Foster & Adoptive Parenting
Get help parenting through adoption and fostering with our adoptee centered and trauma informed resources and tools to facilitate healing in your home.
Use and share our free downloads below of adoptee centered and trauma informed parenting tools, many of which are excerpts from the My Story Book.
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Calm Down Strategies
Print and post this chart to help teach your child calm down strategies. Practice these strategies when feelings begin to overwhelm your child.
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Family Garden
With this family tree alternative, children can include people who are family or friends, to honor all the people who are important to their lives, with no hierarchy.
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Emotions Chart
Before your child has the language or ability to explain their feelings, they can point to these emotion faces to help them name their feelings and build skills to coping with them.
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Daily Routine Chart
Predictability is important for kids from trauma. Create this colorful picture chart together to help kids manage expectations about your daily rhythm.
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Coloring Pages
Research shows that coloring engages the amygdala in the brain to bring calming effects. Download these free hand drawn coloring sheets for the whole family to enjoy.
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Kids Reading List
Reading together builds connection and opens conversation about hard topics. This list includes books about adoption, foster care, trauma, and racial identity.
Help Your Child with Big Feelings
When a child experiences trauma, they struggle with big feelings and sensory processing can become an issue. Add these helpful items to your home for both emotional and sensory processing.
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Weighted Blanket
Weighted blankets can help bring comfort and a sense of safety at bedtime. The attached article highlights some good options.
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Sensory Bed Sheets
If a weighted blanket feels too heavy or hot for your child, these sensory sheets give the same feeling of being held and safe as they go to sleep.
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Sensory Swing
Sensory swings can help kids feel safe and comforted any time of day, like rocking a baby. The attached article highlights some good options.
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Fidget Tools and Items
Fidget toys help with stress and big feelings. This set even comes with a bin., as clutter can be a stress trigger to kids from trauma.
Find support 24/7, call 988 for the US Suicide and Crisis Hotline.
Research shows that adoptees are 4 times more likely to attempt suicide than non-adoptees. 988lifeline.org shares how loved ones can support youth who show suicidal symptoms.
Considered this before adopting outside your race.
Check out these resources to learn what you must consider before you decide, from those who know better than anyone — adult adoptees who were adopted outside their race. “Every adoptive parent must be willing to accept the responsibility of the magnitude of adopting outside their race, as far as the lifelong impact on the child. They must do the work before adopting."
-Phoebe (adult adoptee from a transracial adoption)
Those who were adopted transracially shared their insight and experiences in a series of videos available on Facebook through the United States Foundation for Children of Haiti (USFCH). With permission from USFCH, the information from the first video has been compiled into this brief infographic guide.
Download it for free, and learn from the experts.
BE THE BRIDGE: Transracial Adoption Bundle
“Although no one can fully prepare for parenthood, biological or adoptive, cross-race parenting presents additional challenges and considerations. Unfortunately, many white parents enter transracial adoption ill-equipped to deal with the racial realities their child will face.”
Learn More about Adoption, Fostering, and Trauma
Scientific research now proves that early trauma impacts both body and brain. Learning more about trauma can unlock healing and understanding of how you’ve been changed by your life experience.
Children's Books Written By Adoptees
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Always Forever
All kids need to know that someone loves them no matter where they go in life. Writer (and adoptee) Stephanie Ellison knows this from her own life because she had hard parts in her life story.
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TBRI® Children’s Books
Cindy R. Lee (Executive Director of The HALO Project ) wrote these children’s books based on TBRI® Life Values. These books allow parents to have a tool for implementing TBRI© strategies in their homes, with their children.
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Little Branch Gets Adopted
Let Little Branch Gets Adopted be part of your everyday routine. As Little Branch talks about his feelings, it can introduce conversations about adoption and emotions.
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Forever Fingerprints
Forever Fingerprints is written for kids aged 5-11 to help children who are adopted or in foster care. The book includes 'Parent Tools and Activities' to explore issues such as belonging, and connection.
