Articles
Healing from Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
Strengths Before Struggles: A New Way to See Your Child or Youth
When a child has lived through tough times, like trauma, neglect, or abuse, the adults in their life often focus on what’s “wrong” and try to fix it. We invite you to consider that there is another way to tackle the challenges and the impacts they have on your...
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....
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...
Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Drugs
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...
Helping Tweens and Teens Manage Money
When a child’s developing brain is impacted by exposure to drugs and alcohol during pregnancy, early loss, neglect, or other trauma, they may struggle to understand money. Learning the value of money and how to manage it can also be an overwhelming task for kids with...
3 Essential Tips for Raising a Child with Brain Differences
Your grandchild with brain differences (like ADHD, prenatal substance exposure, autism, or learning differences) navigates the world differently than you do. Sometimes, those differences can make the days challenging for you all. However, if you can focus on these...
Challenging Behaviors
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...
Welcoming a New Child to Your Home
When you agree to open your home to a relative child, you are agreeing to so much more than providing a clean, safe bed and regular meals. You are agreeing to offer them an emotionally and physically safe place to heal from the challenges they encountered before...
How to Respond When a Child or Teen is Having a Meltdown
What do you do when your grandchild pitches a fit in Aisle 2 of the local grocery store? Or when your teenage niece screams at her sibling, slams doors, or kicks walls? It's a stressful moment for everyone, and your nerves are frayed while you figure out what to do....
ADHD
Helpful Homework Strategies for a Child with ADHD
Homework after school can be a daily struggle when raising a grandchild or loved one with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Many of the steps involved in getting the assignments home and finished requires your grandchild to use skills that are...
Empowering Your Teen with ADHD
Your grandchild has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and you want to support them in ways that empower and equip them to succeed. School, extracurricular activities, and part-time jobs are all typical settings that can stress a typical teen. When a...
Practical Ideas for Keeping Easily Distractible Kids on Task
Many kids struggle to stay focused and attend to tasks. As they grow and learn new organizational skills that work for them, they often grow out of their distractibility. However, struggles with organization and staying on task can typically last much longer for a...
Disrupting Birth Order
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Helping A Child Heal from Sexual Abuse
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School Issues for Foster & Kinship Kids
How to Manage Special Education Services for Your Grandchild
Managing your grandchild or loved one’s IEP, 504, or other special education services in the public schools can feel like an overwhelming task. The language of special education and the process of setting up services can leave you feeling uncertain of your ability to...
A Quick Checklist to Prepare for Back-to-School
It seems almost too soon to mention the “s-c-h-o-o-l" word. Still, quicker than you can imagine, your grandchild will be figuring out who is in their homeroom and talking about packing school supplies. When raising a loved one's child, it's good to consider what else...
Being an Active Participant in Your Grandchild’s School Experience
Your grandchild has come to live with you, and it feels like everyone is finally settled into the new routine at home. You find that you have the time, energy, and interest to get involved at your relative child's school. However, you need help figuring out where to...
Technology/Internet and Our Kids
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Self-Care for Kinship and Foster Parents
Raising This Child Matters!
Occasionally, it’s good for your mental and emotional health to pause and consider what you are doing and why it matters. Kinship caregivers play a unique and vital role in a child’s healing and overall well-being. Do you stop to think about why and how to be sure you...
Understanding and Preventing Blocked Care
Raising a family member's child is a challenging responsibility. This child brings joy and laughter to your life. But they also struggle with the losses they've endured. Their behaviors may be challenging to manage. This child might have learning needs or emotional...
Simple Habits to Help You Take Care of Yourself
This time of year, many grandparents and relative caregivers are heaving huge sighs of relief that kids are back in school. It's beneficial to have the structure of the school routine to guide a child's day. And the break for caregivers is physical, mental, and...
Relationship with Child’s Parent
Shared Parenting: Benefits and Tips for Success
It’s hard to raise grandchildren (or nieces or nephews) without having complicated feelings about their parents. You may be angry or disappointed with the parents’ life choices. You may feel guilty because your child has not been a good parent. You may love them...
Helping Family Visits Go Well
When raising grandchildren (or nieces or nephews), visits with their parents can feel stressful and sticky. There is a history between you and your adult child or family member. Big feelings usually come rushing up for everyone. The challenge is how to help the child...
9 Tips for Working with the Child’s Parents
When your grandchild, nephew, or family friend is living with you, you will need to work with the child’s parents to some extent to raise this child. If child welfare is involved, they will let you know what they expect and what is allowed. If child welfare is not...
Working Together For the Good of the Child In Your Care
Starting on the Right Foot if Raising Your Grandchild is New to You
Many factors have come together to lead you to welcome your grandchild (or any other relative) to your home. This new situation can be fulfilling and satisfying – after all, you are helping this child find healing and safety to grow and thrive. However, the new...
Resources to Strengthen and Support Your Family
“It takes a village” brings a whole new meaning when you are raising a grandchild or cousin. Whether you are helping your adult children bring up their kids or raising a nephew or niece for the long haul, you need resources, community, and support. We’re bringing...
Refreshing Your Hope and Strength for Raising This Child
Whether you've already raised several children or recently welcomed another grandchild or loved one to your home, it’s easy to feel weary about the “full plate” in front of you. Raising a grandchild or other relative’s child brings you many new challenges. Maybe you...
Raising Adolescents (tweens/teens)
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Supporting Healthy Relationships/Attachment
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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.