We arrived home late last night with three new kids in tow. Hannah’s brothers are staying with us for a week. Two of the kids are her biological brothers, and one is her former adopted brother, but a brother in her heart.

All of our kids have always been allowed contact with their siblings. It is something we agreed to as a condition with Sammy’s adoption, but felt strongly about after seeing him with his brothers. These boys looked forward to every visit. Our kids can always have contact, so long as it is in the best interest of everyone involved. ... more

One of things you may deal with is visits with siblings. In most cases this discussion would take place before a child is placed in your home. Sometimes this can change if a child is born after your child is already in care. In foster care or pre-adoptive placements it can be mandatory that you agree to visits, but many times they are optional after an adoption is finalized.

I have only had kids where we have done sibling visits. In both Sammy and Hannah’s cases we still do. If Kory and Mackenzie had stayed we would have continued visits with their... more

A mom on the Adoption.com forums posted a question about this, and it is a difficult issue to deal with. We faced it about 18 months ago when Sammy was first admitted to his first residential placement.

How do you deal with a death in the birth family?

A large part of this will depend upon whether or not your child is still a foster child, or is legally adopted. If the adoption is not finalized, the case worker will probably be the determining... more

I previously wrote a blog about some of the pitfalls of adopting sibling groups. Hannah was placed with her biological siblings before she came to us. On the surface it was a good idea, but it turned out to be bad for this family.

When Hannah joined our family, we all agreed that we would keep contact open among the kids. They deserve it. Hannah attempted to seriously hurt on of her brothers at one point, but he has since forgiven... more

Lest you think I am a Willie Nelson fan, rest assured I am not, nor will I break out in song.

Hannah and I are headed off this afternoon for a week long trip to Kansas. Why would anyone want to go to Kansas you ask? Well, we will be visiting my friend, Nancy, the Reactive Attachment Disorder blogger. She’s been in Kansas for 18 months now, and I have yet to visit.

The initial plan for this trip was to provide some respite for... more

Part 1 – Safety Part 2 – Fostering a child’s well being

Part 3 of the report by by Adair Fox and Jill Duerr Berrick, Titled “A Response to No One Ever Asked Us: A Review of Children’s Experiences in Out-Of-Home Care”.

This section addresses... more

There are open adoptions in foster adoption, but they are slightly different. Usually it involves contact between siblings.

This is something you need to seriously consider before you agree or don’t accept it.

We have only had children that have maintained contact with their siblings. Not because that’s what we chose, it’s just the way it turned out.

With Sammy, we initially allowed contact with his paternal grandparents but it turned out to be more than he could handle. We would have weeks of absolutely horrible behavior... more

As you might imagine, our home study has been put on hold.

We still have Christmas decorations up, and now we’ve added piles of mementos, boxes of linens, stacks of papers from MIL’s home to ours.

In other words, our place is a mess.

I’d love to run out and hire someone to ‘handle all this for us’, but actually, it is just going to take time. We are the only ones that will know which mementos to keep. Hubby (an only child) is the only... more

I am headed off today with K to celebrate her half sisters birthday.

I’ve blogged before about my ambiguous feelings about our open adoption, and the amount of contact we have with birth mom, but I am glad that we get to know this little sister baby and she is also part of our lives.

Last year, one year ago almost to the day, I was present at the birth of this little girl. Through a weird twist of fate I took K’s birth mom to the hospital and planned to... more

Continuing on my posts about our open adoption….

Last night, in our foster parent training class, I mentioned to a brand new to be almost foster parent about our open adoption.

She was horrified. I think her exact words were:

That must be terrible for your daughter.

Hummm.. I said, why do you think that?

And she couldn’t really give me an answer. To be fair, she’s probably never even thought about... more