help Making Friends
Making friends can be hard sometimes. For children who have experienced trauma, loss, big changes, learning differences, or prenatal substance exposure to drugs and alcohol, making friends may feel extra hard. As a grandparent or related caregiver to this child, you...
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...
Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Drugs
Potty Training Your Relative Child, Part 1
Taking care of children who have experienced loss, chaos, or exposure to alcohol or drugs before birth can be a big job, especially when it comes to potty training. These children may face extra challenges to conquer potty training, but with understanding, patience,...
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...
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...
Challenging Behaviors
Bedwetting and Accidents, Potty Training Part 2
Helping a Child with Bedwetting and Other Toileting Problems Even after a child has learned successful daytime potty skills, they may experience other toileting challenges. For example, overnight bedwetting or pooping in their pants is not uncommon for kids who were...
Potty Training Your Relative Child, Part 1
Taking care of children who have experienced loss, chaos, or exposure to alcohol or drugs before birth can be a big job, especially when it comes to potty training. These children may face extra challenges to conquer potty training, but with understanding, patience,...
Outdoor Activities with Your Relative Child To Build Crucial Skills
Across the state, Spring is springing up everywhere! Sending the kids outside to play relieves many grandparents and family caregivers. After all, many of us would agree that Winter means too much time inside for our kids, on screens, in their rooms, or getting on...
ADHD
Helping Your Tween or Teen Develop Their Whole Person
Does your tween or teen grandchild (nephew or cousin) act sullen, angry, illogical, and overly emotional? Do they engage in risky behaviors you never dealt with when raising your kids? You may struggle to understand this young person or feel connected to them because...
Encouraging Curiosity in Children
“Why does the plant need water, Grandma?” “How does that plane stay up in the air?” “What do birds think about when they sleep?” Does your grandchild (nephew, niece, or cousin) ask these questions? Do you feel frustrated, overwhelmed, or stumped by the many questions...
Practical Tips to Help an Easily Distracted Child Pay Attention
Many children impacted by early childhood loss or trauma struggle to pay attention. Kids who were exposed to drugs or alcohol during pregnancy struggle with focus and attention as well. Even if your grandchild does not have a diagnosis of attention deficit...
Disrupting Birth Order
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Helping A Child Heal from Sexual Abuse
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School Issues for Foster & Kinship Kids
When a Student Refuses to Comply with School Supports – Part 1
When a child struggles in school, they often receive special support and services through an IEP (individualized educational plan) or 505 plan. These accommodations and resources are unique to this child's learning style or struggles. They can be a combination of...
5 Tips for Advocating for Your Grandchild in Special Education Services
When raising a grandchild, cousin, or other loved one, you may need to navigate the special education services at their school. The world of IEPs and 504s, speech therapy, and reading support might make you feel like you need to learn another language. But pressing...
Creating a Partnership with Your Grandchild’s School
Whether you are raising your nephew, grandchild, or other loved one, you need a supportive and seasoned team around you. One crucial part of that team should be the local school where the child is enrolled. However, grandparents and caregivers often feel as if school...
Technology/Internet and Our Kids
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Self-Care for Kinship and Foster Parents
Why Self-Care Matters When Raising a Relative’s Child
In many tribal communities, raising children is a shared responsibility. Aunties, uncles, grandparents, cousins, and even close family friends who step in when parents cannot show extraordinary love, commitment, and community in action. You likely are reading this...
Practical Tips for Navigate the Tween and Teen Years with Your Relative Child
The tween and teen years can get a bad rap – folks assume an adolescent will be rebellious, acting out, or stuck behind a screen with a sullen look on their face. While sometimes those things are true, it’s also true that the teen years can be rich with rewarding...
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...
Relationship with Child’s Parent
Practical Tips for Sharing the Parenting Load In Kinship Caregiving
No one-size-fits-all solution exists for raising a loved one's child in your home. Depending upon the role this child’s parent can play, the safety and legal issues in your family’s particular circumstances, and other issues your family faces, you might have questions...
How Can You Support Reunification for Your Grandchild and their Parents?
As a grandparent, aunt, or cousin raising this child when their parents cannot do it, you have a unique opportunity to provide nurturing care and space for healing for your loved ones. However, the relationship you already have with this child’s parents, whether they...
Keeping Your Grandchild Out of the Middle of the Relationship Between You and Their Parents
Raising a loved one’s child can be a joyful, fulfilling experience. However, it can also be riddled with tension and anxiety – for you, the child, and the parents. This child may feel stuck in the middle of the adults in their life, and that's stressful for any child....
Working Together For the Good of the Child In Your Care
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...
Easing A Child’s Fears When You Meet for the First Time
Typically, when you welcome a child to your home to support their family through a challenging season, you already have a relationship with the child. You may not know them well, but you are not wholly unfamiliar with each other. However, occasionally, raising another...
Truths Every Child Needs to Hear
When a child has experienced abuse, neglect, or loss, they often take those events into their hearts and minds and then believe things about themselves that are untrue. They frequently feel guilt or shame as if the abuse or chaotic conditions of their life are their...
Raising Adolescents (tweens/teens)
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Supporting Healthy Relationships/Attachment
Practical Ways to Partner with Family and Friends To Raise This Child
When you step in to raise your relative's child, as an auntie, grandmother, older cousin, or another trusted family member, you give that child something priceless: safety, steadiness, and love. But most of these kids also have others who care deeply about them. Their...
Have Some Winter Fun and Build Connection with Your Relative Tween or Teen
Do you ever catch yourself singing “Rockin’ around the Christmas tree…” and halfway through realize your tween or teen grandchild is doing their own version behind you, complete with lip-syncing, eye-rolling, but they’re secretly smiling too? That little burst of...
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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.