Family Relationships

Family Relationships

Encouraging Resilience

More Research Shows that Our Presence Matters in Our Kids' Lives

Strong Commitments and Healthy Boundaries

Why and How to Account for Trauma When Setting Boundaries for Our Kids

Strong Commitments and Healthy Boundaries

Three Valuable Lessons We Can Learn about Foster and Step-Parenting from Epic Stories

Strong Commitments and Healthy Boundaries

Seven Principles for Protecting Our Commitments with Strong Boundaries

Strong Commitments and Healthy Boundaries

Why Committing to Our Foster and Stepchildren is More Important Than Loving Them

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

Six Important Lessons We Can Learn from Fairy Tales

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Four Important Principles for Balancing Our Priorities

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Why Our Kids Need Us to Make Our Marriages a High Priority

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Why Core Values and Self Care Should Be Our Top Priorities

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Why It's Best for Our Kids to Make Them Our Last Priority

Building Relationships

Why We Have to Repeat Ourselves and How to Be More Effective

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

How We Can Become the Mentor in Our Children’s Stories

Building Relationships

How We Should Respond as Our Kids Deal with the Loss of Their Families

Building Relationships

How We Will See Our Kids Processing Their Loss

Our Foster and Step Families Begin with Deep Loss

Building Relationships

6 Important Tips When Our Kids Make Bad Decisions

Building Relationships

4 Important Principles for Treating Our Kids The Same

Building Relationships

5 Principles for Knowing What It Means to Treat All Our Kids the Same

Building Relationships

What to Do When You Don't Like Your Foster or Stepchildren

Building Relationships

Building Healthy Relationships by Giving Kids Space

Building Relationships

How Stepparents Can Find Their Lanes

Building Relationships

Five Tips for Learning to Appreciate Our Imperfect Spouses

Building Relationships

Navigating Healthy Boundaries with Biological Parents

Building Relationships

Areas of Agreement Essential to Keeping Your Marriage Strong

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Four Important Reasons You Need to Prioritize Your Marriage

Encouraging Resilience

More Evidence That We Matter in Our Children’s Lives

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

How Foster and Stepparents Can Set Important Boundaries with Kids

Building Relationships

How to Make Family Suppers Part of Your Parenting Toolkit

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

5 Reasons Why and How Parents Can Learn Self-Compassion

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Five Reasons Foster and Stepparents Need Self Care

Building Relationships

Ten Ways to Teach Our Kids the Art of Respectful Disagreement

Mental Health Challenges

How to Help When Your Child Acts Like a Bully

Building Relationships

Three Reasons Why and Six Ways How to Pick Your Parenting Battles

Building Relationships

Why Our Children Need Nurture More Than Structure and How to Provide It

Encouraging Resilience

Seven Reasons to Help Children Master Small Tasks

Building Relationships

Our House Rules Need to Focus on What Matters

Encouraging Resilience

Why and How We Should Quit Taking Responsibility for Our Kids’ Happiness

Encouraging Resilience

12 Great Principles for Encouraging Problem Solving Skills in Children with Trauma

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

How to Be The Person Who's Not Supposed to Be In Our Kids' Lives

Seven Important Principles for Enjoyable Blended Family Vacations

Building Relationships

Four Important Principles for Letting Our Kids Bounce Off Us

Building Relationships

What It Means to Let Our Kids Bounce Off Us and Why It's Important

Building Relationships

How To Keep a Good Relationship with Adult Children Still Living at Home

Building Relationships

The Power of Hanging Out With Our Kids

Building Relationships

Four Ways to Encourage Step-Sibling Relationships

Building Relationships

Why and How to Have Difficult Conversations With Our Children

Building Relationships

The Best Reason To Keep Trying With Our Kids

Building Relationships

How the 80/20 Rule Can Strengthen Your Family Relationships

Building Relationships

Our Teens’ Brains May Be Hard-Wired to Ignore Us

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

Four Ways to Be the Mentor, Not the Villain, in our Children's Stories

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

Figuring Out Where We Fit In Our Children's Stories

Encouraging Resilience

How to Empower Our Children to Create Their Own Happiness

Building Relationships

How to Accept that We Cannot Control Our Children's Decisions

Take Time to Enjoy the Opportunities We Have With Our Children

Building Relationships

Five Things Theater and Movies Can Teach Us about Dealing with Family Drama

Three Important Things to Remember About Christmas Presents for Your Child's Biological Parents

Why and How to Help Your Kids Stay in Touch with Biological Family During the Holidays

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

Why and How to Help Our Kids Deal With the Unavoidable Loss in Adoption

Seven More Ways to Manage Holiday Stress

Seven Ways to Help Manage Stress Over the Holidays

Building Relationships

Supportive Parenting Styles Correlate with Warm Relationships with Adult Children

Why and How We Need to Manage Our Expectations for the Holidays

Encouraging Resilience

More Research about Family Traits that Help Foster Resilience

How to Parent Children From Different Faith Traditions

Encouraging Resilience

Four More Ways to Help Children Struggling with School

Building Relationships

Good Ways to Help a Child Struggling With School

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Five Things to Remember When You Can't Do It All

Strong Commitments and Healthy Boundaries

How to Let Our Kids Know We See Them Clearly and Love Them Unconditionally (part 1)

Effects of Childhood Trauma

Why It's Easy to Repeat the Cycle of Trauma and How to Stop

Encouraging Resilience

How to Encourage Resilience Through Emotional Support

Building Relationships

How and Why Fathers are Important to Our Kids

Building Relationships

A Common Reason Why Your Kids May Reject You

Encouraging Resilience

Lowering Our Expectations May Be the Best Way to Lower Our Kids’ Stress

Working with Biological Family

Why and How To Keep Our Kids Connected to Their Biological Parents

Power of Plan B Parenting

Embrace the Power of Being Our Child's Plan B

Building Relationships

Three Principles for Helping Children You Don't Understand

Encouraging Resilience

How to Help Our Children Change Bad Habits

Building Relationships

Four Ways to Limit Parenting Stress

Building Relationships

We Need to Be Careful What We Label Child Abuse

Encouraging Resilience

How We Can Start With a Clean Slate, Or At Least Come Close

Lessons About the Holidays I Learned At Walt Disney World

How to Help Your New Family Adjust to the Holidays

We Need to Be Grateful for Our Kids, and Let Them Know

Honoring the Unique Challenges of Military Stepfamilies

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

It's Important to Our Kids When We Show Up

It's Never too Early to Start Planning for the Holidays

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

What It Means To Recognize Our Children Have Agency

Encouraging Resilience

How to Help When Your Child is Being Bullied

Building Relationships

How To Reduce Burnout By Letting Go of Decisions

Encouraging Resilience

Ways to Build Resilience in Young Adults

Setting and Protecting Your Priorities

Less-Than-Perfect Parenting Is Good For Our Kids

Encouraging Resilience

Building Resilience by Building Relationships

Finding and Enforcing Logical Consequences

Why I Look for Low-Maintenance Consequences for Children

Effects of Childhood Trauma

How to Help Our Children Untangle Their Emotions

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

How to Respond to "You Are Not My Parent!"

Encouraging Resilience

The Trap of Blaming Other People

Building Relationships

Don't Forget About the Quiet No-Problem Child

Building Relationships

Why It Is Important to Build a Family Team

Being the Person Who Is Not Supposed to Be There

Knowing that Someone Somewhere Cares About You

Building Relationships

Maybe Your Problem Child is a Gifted Child