Articles
Healing from Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
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...
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...
Fun Traditions to Build Connection in Your Family
When raising kids who have experienced loss, chaos, or neglect, it's easy to get lost in the responsibility of helping them heal. Structure, routine, and predictability are essential to creating a foundation for that healing. But sometimes, we forget that good...
Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Drugs
Establishing Daily Routines to Help Prenatally Exposed Kids Thrive
Children exposed to alcohol and drugs during pregnancy need more support to succeed. Daily routines are one of the best things you can do to help them. Prenatal exposure affects how a child’s brain works. Kids exposed to alcohol and drugs during pregnancy often have...
Challenging Behaviors
How to Avoid Triggering and Being Triggered by Your Grandchild
Raising a child with challenging behaviors like lying, stealing, tantrums, or defiance can be exhausting and frustrating. When their actions stress you, it’s hard to manage your emotions and theirs, too. It’s easy to slip into the cycle of the child triggering you and...
4 Ideas for Handling Challenging Behaviors
Trauma, abuse, loss, and grief all create a sense of instability or insecurity in children of any age. When a relative’s child comes to your home, you may notice several behaviors, like talking back, temper tantrums, or whining. It’s understandable that they are...
Understanding Why Kids Lie and Steal
All kids tell lies or take something that doesn’t belong to them at some point in their childhood. But some children lie and steal often! As their caregiver, it’s stressful to live with these behaviors. You worry about the future and you want the behaviors to stop...
ADHD
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Disrupting Birth Order
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Helping A Child Heal from Sexual Abuse
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School Issues for Foster & Kinship Kids
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Technology/Internet and Our Kids
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Self-Care for Kinship and Foster Parents
Practical Tips to Starting Regular Self-Care
When you are raising a child from your extended family or tribal community, you are giving of yourself in new and challenging ways. Your grandchild (or cousin or nephew) needs you to help them overcome their struggles. It's easy to feel overwhelmed by their needs and...
Making Self-Care a Routine
Raising a grandchild (or nephew or cousin) brings both joy and stress. You love them and you love knowing that they are safe, but raising a child is a lot of work! Think back to when you were raising your kids and remember how tired you were. Now add a few or a lot of...
Relationship with Child’s Parent
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Working Together For the Good of the Child In Your Care
Practical Ways to Set Your Grandchild Up for Success
It's challenging to raise your grandchild (or other loved one) in today's world. Your grandchild’s early life experiences can make your role in their life feel overwhelming. The impacts of their trauma or prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol can create many obstacles...
Welcoming a Relative Child When You Have Children Already in the Home
Adding a child to your family changes how you function in your home. Frequently, the kids already living in your home feel these changes most profoundly. This article will refer to them as "resident children." Tips to Prepare Resident Children Whether you are offering...
Preparing Teens with Cognitive Delays for Adulthood
Have you heard from a doctor or a teacher that your grandchild (or niece or cousin) has “cognitive delays”? Or maybe you’ve heard that the child has developmental delays or an intellectual disability. Whatever it is called, you know that this child develops and learns...
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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.