Our whole family was getting ready to head out to our church last night for our annual New Year’s Eve celebration. The children all look forward to playing with their friends and talking without constantly being shushed. Each family that attends brings a snack food, a two-liter of soda, and their favorite game. We always purchase a few bottles of sparkle juice for the event because our children think it is a great treat. This year the children tried for days to talk me into letting them open a bottle of it early. Buck made plans to take his PS2 and have friends bring their games.... more

What does your family do when you are snowed in and can’t go anywhere? I am sure that the county has their plow and salt trucks out in force, but they haven’t made it out to the country roads yet. My mother lives within the city limits and they haven’t even plowed her street yet. Apparently, with all of the blowing and drifting going on, the county is having trouble keeping the main roads clear. This is only the second Sunday that I can remember our church canceling all services due to inclement weather. I didn’t even attempt to go anywhere today in my 15 passenger van,... more

I realize that Christmas day is getting way too close for the amount of shopping I have completed this year. I am also having difficulty wanting to choose individual gifts for some of my children whom I have had a difficult time with this year. One of my readers mentioned family gifts and Cindy Bodie did a blog on family gifts recently as well. Because over the years, we have parented nearly 100 children, we practically own every toy, book, and gadget known to modern children already. Not to... more

If you are an adoptive family who celebrates Christmas, do you use it as a behavior modifier? One of my friends has adopted a sibling group of three. While the children have been in this adoptive home for four years, they were actually adopted 10 months ago. She uses a credit and reward system similar to the one I use to modify unacceptable behavior. I have included the form and instructions that we use in some recent blogs, so you may be familiar with the system. Her system also involves losing presents, whether they are for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, or one of the various other... more

I have been thinking about creating a morning ritual for starting the day off right with my adopted children for quite a while now, but just haven’t done it. With older adopted special needs children you never quite know how they are going to act each day. Because we homeschool it is particularly important to me what their attitudes are like each day. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a special morning routine that sort of set things off on the right foot every morning? I knew a family that had adopted six children. Every morning she sat out on the porch with them talking quietly and... more

When I first retired from full time employment as a cost accountant, I wanted my household to be organized and efficient. We had accepted an infant as a foster care placement giving us four young boys at home at the time. I had also been licensed to provide daycare to unrelated children before retiring and was watching two toddlers full time. I was used to getting up at 5:30 every morning and continued to do so, for a few years. Everything I did, I did in a hurry including running up and down stairs.

There wasn’t an emergency, I was just trying to accomplish as much... more

If your children are anything like mine they probably want to spend every spare minute playing video games. My children think a day off from school, like a holiday, means video game free time from sun up until sun down. As parents, we sometimes have to curtail video game time to allow our children to participate in other activities as well. If you have adopted siblings that suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, like we have, then you know how difficult it can be to get them to transition to another activity. I also find it interesting how my children with attention deficit... more

Today is a joyous occasion for each family finalizing an adoption. It has been a long and emotional process to get to this point. Many of us feel a sense of relief upon dismounting the emotional rollercoaster of foster care adoption. Please let us remember that our children may also experience some sadness about being adopted today. Today’s adoption forever closes the door to their dream of returning home to live with birth family. While our children may not be able to express that dream verbally, if they have ever lived with their birth family, it is in their hearts.

The... more

Be realistic about what you can do for the holidays when you are parenting children new to your home and family. Stress can lead to depression and can ruin your holidays and hurt your health. Your children may not be ready for big holiday parties that include many extended family members. You probably have the desire to make the first holidays together perfect for your new sibling group. You may want to make up for everything they have missed. What they have missed, is having a family, now that they have that, they have the best gift of all.

Some traumatized children can’t... more

My friend shared her childhood dream with all of us. When she was a teenager, she would dream of people leaving babies on her doorstep. Quite often, when she awoke in the morning she would run to the front door and open it to check. Of course, no one ever left a baby on her doorstep; she didn’t live in a convent or an orphanage. Now she has six children between the ages of 20 and eight, two through the miracle of adoption. Recently, her sixteen-year-old daughter shared a dream with her. Mom, we need to go to an orphanage and take care of children. Of course,... more