How to Connect with Birth Mom with Mental Illness? - Weekend Wisdom
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
02/22/25
•11m
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Question: I've been listening to your podcast for a few years! Our 10-year-old kinship adopted daughter has lived with us since she was 2 months old. For a variety of reasons, there hasn't been any in-person visits or phone calls with her birth mom (my sister). Communication has been limited to holiday/birthday cards and gifts. My sister has schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. Because she has been stable on her medications and her behaviors are typically within a somewhat 'predictable' range, we're thinking it's time to begin an in-person relationship. We're planning on writing a letter to my sister to tell her our thoughts on all of this and establish some ground rules and boundaries. After she has some time to digest that letter, my wife and I plan to meet with her in person (without our daughter) to firm up plans, expectations, etc. My questions are:
- What are some generally good boundaries to set up?
- How can we help prepare my sister for potentially tough questions from our daughter? (My sister is in denial that anything is wrong with her.)
- How can we prepare our daughter for all of this?
- How can we do this in a way that doesn't feel like we're wagging our finger at my sister and being 'above her'?
Resources:
- Working with Birth Parents for the Child's Best Interest (Resource page)
- Evaluating Risk Factors in Adoption (Resource page)
- Finding an Adoption-Competent Therapist (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
Previous Episode
Courage & Resilience: A Foster Child's Story of Success
February 19, 2025
•52m
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How do some kids survive a life of poverty, homelessness, abuse, and foster care and eventually thrive? We talk about courage & resilience with David Ambroz who is a national poverty and child welfare expert and advocate and the author of the memoir, A Place Called Home. He was recognized by President Obama as an American Champion of Change. Currently serving as the Head of Community Engagement (West) for Amazon, Ambroz previously led Corporate Social Responsibility for Walt Disney Television, and has served as president of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission as well as a California Child Welfare Council member. After growing up homeless and then in foster care, he graduated from Vassar College and later earned his J.D. from UCLA School of Law. He is a foster dad and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Poverty and Homelessness:
- His story.
- School
- What made a difference?
- What should adults who encounter or work with homeless children/youth know?
- Foster Care:
- His story.
- Youth who identify as LGBTQ+ are overrepresented in foster care (Human Rights Campaign, 2015). While approximately 5 percent of the general population is estimated to be LGBTQ+, studies estimate that about 30 percent of youth in foster care identify as LGBTQ+. Why are these young people over represented in child welfare? LGBTQ+ youth are 1.5 -2 times more likely to have a foster placement failure.
- What would you want foster parents to know?
- What made the difference in your eventually succeeding? (Going to Vassar and UCLA Law School.)
- The lack of available treatments for mental illness.
- Why did you become a foster parent?
- Why did you title the book “A Place Called Home?”
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
Evaluating Risk Factors in Domestic Adoption
February 26, 2025
•64m
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Are you thinking about adopting a baby? Are you worried about what risk factors exist that you should know about? Join us to talk about these issues with Dr. Lindsay Terrell, a pediatrician at Duke University Medical Center and an Assistant Professor in their Department of Pediatrics. And James Fletcher Thompson, a South Carolina attorney with extensive experience in adoption.
In this episode, we discuss:
- Lack of prenatal care.
- What is covered in prenatal care and how might a lack of prenatal care impact a baby?
- Prematurity
- What causes a premature birth?
- Prenatal exposure
- Alcohol
- What are some red flags that a mom might have abused alcohol during her pregnancy?
- Does the degree of impact differ depending on when in the pregnancy alcohol was consumed?
- What are the long- and short-term impacts of alcohol consumption on a child exposed prenatally?
- Creating a Family’s Prenatal Substance Exposure Workshop for Parents
- Opioids
- List of opioid drugs in increasing degree of strength
- Codeine.
- Hydrocodone (Vicodin, Hycodan)
- Morphine (MS Contin, Kadian)
- Oxycodone (Oxycontin, Percoset)
- Hydromorphone (Dilaudid)
- Heroin
- Fentanyl (Duragesic)
- Methadone, Suboxone
- Does the degree of impact differ depending on when in the pregnancy the opioid was used?
- Does the degree of long-term impact differ depending on whether the baby was born dependent or with a diagnosis of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) or Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Syndrome (NOWS)?
- What are the long- and short-term impacts of opioid exposure on a child exposed prenatally?
- List of opioid drugs in increasing degree of strength
- Cocaine
- Marijuana
- Methamphetamine
- Polysubstance abuse
- Creating a Family has extensive resources to help parent a child exposed to opioids prenatally.
- Alcohol
- Sexually Transmitted Infections
- What are the common STIs?
- What are the risks of each of them to the unborn child or newly born child?
- Mental Health Issues
- What is the genetic connection for the following mental health disorders? How heritable are these mental illnesses?
- Anxiety disorders, including panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and phobias.
- Mood disorders: Depression, bipolar disorder
- Personality disorders (antisocial, borderline, narcissistic)
- Psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia
- ADHD
- What is the genetic connection for the following mental health disorders? How heritable are these mental illnesses?
- Legal Risk Factors
- What are the most common legal risk factors when adopting an infant through private adoption?
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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