Articles
Healing from Trauma/Neglect/Abuse
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...
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...
Impacts of Prenatal Exposure to Alcohol and Drugs
Tips for Helping a Baby Cope with Withdrawal from Opiates
Your new grandbaby is here, and they are beautiful. But the doctors just informed you that this baby will have a rough few weeks ahead. Their little body is going through withdrawal from exposure to opiates during pregnancy. It's normal to feel scared for this baby's...
Quick Tips to Help Save Your Sanity When Raising Kids with Prenatal Exposure
Is your grandchild (or other relative) showing signs of exposure to drugs or alcohol during pregnancy? Are their homework and school projects disorganized and always late? Do they need directions repeated frequently and slowly? Are their emotions and physical activity...
5 Practical Tips to Help a Child Learn Organizational Skills
A child who had prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol or struggles with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often struggles to get and stay organized. You probably feel like there is too much chaos getting them out the door to school every morning. That...
Challenging Behaviors
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....
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...
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
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...
Do You Have a Strong Support Network?
Raising your nephew, cousin, or grandchild can be a fantastic opportunity to support your extended family. You are providing a safe landing place for this child while their parents get back on their feet. The child is experiencing the emotional and physical safety,...
7 Signs of Caregiver Burnout and What to Do About It
Are you helping or supporting your extended family? Are you raising a grandchild, niece, or family friend while the child's parents get help? If so, you might be at risk for caregiver burnout. Caring for a child with significant learning challenges, problematic...
Relationship with Child’s Parent
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Working Together For the Good of the Child In Your Care
Tips for Surviving Summer Break with Your Grandkids
School’s out for summer for most kids in this part of the country. You might have plans for a family trip, a staycation, or day trips to the local sites with your grandchildren. Those events are exciting to look forward to and create opportunities for memory-making....
Making a Smooth Transition When You Welcome a Relative’s Child
Successfully welcoming a grandchild or other relative’s child to your home for kinship care requires some preparation and ongoing support. If you’re raising a relative’s child right now, or if you know a child is joining your home soon, these tips can help make that...
The 5 Be’s of Welcoming an Older Child to Your Home
When welcoming an older child to your home, it can be challenging to strike a balance. You don’t want to come on too strong and overwhelm them. You also don’t want to be too relaxed or laid back because you want them to feel welcome and safe. You can do several things...
Raising Adolescents (tweens/teens)
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Supporting Healthy Relationships/Attachment
Why Friendships Matter: Part 2 — A Practical Tipsheet
As a continuation of the previous article, this practical tipsheet offers simple, hands-on ways for children of all ages to practice friendship skills at home. These activities are especially helpful for kids who struggle with social cues, emotional regulation, or...
Why Friendships Matter – Part 1
Friendships are more than just fun — they help children learn essential skills that last a lifetime. Through friendships, children learn how to share, show kindness, understand other people’s feelings, solve problems together, and feel accepted and cared for. As a...
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...
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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.