News & Library

I  touched on this a little bit already but want to emphasize this particular point: you need to be flexible when you’re a foster parent. This is always true at the initial placement, but this need for flexibility WILL, most likely, run the entire course of the case....

You guys…I realized that I need to pause in the middle of the series about “What I Wish I Knew” to share a little bit about what’s been going on in our lives and encourage those of you who may be struggling with the idea of letting a kid from hard places attend a...

I’m going to hit you with a quote from a foster parent parent right out of the gate this time: “Accepting help doesn’t mean that you can’t do this.”  You guys…I’ve said this before and I will say it again. You cannot be a foster parent in a silo.  Well to be fair…you...

It will surely come as no surprise that when you become a foster parent, your time ends up being split even more than ever. And so, you have to be careful in guarding your own time and the time of your family; to assist with that, you’ll need to set (or learn to set)...

For Part 3 of “What I Wish I’d Known” is one foster parent’s statement: Don’t have high expectations in the areas of DCS parental standards, biological parents’ behaviors, visit supervisors/transporters communication...ever! Keeping low expectations in these areas...

Every single person who has been a licensed foster parent has expectations of some sort. It might be the expectation of a placement being adopted, or the expectation of fostering teens, or taking sibling groups, or being “habitual foster parents” (meaning you have a...

I wanted to take the next few weeks and do a short little series of posts called “From the Trenches: What I Wish I’d Known”. To garner my information, I surveyed a pool of foster parents and asked them what things they wish they would have known prior to fostering....

In honor of National Foster Care Month and a year when vacations can actually happen, I thought revisiting “Vacations with Your Foster Child” was appropriate. One thing I want to clarify before I launch in: when you have a kiddo from foster care, they will have...

Mother’s Day. It gets me every year … since our son came to live with us. I wish I could say it gets easier; but, honestly the opposite is true. I think about his birth mom more on Mother’s Day than any other time. I try to put myself in her shoes and imagine what...

So, some of you may still be reeling at the thought of giving the biological family your contact information once the child has been reunified. And if that’s you, you may want to sit down for this post. For part two of my blog about exceeding expectations with...