Breakout Session 1 | Friday, 10:45 - 11:45 am
When Nothing Works: Troubleshooting Challenging Behaviors | Stacey Cales (Mak)
When traditional strategies fail, foster and adoptive parents are often left feeling stuck and discouraged. This session reframes challenging behaviors as signals of unmet attachment needs rather than defiance. Caregivers will learn how to identify what drives behavior, choose responses that promote regulation, and interrupt power struggles while strengthening connection.
An Adoptee's Perspective on Building Resilient, Whole Families | Leah Sutterlin
Join an adult adoptee to explore how adoptive families can help adopted children move past trauma into true wholeness. We’ll unpack how to support your adopted children, talk about adoption openly, cultivate mutual understanding, and build relational resilience. You will leave equipped with practical, grace-filled strategies to foster emotional healing and anchor your family in unconditional love and safety.
Confessions of a Reformed Yeller | Kayla Moffitt
Caring for children from hard places can leave even the strongest of parents feeling frustrated and reactive. Join Kayla as she shares why we lose our cool, how reactivity shapes the atmosphere of our homes, and practical ways to break the cycle of yelling. Come find grace, laughter, and the reassurance that you're not alone in this struggle.
From Guilt & Second-Guessing to Confident, Present Parenting | Anna Bernacki
Adoptive parents often carry guilt, pressure, and constant second-guessing. This workshop offers a compassionate roadmap forward, helping parents move from overwhelm to confident, present parenting. Through honest stories and practical, bite-sized tools, Anna Bernacki equips parents to release perfectionism, strengthen connection, repair mistakes, and rediscover hope in the small moments that build safety, trust, and healing in their families.
I’m So Tired I Can’t Even: Sleep, Trauma, and Hope for Weary Parents | Meredith Shuman
As parents of kids from hard places, the sleep in our households is at best, interrupted, and at worst, shredded. Using Psalms to ground us, we’ll learn the deep truths of what science has to teach us about getting more zzz’s and more quality zzz’s.
The Enneagram and Relationship | Suzanne & Joe Stabile
Details Coming Soon
When Connection Feels Hard: Navigating Caregiver Burnout | Lyssa Stoyko
We all know connection is important but sometimes it feels so hard. Not just because of our children, but because of what is going on inside of us. Learning to ask, “What’s going on in me?” enables us to care for and regulate ourselves so that we can offer the connection our children, and we, so dearly need.
Breakout Session 2 | Friday, 1:00 - 2:00 pm
Featured Breakout 2: Oops, I Did It Again: Parenting Through Triggers | Meredith Shuman
We're not that innocent, but many times the trauma that unfolds around us is...just...hard. Let's talk about the power of Psalm 13 PLUS our modern understanding of triggers. We'll unpack the importance of knowing ourselves, leaning into community, and leaning into the Lord when our kids' challenges activate our fear response.
Beyond the Crisis: Seeing the Mom Behind the Story | Krysten Cline
The story of foster care is often told through the lens of children in need, but behind every child at risk is a mother in crisis whose story is often unseen or misunderstood. “Beyond the Crisis” explores these stories and what draws families into child welfare systems, equipping participants with tools to engage mothers in crisis with redemptive, relationship-centered support.
Calling All Dads: A Panel Just for You | Derek Carter, Eric Fridge, Justin Myers
This session is designed specifically for foster and adoptive fathers - We see you! You’ll have the opportunity to connect with other fathers who understand your unique journey and gain insights on building strong, nurturing relationships with your children. Whether you’re new to foster care or adoption or have been on this path for years, this session offers a valuable space to learn, connect, and grow.
Compassion that Connects: Grace for the Teen Years | Susan TeBos & Joanna Teigen
This session invites you to join two seasoned adoptive moms as we explore how many teenagers process their stories, loss, and identity--in their own words--and how parents can respond in ways that build connection and healing. With the help of The Reflection Prayer-a powerful, daily tool to seek God's care and wisdom-we will learn how compassion wins so our kids feel seen, soothed, safe and secure.
Stopping the Spiral: Helping Kids Before Behaviors Become Crisis | Richard Graves
This workshop equips caregivers to recognize early warning signs before youth progress into repeated school discipline, alternative school placement, DCFS involvement, behavioral instability, or juvenile justice contact. Grounded in practical experience, it offers trauma-informed, honest, and actionable strategies to help caregivers respond effectively, promote accountability, and interrupt pathways that can lead to deeper family and system crises.
Trauma and Sensory Processing: Practical OT Tools for Everyday Parenting | Cheryl Hunt
Trauma, including physical, emotional, prenatal, and early-life stress, can disrupt brain development. This affects emotional regulation, sensory processing, attention, and learning. When the nervous system remains stuck in fight, flight, or freeze, healthy development is interrupted. Discover foundational reflexes and movement patterns that help regulate the nervous system, foster connection, and support growth, resilience, and a greater sense of felt safety at any age.
Trying Differently Rather Than Harder: Practical Support for Kids Impacted by Prenatal Alcohol Exposure | Sandra Flach
Trauma and prenatal exposure to alcohol impacts brain development. Often, these children present with challenging behaviors which are actually symptoms of how their brain works differently. In this workshop we will strategize ways to support and accommodate individuals with brain differences using the FASCETS Neurobehavioral Model. Together, using the Accommodations Grid, we will explore real life scenarios and how symptoms can block a child's success and how, by using accommodations, we can support the child so they can learn and succeed.
Breakout Session 3 | Friday, 2:15 - 3:15 pm
Featured Breakout 3: Discipline Through Relationship: Correcting Without Losing Connection | Justin Myers
This presentation reframes discipline as a relational process rather than behavior control. It shows how escalation often backfires, especially with children impacted by trauma, and introduces the framework “regulate, relate, reason.” By prioritizing connection and safety, parents can build long-term skills, foster emotional regulation, and guide children toward growth, rather than simply stopping behavior in the moment.
Becoming a Church for Every Family: Welcoming Foster, Adoptive, and Kinship Families | Kerry Rhodes
Every child and family should feel like they belong at church, but too often trauma-based behaviors get in the way. Children and families feel rejected, and volunteers burn out.
Educational Options for our Children: Finding the Best Fit | Will & CarrieAnn Standfest
Choosing the right education path for your foster or adopted child can feel overwhelming. Public school, private school, or homeschool—what truly fits their needs? This interactive session explores the strengths and challenges of each option, then walks through special education supports like IEPs and 504 plans to help families advocate for the right educational support.
Helping Kids Process Grief and Their Story: What Helps, What Hurts | Tamara Bolthouse
Adults may unintentionally complicate childhood grief through minimizing, comparing, distracting, or rushing a child's recovery. While healing takes time, time alone does not heal. This workshop examines common but unhelpful, even toxic, adult responses, addresses grief myths, and equips caregivers with practical language and managing expectations to offer a healthy recovery for childhood grief.
Flip The Script Panel: What I Wish You Knew | Janelle Basham and Anna Bernacki
Join two birth parents, two adoptees, and a former foster youth for a powerful conversation about identity, loss, belonging, connection, and healing. Through their personal stories, you’ll gain fresh perspective on the realities children and families often carry beneath the surface. You’ll leave with greater empathy, practical insight, and a deeper understanding of how to create safety, connection, and hope in your home. Come ready to ask questions. Come ready to listen. Come ready to leave with a perspective shift.
When Coping Becomes Risk: Understanding Youth Substance Use and How Caregivers Can Respond | Richard Graves
This workshop equips caregivers to recognize early signs of youth substance use, with special focus on cannabis and alcohol prevention. It addresses how vapes, cannabis-infused drinks, and edibles are often packaged and marketed in ways that appeal to youth. Caregivers will gain practical, trauma-informed strategies to identify risk, respond effectively, and intervene before experimentation becomes a larger problem.
“Why Is This So Hard?” Understanding How Early Trauma Rewires Parenting | Stacey Cales (Mak)
Foster and adoptive parents often feel overwhelmed despite doing everything “right.” This session explores how early trauma impacts not only children, but the parenting experience itself. Using an attachment-centered lens, participants will gain insight into why strategies fail, why parenting feels personal, and how to respond with greater regulation, confidence, and compassion.
Breakout Session 4 | Saturday, 8:00 - 8:50 am
Fewer Heroes, More Helpers - Building a Support Team for Adoptive/Foster Families | Eric & Jenny Fridge
Too many adoptive and foster families carry the weight of caring for children from hard places alone. This interactive session explores how to shift families from isolated struggle into thriving community support. You'll discover best practices for building wrap-around networks: peer support groups, church teams, volunteers, and professionals. Walk away learning how to recruit, train, and coordinate helpers who truly lift the load and nurture healing for everyone involved.
Parenting From a Distance | Anna Bernacki
Parenting a child with severe mental illness who cannot safely live at home is one of the most isolating journeys a family can face. This workshop offers honest insight, practical tools, and compassionate support for parents navigating residential treatment, helping families maintain connection, advocate well, and care for both the child in treatment and the family still at home.
Soul Care for Foster & Adoptive Parents | Sandra Flach
Parenting children with trauma and prenatal exposure to alcohol can be a very difficult and isolating journey. Parents and caregivers need more than just self care to stay the course—we need soul care. In this workshop, Sandra Flach will share encouragement from personal experience and Scriptures along with practical applications to guide parents and caregivers to experience daily peace and joy for the journey.
Space and Grace for the Hard | Lyssa Stoyko
Parenting is hard. That’s ok to acknowledge! But sometimes we sit in the hard for so long that we forget God’s grace in it. During this workshop, we will make space for the hard, while also leaning into the grace God provides. This workshop includes small group sharing and personal reflection as well as the large group teaching.
The Impact of Foster Care and Adoption on Biological Siblings | Emily Lawson
When one child experiences trauma, siblings often carry unseen burdens of their own. This session explores the grief, confusion, resentment, guilt, and hypervigilance that can develop in foster and adoptive families, equipping caregivers to recognize these hidden struggles and better support siblings affected by secondary trauma.
When Faith Feels Like a Fight: Jacob, Our Kids, and Us | Meredith Shuman
The story in Genesis of Jacob wrestling with God is famous for so many reasons, but we'll dig into the truths it has for families like ours. What's this wrestling about when it comes to the trauma our families have faced? Why has God called us to this kind of fight? Will I walk away with a "limp?" With a blessing?
Breakout Session 5 | Saturday, 10:45-11:45 am
Featured Breakout 4: Making Sense of Your Worth | Cindy Lee
This session is designed to help people experience positive self-worth and secure attachment in relationships. Self-worth is a strong foundational component of who we are as humans and how we show up in the world. Our belief in our own value (or lack thereof) has huge implications in our personal and professional lives. Without awareness, our self-worth affects our behaviors, our relationships, our boundaries, our aspirations, our ability to lead, and, for some of us, our healing.
Birth Family Relationships Through the Seasons | Leah Outten
From a birth mother who has lived in open adoption for over 22 years, this workshop explores how adoption relationships develop and transform across the lifespan—from early childhood through adolescence and into adulthood. Participants will gain insight into the emotional and developmental needs that emerge during different stages, learn practical strategies for nurturing healthy relationships, and discover ways to support their child's evolving understanding of their adoption story and birth family connections.
Brave Conversations About Race | Panel
A courageous space for foster, adoptive, and kinship families to explore race, identity, and cultural humility. This session invites honest dialogue, deep reflection, and practical tools for navigating transracial families. Leave encouraged and better equipped to raise children who feel seen, celebrated, and deeply known - rooted in the kind of belonging every home team is meant to provide.
Helping Schools Support Your Child’s Story | Laura Adams
Adoptive, foster, and kinship families often find that schools are not prepared to understand the grief, loss, and attachment disruptions that affect learning and behavior. In this session, parents and caregivers learn to build effective partnerships with schools, offering practical strategies to communicate needs, navigate supports, and create environments where children experience connection, belonging, and success.
Hope For the Future-Raising Teens Impacted by Trauma & Prenatal Substance Exposure | Sandra Flach
This workshop will help foster and adoptive parents better understand the lasting impacts of trauma and FASD, particularly as children move toward adolescence and young adulthood. Together, we’ll explore practical, hope-filled strategies for preparing teens for the future while balancing independence, support, and realistic expectations. Participants will also be encouraged to rest in God’s faithfulness - remembering that while we are called to steward and prepare, God is ultimately in control.
The Value of Writing Your Story | Jillana Goble
Our stories make up our lives. For those who have ever thought "I would like to write my story" but then feel stuck with the realistic considerations of time, privacy, and understanding the difference between self publishing and traditional publishing, this workshop is for you.
United Under Pressure: Protecting Your Marriage in Trauma Parenting | Will & CarrieAnn Standfest
Parenting children with trauma can put real strain on a marriage. Stress, exhaustion, and different parenting styles can slowly create distance. In this practical workshop, couples will learn simple tools to stay united, communicate well, and protect their relationship in hard seasons.
In Chicago
Be a part of our live audience at The Compass Church in Naperville, IL with teaching, worship, breakouts, pampering, connection, and more!