You really want to speak up, because, you’re a mama bear (or papa bear). It’s so hard to let them stand on their own when you’ve spent so much time advocating for them, defending them, and fighting for them. But there’s a time and place to stay quiet and let them stand.
Often, when you’re in the trenches of parenting children with major special needs, the most important relationship you have begins to suffer. How do you keep your marriage healthy in the midst of very difficult circumstances with your children?
Sometimes, as foster and adoptive parents, we’re pushed over the edge and we lose our cool with our children. How do you pick up the pieces and move forward after you’ve failed your children?
You got into this because you were passionate about loving children. But you soon found out, the journey is more difficult than you anticipated. How do you survive the first year or 2 of the adoption journey?
We’re the parents of 8 children, all of whom are adopted. We drive a big old 12-passenger van and a Suburban to boot. Quite often we’re asked how in the world we have enough money to do it all. Our secret isn’t in what we have. It’s in what we’ve decided to live without.
It’s a common question adoptive and foster parents ask. “How do I handle having a relationship with my child’s birth parent?” In-spite of the fear, confusion, and sometimes awkward situations that come from birth family relationships, we’ve discovered some practical ways to have a healthy relationship.
In a world that is noisy, fast-paced, and often all-consuming, it’s easy for us to forget that our children need our love on a daily basis. But if we want to be sure they know we love them we must answer some big questions.
Let’s be honest. Marriage isn’t easy. Whenever you bring two individual human beings with their own personalities, hang-ups, and idiosyncrasies into a relationship, bombs are going to detonate. Really, there’s no way to avoid this entirely. But there are some steps you can take to reduce their frequency and find peace.
Marriage is hard. Anyone who has been married for any amount of time will testify to this. When you mix two individuals, from two different backgrounds, two different households, who have, at times, two very different perspectives, you’ll face conflict to some degree.
Marriage rarely begins in crisis. There are exceptions to this but it’s certainly not the rule. Marital problems usually start off small and almost undetected. If left alone, however, they could grow into a full-blown crisis. How do you determine whether your marriage is in this state or not?
