Carrie leads parents in discovering how to CARE for themselves, so they can continue care for others. Join her as she encourages you to look beyond activity-based self-care and see how the C.A.R.E method creates a personalized plan you can integrate into all areas of your life.What’s the best age to tell children they are adopted? How many details do I share? How do I respond to that rude comment? A family tree project? Let’s face it. Our children did not come with manuals on how to tell them, not to mention others, their stories. This breakout is full of ideas to bridge the communication gap.We all go through an identity crisis of some kind, but for children in foster care those questions and doubts are magnified. This class offers clear, practical ways to help kids in your home form a healthy self-image and navigate those rocky years of deciding who they are and who they’re becoming.Our kids need to learn how to responsibly own a phone and as parents we have a responsibility to protect them. This session explores how to manage the phones features and applications to help your kids learn responsibility while also maintaining child safety.Our kids are doing the best they can to meet their needs. Technology can easily become the tool they use to self-soothe, distract, or numb. This session focuses on helping our kids skillfully meet their needs rather than get stuck on technology.Navigating trauma in the classroom is complex. Knowing what our children need can be overwhelming. Learn from a mom of 9 children (7 with both special needs and trauma) who has been doing it effectively for many years. As a school counselor of 18 years, this mom’s insights and knowledge is invaluable. The children God brings us are incredible gifts, who come with their own unique diversity. Learning the diversity of our new children is a steep learning curve for us as adoptive/foster parents. But it’s crucial.How do we keep our children safe? Jenn, a trauma specialized therapist, invites you to have an honest, vulnerable, and compassion-filled conversation about self-harm. We will discuss self-harm behaviors and walk away with practical tools.This workshop will give an introduction and overview of the Enneagram model of personality. We will cover the 9 different Enneagram types, including the core needs of each type. Then, we will discuss how the Enneagram can help us better understand ourselves, our spouses, and our children.What is trauma and how does it impact our kiddos? We will spend time understanding trauma, its impact, and how the TBRI® strategies help us respond to behaviors and create an environment of connection and safety. We will dive deep into how to implement TBRI strategies to help promote healing in children who have experienced trauma.When your children turn into tweens and teens, connecting with them can feel like a journey into another world. They don’t respond like they used to and its easy to feel like a failure. Here we will take basic connection strategies & translate them for bigger kids. You’re not alone. This is hard stuff.Sometimes talk therapy isn’t enough or … your teen might refuse to go! So here you will find some simple lifestyle changes you can try at home. Using principles from TBRI & Integrative Medicine, this workshop will share practical strategies to help set up your bigger kids for success at home and in the community.Rest is often tough to find for those of us parenting kids from hard places. Whether you are looking for sleep strategies for your children, teens or yourself, this workshop will help you understand the impact of sleep (or the lack of it) while you discover some fresh ideas you may not have tried yet.Navigating our children’s birth parent relationships is challenging! How do we engage our children in healthy love and respect for their birth parents, while also being truthful and maintaining boundaries as necessary? How do we navigate our own emotions and fears? What if we don’t have any answers? We will dive into these questions and more in this session.Children affected by trauma are often resistant to our attempts to build trusting relationships. However, cooperative cooking is a language you can use to express care, provide support, challenge growth, share power, and expand possibilities – all developmental assets they need to grow strong, healthy, and resilient, communicated through the shared act of cooking and eating together.There is one vital thing caregivers can do to contribute to and maximize a child’s healing. For some families, this one thing comes easy, for others, it requires time and effort to master. In this session, Cindy provides the insight into this one thing, why you may or may not struggle providing it, and how to master it. Many children who have experienced harm exhibit a high need to be in control. In this session, Cindy provides the many reasons why this is happening and some strategies you can use to help your child with this issue. The greatest times of conflict in relationships often arise when one person’s history intersects with another person’s history. Parenting is no different. Some of the toughest moments in parenting occur when my child’s history and beliefs collide with my history, motivations, and expectations.Families with children with attachment issues have common struggles. Carrie has been coaching parents for over a decade, and has found many similar themes in these clients. This workshop will help you understand the RAD family dynamics, how it impacts each individual, couple, and other siblings.You have tried it all: Therapy, prayer, special education, respite, out of home placement. Nothing seems to help. You are all traumatized. What are your options? How do you make this decision? Can you ever heal? Carrie has been through it, and has worked with hundreds of families facing this decision. You are not alone.So often we’re focused on the significant needs of the children who join our families through foster care and adoption. We may hope the other children are doing well when they actually need our support more than ever. Listen in as Lisa Qualls interviews her young adult child about her experience of having four siblings join the family through adoption.
In order to support our kiddos well, we need to understand their experience. In this session, you will hear firsthand accounts from the voices of adopted and foster persons, as they take a deep dive into issues such as identity, grief and loss, and more. You will be both challenged and encouraged.For a child to understand his life story is fundamental to healthy development. This workshop will discuss ten principles in talking to children and youth about their past.Children currently in the foster/adoptive home are impacted by the decision their parents made to open their home. This workshop examines the major impacts and offers strategies to assist families.Vulnerable children in the Global South face increased risk of trauma and becoming separated from family. Living in orphanages or on the streets is no way to spend a childhood. In this workshop, we’ll identify misconceptions in orphan care and learn what can be done to help children facing adversity. We’ll take a look at these children’s journeys and see how we can help them get back to where they belong: home.Many children who have experienced trauma or have a diagnosis such as ADD/ADHD or Autism Spectrum Disorder have unique developmental and behavioral needs as a result of sensory challenges. Addressing these needs is essential for social interactions, school participation and participation in home routines. During Part I, of this two-part workshop, an overview of sensory processing will be provided and what to do for a child struggling with one of these issues will be discussed.This session will build upon what was learning in Part I of addressing sensory processing needs of children and youth. It is designed to provide practical strategies families can use to support these children in the home, school and community. Strategies will also include how to talk to other professionals about your child’s sensory needs, and how to support play and executive functioning for children with sensory processing challenges.Struggling to connect with your adoptive or foster child? Come learn from an adult adoptee about what your child wishes they could tell you, but because of their rejection wound, they don’t know how. We will also be discussing why adoptees often blame their parents, other unforeseen struggles because of trauma, and ways to help your loved one through rejection and control issues.In this presentation, Scott Watters describes a simple diagram of the attachment relationship, discusses ways in which the attachment relationship can go wrong, and helps create a path to empower healing for relational wounds.Using real world examples, Scott Watters outlines a tool for families and professionals to empower self-regulation, nurture behavioral change, build social skills, and create space for secure attachment.Correction without connection can lead to mistrust and frustration for both parents and kids. Small missteps can lead to meltdowns in an instant. In this session, Scott Watters provides strategies to help parents empower trust during correction. He shares tools and tips from his experiences of working with kids from hard places at home and in a residential setting.Positive, healthy humor has a way of endearing ourselves to a person – and it’s no different with the children through adoption and foster care. While we always want to avoid sarcasm and cynicism with them, humor can be a huge connecting tool as we seek to develop healthy relationships with our kids.The discipleship needs of children and teenagers through adoption and foster care are unique. Why? Because these kids have experienced trauma and trauma affects our beliefs – especially about God, faith and The Gospel. Let’s identify the Biblical words and Gospel concepts that might be barriers, so that we can confidently share the good news of Jesus Christ to these children and teenagers.