The Indiana Adoption Program Blog
The Best Decision
Harmony and her mom, Rebecca, have a lot in common. They both love makeup. They both like to dye their hair fun colors (Harmony maybe more than Rebecca, who says she embraced her rainbow-hued hair mostly because “getting our hair done was something we could do together”). And they both spent 8 years of their lives in foster care.
Understanding Behavior as Language
Behavior is the language of children. Unfortunately, there is no translation app available! We have to learn to interpret by observation, experience and understanding their big emotions. This is especially true for foster and adoptive families, since children from trauma may not have developed the skills needed to understand their behavior and communicate properly.
At 17 Years Old…
17-year-old Carolyn knows that her chances of finding a forever family are slim. 17-year-olds with difficult history aren’t in high demand like infants and toddlers are. But sometimes family emerges where we least expect it, so we’re not giving up hope or slowing down our efforts to find Carolyn a family to call her own.
10 Years, 3 Teens, 1 Family
Children who spend years in foster care waiting for their forever family have every reason to wonder if they’ll ever be adopted. For these three sisters, their forever day came after over 3,600 days — that’s 10 years! – in care.
What Happens At 18?
For teens in foster care, turning 18 offers a very different reality. They don’t have that safe place to call home. The home most of us can go to when things get hard, or family to call when we need advice. While nothing compares to the forever family every youth deserves, there are resources in place for Indiana teens at risk of “aging out” of foster care.
The Fear of Being Invisible
We all know kids who do things to “get attention.” But many children with neglect histories who get labeled as “attention seeking” are actually seeking connection. If we can work on giving that connection as often as possible, we can help curb some of the negative behaviors. Connecting, though, requires us to look at the need behind the behavior and come up with “out of the box” solutions.
Summer Camp, Here We Come
It's not even Spring, and yet, here we are, already thinking about Summer! Well...thinking mostly about summer camps, which are open for registration now, and as any parent knows -- they fill up FAST! Sometimes, finding a summer camp option feels easy, especially if...
The Depth of Their Fear
Children who have trauma histories are victims of their intense fears. Traumatic fear can only be resolved by consistently repeated positive experiences which serve to balance the brain and give hope of safety.