Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care

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Are you a transracial adoptive or foster parent? Have you wondered how you can help your child form a healthy racial identity. Does racial identity formation change depending on the race of the child? Today we talk about all this and more with Dr. Gina Miranda Samuels, a professor at the University of Chicago and Director of the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. She is a transracial adoptee and co-author of the book Multiracial Cultural Attunement.

In this episode, we cover:

• How do children in the US come to understand race at different ages and developmental stages?
• How early do children develop a racial bias? How early do children associate certain characteristics to race and show a preference towards a person of a certain race? 
• How does transracial adoption or fostering or kinship care impact a child’s understanding of race?
• How does transracial or transcultural adoption or fostering or kinship care impact children? 
  • Racial identity formation: How does being adopted transracially impact the adoptee’s racial identity formation?
  • Coping with racism
• In your research and in your experience, do you see a difference in the experience of race is perceived by both transracial adoptees or adoptive or foster parents depending on the race of the child? Asian, Latinx, Black, Bi-racial?
• Why is taking the colorblind approach to parenting not helpful? 
• “It’s About More Than Hair”
• Transracial parenting requires the family to be fluent in “race talk” – socialization is not a conversation, it is a daily, incremental, and developmental family process.
• As our kids age, what is it like for our tweens, teens, and young adults to have parents of a different race?
• How does transracial adoption or fostering impact siblings in the family who are the same race as the parents?
• How does transracial adoption or fostering affect extended family members, such as grandparents and aunts and uncles?
• Practical tips for parents raising a child of a different race or ethnicity.

Additional Resources:

• Diverse Book Finder
• The Brown Bookshelf – highlights Black voices writing for young readers.
• The Conscious Kid 
• Multiracial Cultural Attunement by Gina Miranda Samuels and Kelly Faye Jackson, 2019
• Tips for parenting your transracially adopted child by Dr. Gina Samuels 
• EmbraceRace was founded to create the community and gather the resources they needed (need!) to meet the challenges faced by those raising children in a world where race matters.
• Dr. Erin Winkler, Children Are Not Colorblind: How Young Children Learn Race
• Hamilton ER, Samek DR, Keyes M, McGue MK, Iacono WG. Identity Development in a Transracial Environment: Racial/Ethnic Minority Adoptees in Minnesota. Adopt Q. 2015;18(3):217-233. doi: 10.1080/10926755.2015.1013593. PMID: 26300622; PMCID: PMC4540225.  

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podca

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

What are the common health issues foster parents and those adopting from foster care should expect? We talk with Christy Street, Program Director of Fostering Health NC, which is a program of North Carolina Pediatric Society.

In this episode, we cover:

• Term “health” broadly to encompass physical, emotional, mental, behavioral, developmental, educational, and oral health.
• Impact of trauma on kids physical and mental health.
• Those areas of the brain most affected by trauma, especially early trauma, are those involved in stress response, emotional regulation, attention, cognition, executive function, and memory. 
• An issue with foster care parenting is limited access to health care before entering foster care and lack of knowledge about previous health care. How does this impact care and what can foster or adoptive parents do?
• The role of transience and uncertainty for kids in foster care provides challenges for foster parents and doctors in providing health care to kids in foster care.
• Immunizations
• Medicaid Care management
• Foster kids often come to us with a bag full of medications that have been prescribed somewhere along the line and a host of diagnoses. What role can foster or soon to be adoptive parents play?  
• What are psychotropic drugs and why are so many foster children on them?
• What can foster parents do if they question the amount or type of medication their foster child is taking or even the underlying diagnosis? 
• What role does a foster parent have in seeking a change in medication for their foster child?
• What doctor do you take your foster child to? Your pediatrician? Their previous doctor, if they had one? The doctor that has prescribed the medication?
• Pre-natal exposure to alcohol and drugs: impact, diagnosis. 
• One of the most confusing aspects of caring for a child in foster care is identifying who has the authority to consent for health care on behalf of the child or adolescent. Varies by state (caseworker can tell you).
• Sleep issues with foster children. What causes sleep issues? What can foster parents or parents adopting from foster care do to help children in foster care sleep better?
• How common are weight issues in foster children? Why is obesity and being overweight an issue? What can foster parents or parents adopting from foster care do? 
• Dental care for foster children. How much and how soon?
• Coping with feelings of “why bother” when a foster child will return to the same chaotic household they came from.

Additional Resources

• Guide for Use and Monitoring of Psychotropic Medications in Children & Adolescents
• Tips to Help Your Child Sleep
• NCPeds.org - Fostering Health
• NCPeds.org - Library

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Are you thinking about using donor sperm, egg, or embryo or using a surrogate? We talk about the current trends in third party reproduction with Corey Burke, an embryologist and Tissue Bank Director at Cryos International Sperm & Egg Bank.

In this episode, we cover:

• What do we mean by third-party reproduction?
• What are some of the current trends in sperm donation? 
• What are some of the current trends in egg donation?
• What are some of the current trends in surrogacy?
• What are some of the current trends in embryo donation? 

 This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Is your child more challenging than most? Do typical parenting approaches not work? We talk about how to parent harder-to- parent kids with Dr. Ross Greene, the originator of the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions parenting model, a non-punitive, non-adversarial, trauma-informed model of care. Dr. Greene is a clinical psychologist, former Harvard professor, and the author The Explosive Child and Raising Human Beings.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why are some kids “harder to parent”?
• How does trauma impact a child’s behavior?
• How does innate temperament or genetics impact behavior?
• What is the collaborative partnership approach?
• 3 Steps to the Collaborative & Proactive approach are:
  • The Empathy step – involves gathering information so as to achieve the clearest understanding of the kid’s concern or perspective about a given unsolved problem.
  • The Define Adult Concern step involves the adult sharing their perspective.
  • The Invitation step involves having the adult and kid brainstorm solutions so as to arrive at a plan of action that is both realistic and mutually satisfactory…in other words, a solution that addresses both concerns and that both parties can actually do.
• “Kids do well if they can.” Kids are challenging because they’re lacking the skills not to be challenging. If they had the skills, they wouldn’t be challenging. That’s because – and here is perhaps the key theme of the model — Kids do well if they can. And because (here’s another key theme) Doing well is always preferable to not doing well (but only if a kid has the skills to do well in the first place).
• How would you apply this approach to work with kids who have experienced trauma?
• Is Collaborative partnership permissive parenting?
• Practical applications:
  • A child who struggles with transitions.
  • A child who won’t accept “no” and tantrums or argues.
  • A child who doesn’t handle change and can’t be flexible.
  • Tattling
  • A teen who disregards curfew or other house rules.
  • How to deal with aggressive behaviors towards pets, siblings, or parents?

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Have you ever thought about adopting a child from abroad? What does it take and what type of kids are available? To learn more, listen to our interview with Robin Sizemore, Executive Director of Hopscotch Adoptions, who has worked in the international adoption field for 27 years and Debbie Price, Executive Director of Children’s House International and who has worked in international adoption for 28 years.

In this episode, we cover:

• Outline of the typical international adoption process.
• What type of kids are available for international adoption?
• What is the youngest child available?
• Is it possible to get a young healthy child or baby?
• International adoption regulations.
• What governmental entities are involved in international adoption?
• How to decide on what country to adopt from? Will the country accept you? Does the country place children that you think your family is a good fit for?
• What are some of the country-specific requirements for adoptive parents?
• Can adoption agencies have different or more stringent requirements than the foreign or US government?
• What are the health risks for children adopted internationally?  What type of special needs do children have?
• What type of care do children have before adoption? Institutional vs foster care.
• How to find children abroad who are waiting for adoption? How to adopt a child on a waiting child website?
• How much information will you have on the health of the child when you receive a referral?
• How big of a risk is it that a country will close down to international adoption once you apply? How do you mitigate the risk of losing the money you invested? 
• What to look for in an international adoption agency?
• Pre-adoption education requirements.
• How much does international adoption cost?
• Are grants available?
• What is the Adoption Tax Credit and can it be used for an international adoption? 
• How long does it take to adopt internationally?
• Is it possible for single women, gays, lesbians, or other members of the LGBTQ+ community to adopt internationally?
• Importance of post-adoption reporting.
• How do internationally adopted children acquire US citizenship?

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

• Process
• Typical stresses adoptive parents feel
• Lack of sleep
• Not deserving to complain
• Feeling like a babysitter
• Not feeling love at first site
• Impact of infertility struggles on transitioning into parenthood
• Stresses with parenting a child with neonatal abstinence syndrome
• Stresses with open adoption

Older child adoption through foster care or international adoption:

• Process
• Typical stresses adoptive parents feel
• Unrealistic expectations of the child and of yourself
• Love at first site
• Feeling like a babysitter
• Language issues
• Cultural issues
• Parental attachment styles-How the way we were parented influences how we parent.
• Challenging behaviors
• Sibling issues

Change is stressful and adding a child to your family is a huge change regardless of how the child joins the family. What can newly adoptive parents do to prepare in advance and to cope in those first few months?

How has the idea of cocooning impacted stress?

• Doc McStuffins, "Baby McStuffins" (Season 3)
• Sesame Street, "Gina Adopts a Baby"
• Suggested Book List on Preparing Children for Adoption of a Sibling
• Suggested Book List on Explaining Adoption To Birth Siblings of Adopted Children
• Creating a Family resources on Disrupting Birth Order
• Creating a Family courses on Combining Kids by Birth and Adoption

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

What's IVF like for the male partner? We spend a lot of time talking about the experience of infertility treatment for the person going through treatment, but what about their partner? We talk with Keegan Prue, the author of "The IVF Dad." He and his wife Olivia went through two rounds of IVF and suffered two miscarriages before welcoming their daughter.

In this episode, we cover:

• Tell us your story to parenthood.
• The imagined role of the male partner: strong, supportive, and not needing support.
• Media messages about men that impact how they can respond to infertility: men take action to fix problems, showing emotion makes you weak, real men don’t ask for or need help, real men are virile, being a father is part of what makes you a man.
• What are some things that you learned that the male partner can do to improve the quality or quantity of sperm.
• What are some common emotions men or those supporting a person trying to get pregnant might feel when they start infertility treatment: anger; embarrassment; jealousy; fear that is won’t work; worry (over costs, impact of the treatment on their partner and their relationship), feeling less manly.
• How can the supporting partner take care of themselves during treatment? 
• The partner’s role in giving the shots. What are some common feelings they experience?
• Tips for staying connected with your partner through the stress of fertility treatment.
• Dealing with miscarriage yourself while supporting your partner.
• The role of infertility nurses. You wanted to nominate your infertility nurse for sainthood. What did she do that made the stressful experience of infertility and its treatment more bearable for you as the male partner.

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Do you think your child or your family would benefit from counseling? How do you find the right therapist and how can you tell in advance if they will be a good fit for your family? We talk with Debbie Riley, a Licensed Clinical Marriage and Family Therapist and CEO of the Center for Adoption Support and Education.

In this episode, we cover:

• What type of professional can provide therapy to an adopted or foster child or family?
• What’s the difference between being adoption competent and adoption informed?
• Why is competency in adoption or foster issues important?
• What do we mean be an “adoption competent therapist”? What makes a therapist adoption competent?
• Is adoption/foster competence the same as trauma competence?
• How can you tell if a therapist is competent to handle adoption or foster issues? Are there specific trainings that provide adoption competency?
• Creating a Family provides a list of ways to find an adoption competent therapist on our Adoption Therapy section.
• Is one type of therapeutic model of treatment more effective for adoptive children and families? Theraplay, Dyadic Developmental Psychotherapy, Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), Narrative therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), etc.
• Should therapy with adopted kids on adoption issues involve just the child, or the child and the parent?
• What is home-based therapy and are there advantages to this type of therapy for adoptive and foster families.
• How can you find a therapist that will provide therapy within the home? (One source is http://www.familycenteredtreatment.org/)
• Is therapy via tele-health or via teleconferencing as effective for adopted children? For families? How to know if it will work for your family? Ways to make it more effective.
• How can a parent determine if the therapist is a good fit for the child and family? What questions should they ask?
• How many sessions to try?
• When to seek a therapist?
• How to find a therapist with lived experience of being adopted?

Resources

• How to find an adoption competent therapist? 
• A Guide to Selecting an Adoption or Foster Therapist
• 10 Reasons for Parents to be in Child’s Therapy Session
• Beneath the Mask: Understanding Adopted Teens & Beneath the Mask: For Teen Adoptees: Teens and Young Adults Share Their Stories

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

Have you ever thought about becoming a foster parent? If so, this is the podcast for you! We talk with Arnie Eby, the Executive Director of the National Foster Parent Association and a foster parent for 22 years; and Angie Jones, a licensed clinical social worker and the Intensive Service Foster Care Recruiter and Trainer at Vista Del Mar, an agency placing foster children.

In this episode, we cover:

• What is the goal of the foster care system?
• How to become a foster parent?
• What are the typical requirements for becoming a foster parent? 
• What disqualifies you to become a foster parent?
• What type of pre-service training is involved?
• How long does it usually take to become a licensed foster parent?
• Who licenses foster parents?
• What types of questions should parents ask when deciding on which agency to work with?
• What are the different levels of licensing for foster homes? 
• Do foster parents get paid?
• Can you foster if you rent your home or apartment?
• Does one parent have to be at home if they want to have infants or young pre-school aged children placed with them?
• How much control do foster parents have on which child is placed with them?
• What is expected of foster parents when a child is placed with them?
• Can you travel with a foster child? Out of state? Out of the country?
• What is shared parenting or co-parenting?
• What type of support should foster parents expect from the agency they are licensed through?
• Is it possible to adopt your foster child? 
• How do you foster and adopt?
• How much control do foster parents have on visitation, medical treatment, mental health care, and reunification?
• How to cope with the grief when a foster child leaves?
• Where can foster parents turn for support?

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!

We talk today with Sarah Naish, the CEO of the Center of Excellence in Child Trauma and founder of the National Association of Therapeutic Parents. She is the author of "The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting" and "The A-Z of Survival Strategies for Therapeutic Parents." She is the adoptive mom to a sibling group of 5 who are now adults and she has fostered over 40 kids.

In this episode, we cover:

• Why are some kids harder to parent and why especially are kids who have experienced trauma, including prenatal trauma, often harder to parent?
• Understanding the cause of the behavior is the root of parenting harder to parent kids.
• Establish the basics to make their lives predictable so they can feel safe and grow and heal. The elements for establishing this base:
  • Routines
  • Establish yourself as a safe base-empathetic and nurturing but in control
    • Respond to the child, not to the child’s demand
• Be honest about their story, contact, etc. – be factual, but don’t fill in the gaps
• Establish strong, clear boundaries- what to do when these boundaries are crossed?
• Use natural or life consequences
  • Our kids may not recognize cause and effect.
    • Early trauma, including prenatal exposure, can hinder a child’s ability to recognize cause and effect
    • Our kids may be developmentally younger than their chronological years which also impacts understanding.
  • Natural consequences help children recognize that they can make an impact on the world-helps them make sense of the world
  • Combine natural consequences with nurturance.
• How to handle incidents when they happen. PARENTS model.
  • Pause-to allow you to respond with intention not emotion.
  • Assess-is anyone in danger or serious damage.
  • Reflection-quick reflection to identify the trigger.
  • Empathize rather than ask questions
    • use empathetic commentary-
    • respond to their feelings rather than the behavior.
  • Nurture-examples of nurturing in the heat of the moment.
  • Think about next action to take.
    • What strategies might I use to resolve this? Do you need to do anything else?
    • How can we avoid this situation in the future?
  • Self-care
• Other parenting strategies for harder to parent kids. Other tools for your toolkit.
  • Identify your triggers.
  • Set realistic expectations.
  • Use silliness or playfulness.
  • Remove the audience.
  • Help kids show they are sorry rather than demand they say they are sorry.
  • The phone strategy.
  • Watch what the child is doing rather than what she is saying.
  • Payback time.
  • Admit it when you made a mistake.

This podcast is produced  by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them. Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building

Please leave us a rating or review RateThisPodcast.com/creatingafamily

Support the show

Please leave us a rating or review.  This podcast is produced by www.CreatingaFamily.org. We are a national non-profit with the mission to strengthen and inspire adoptive, foster & kinship parents and the professionals who support them.

Creating a Family brings you the following trauma-informed, expert-based content:

• Weekly podcasts
• Weekly articles/blog posts
• Resource pages on all aspects of family building