Attachment-Informed Tools for Working with Kids
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
07/16/25
•66m
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Are you looking for practical strategies to build attachment with your child? Jeanette Yoffe, MA, MFT, is a psychotherapist specializing in adoption and foster care with over 20 years of experience treating children with complex trauma. Her new book, The Traumatized and At-Risk Youth Toolbox: Over 160 Attachment-Informed Interventions for Working with Kids and Families in Foster Care and Beyond offers specific strategies and tools parents and caregivers can build into their family rhythms to promote regulation and healing in their homes.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Overview of trauma’s impacts on the brain, on learning, regulation, and on the ability to trust.
- What does co-regulation look like between a caregiver and a child with a trauma history?
- What are some simple, everyday things caregivers can do at home to support a child’s self-regulation?
- What practical tools – activities or routines – will help us build emotional safety in our homes?
- Why is play such a powerful tool for connection and healing?
- Trauma often mimics ADHD or overlaps with it. How to help teachers understand what’s really going on.
- How can parents or relative caregivers support our kids for homework, without turning the evening into a power struggle?
- What kinds of professionals should we look for?
Resources:
- Working with Traumatized Children in the Classroom
- What is Adoption?
- What is Foster Care?
- What is Family Court?
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
Previous Episode
How to Normalize Adoption for the Child? - Weekend Wisdom
July 12, 2025
•12m
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Question: My wife and I adopted a newborn baby almost 3 years ago, and we could not be happier. Now that he is getting a little older, he is talking and starting to understand things. My question is, how can we best normalize his adoption with him? I know it is better for kids to grow up with everyone being open with him and his adoption so it feels like now is a good time to start. But I am not sure how to that with an almost 3-year-old. For context, we do not have any contact with the birth family. We send updates and pictures to the agency, but they have not expressed interest in having contact with us. This always seemed like an avenue to start that conversation (you have a birth family and an adoptive family). Without that, I’m not sure how start talking to him about this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Resources:
- Talking with Kids About Adoption (Resource page)
- Talking with Kids About Birthparents (Suggested Books)
- Adoptee Voices (Resource page)
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
Next Episode
How to Prepare Sibling for an Infant Adoption - Weekend Wisdom
July 19, 2025
•7m
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Question: My husband and I adopted our daughter in 2019, and she is now 5. As of a week ago, we were matched with a birth mother who is due in six weeks. We have explained the process to our daughter (we made a book about our life, and one day someone will pick us), but now that we’ve been chosen, what is the best way to approach this with my daughter? We have several of the books from your (wonderful) book list, but not many pertain to same sex parents who are bringing home an adopted sibling. How do we prepare our daughter for the possibility of having a sibling, while also being open and honest about the possibility that this baby might not be ours to take home?
Resources:
- Prepare Children for the Adoption of a Sibling (Suggested Books)
- Books for Transracially Adopted Kids (Suggested Books)
- Talking with Kids about Adoption (Resource page)
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
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