Navigating Sticky Birth Parent Situations
Creating a Family: Talk about Adoption, Foster & Kinship Care
03/08/23
•50m
About
Comments
Transcript
Featured In
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
How do you handle a birth parent showing up to a meeting with the child stoned or drunk? What do you do when a birth parent often breaks promises to the child? Join us to talk about nine sticky situations that adoptive parents often find themselves in. Our guest is Lori Holden, the author of The Open-Hearted Way to Open Adoption: Helping Your Child Grow Up Whole.
In this episode, we cover:
- What do we mean by openness and why is openness or some form of a relationship considered best for adopted kids?
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #1: Birth Parent Addiction to drugs or alcohol.
- How to handle things when a birth parent shows up for a meeting with a child high or stoned.
- How to set healthy boundaries with birth parents who are addicted? How to set these boundaries when you have an open adoption with a birth parent dealing with addiction?
- Explaining drug addiction of birth parents to children.
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #2: Failing to show up for meetings/visits or showing up late?
- Determining the cause.
- How do you protect your child from disappointment?
- How to handle it if the parents are struggling with substance abuse disorder.
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #3: Making promises they can’t or won’t keep.
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #4: Should you maintain any type of relationship with a birth parent who abused or neglected the child?
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #5: How should parents deal with the obvious difference between openness in multiple adoptions within the same family?
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #6: DNA testing. If the birth parents have not told others about the child, what obligation do you have to their desires regarding DNA testing on the child? What if there are medical reasons for doing the testing?
- Difficult/Sticky Situation # 7: When the adoptive parent is the problem. Over-reacting, assuming the worst intentions, etc.
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #8: Birth family doesn’t want contact.
- Difficult/Sticky Situation #9: Birth siblings being parented by the birth parents.
- Why should parents try to maintain relationships with the birth family in difficult situations?
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
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
Handling Screens and Technology as a Family
March 1, 2023
•56m
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
When should your child get a smartphone? What can you do if your child spends too much time playing video games? How can we protect our kids from the downsides of social media? Join us to talk about parenting and technology with Krista Boan, co-founder of the nonprofit Screen Sanity.
In this episode, we cover:
Digital Health:
- Screen Sanity’s 5 Rules of Thumb.
- Ride, practice, drive” approach for device and app introduction.
- How to handle a foster, adoptive, or kinship placement of a child that has already gone down that slippery slope of too much screen time and tech. How do you establish reasonable boundaries?
- Is it still recommended that parents establish a "no expectation of privacy" policy for online activity? At what age/stage should that start to change?
- How to handle when your family has vastly different rules from your child’s friend’s families when you don’t want your child to feel left out?
Screentime:
- What is a reasonable rule of thumb for how much screen time a child should be allowed by age?
- What is considered screen time?
- School work?
- Facetime with family or friends?
- Drawing or coding games?
- Social media?
- How do we handle cell phones and tablets when we see more negative behavior from any usage?
Smartphones:
- At what age should a child be given a smartphone? What questions should you ask before you give a child a smartphone?
- What are the alternatives to a smartphone? What are good starter phones?
Video Games:
- How to manage the addictive nature of video games?
- How to strike the balance between limiting the time of video games when this is where many kids socialize.
- Screen Sanity’s Video Game Decision Tree
Social Media:
- What are the pitfalls, and how can we protect our kids?
- When should kids be allowed to be on social media?
- How can parents keep up with what their kids are doing on social media?
- The Social Media Playbook is a parent-child workbook for starting powerful conversations about social media. Families are prompted to dig deeper into the purpose of social media in their lives and question the false standards it places on its users.
Pornography:
- How do we protect our kids and youth from pornography?
- Good Pictures, Bad Pictures book
Screen Sanity has parent guides, training, webinars, and study groups.
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
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
Adopting or Fostering a Child Who Identifies as LGBTQ+
March 15, 2023
•48m
Drop us some Fan Mail. Thanks!
Have you wondered if you could be the right place for an LGBTQ+ youth or child to land? Join us to talk about how to be an affirming and supportive home for LGBTQ+ youth. Or guest will be Angela Weeks, the Director of the National SOGIE Center at the Institute for Innovation and Implementation. Under the Center, she directs the Center of Excellence for LGBTQ+ Behavioral Health Equity and the National Quality Improvement Center on Tailored Services, Placement Stability, and Permanency for LGBTQ2S Children and Youth in Foster Care.
In this episode, we cover:
- 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. Why?
- What does the research indicate about how sexual orientation and gender identity are formed?
- Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely to have a mental health diagnosis or behavioral issues.
- Are LGBTQ+ youth more likely than heterosexual or cisgender young people to sexually abuse or otherwise pose a threat to others, including children?
- How to help youth evaluate the safety of their communities, schools, social networks, and homes to decide whether to disclose their LGBTQ+ identity, when to do so, and to whom.
- Parents often think, especially with younger kids, that this is just a phase. And kids are coming out (acknowledging their sexual orientation/gender identity to themselves and others) at younger and younger ages. And there is some fluidity. So how’s a parent to know how to handle?
- Studies by the Family Acceptance Project have found that most people report being attracted to another person around age 10 and identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual by age 13 (on average). Most children have a stable sense of their gender identity by age 4
- Sexual orientation vs sexual behavior.
- How can parents create a welcoming and affirming home?
Additional Resources:
- Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth: A Guide for Foster Parents https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/lgbtqyouth.pdf
- Glossary of Terms (Human Rights Campaign)
- The National SOGIE Center. The National Center for Youth with Diverse Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, & Expression provides a centralized site for accessing resources on providing culturally responsive care to children, youth, and young adults with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression (SOGIE) and their families across systems, including child welfare, juvenile justice, mental health (including school mental health), substance use systems, and housing and homelessness. https://www.sogiecenter.org/
- Family Acceptance Project® LGBTQ Youth & Family Resources To Decrease Mental Health Risks & Promote Well-Being https://lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org/
- Learning About Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity & Expression (SOGIE) (Video)
- A Guide for Understanding, Supporting, and Affirming LGBTQI2-S Children, Youth, and Families
- Support for LGBTQ Youth Starts at Home (Video)
- Be True and Be You: A Basic Guide for LGBTQ+ Youth
- Sharing Our Lived Experiences: 22 Tips for Caring for Two-Spirit and Native LGBTQ Youth in the Child Welfare System
This podcas
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
If you like this episode you’ll love
Promoted