It's been more than a decade since we said goodbye to him, yet I remember it like it was yesterday. We met in the parking lot of the CPS office. We'd known the day was coming for weeks, yet we didn't want to believe it. When they placed him in our home they asked if [...]
It’s the start of a new year so we thought we’d go back and start at the very beginning, it is after all a very good place to start.I remember when we first learned about trauma and its impacts, and how that new knowledge impacted me. Learning about trauma changed me in two very important [...]
Choices I was recently thinking about some of my go-to parenting tools, you know the ones you use when the kids are struggling. One of the first tools I got to is giving my kids choices. Giving my kids choices allows us to get where we need to go while recognizing that we might need [...]
Proactive vs. Reactive Parenting One of the first changes we had to make in our parenting was moving from reactive to proactive parenting. It takes more work at first, reacting is easier and comes naturally to most of us, but it doesn't help change behavior in the long run.Watch as Kayla talks about Proactive vs. [...]
I love going to conferences. Adoption and foster care, home school, women of God, marriage, you name it, I’m there. I love spending time learning from people who are experts in their fields. I love hearing stories from those who have tried and failed and kept trying until they found a solution. I always walk […]
Navigating the Holidays Webinar As we enter the holiday season, we can begin to feel overwhelmed as emotions run high and behaviors deteriorate (both ours and our kids). Join us as we look at what makes the holidays so challenging for us and our kids and some practical things we can do to make this […]
I love going to conferences! Adoption and foster care, home school, women of God, marriage, to name a few. I love spending time learning from experts in the field. I love hearing stories from those who have failed and those who have found solutions. I always walk away from conferences feeling like I can do […]
Ryan had the opportunity to Keynote the 2017 Florida Adoptive/Foster Parent Association Annual Conference in Orlando last summer. Here is “When Two Worlds Collide” from that event.
It took me a long time to embrace the idea that we should connect first even when correction is obviously necessary. After all, isn’t dealing with the natural consequences of breaking a rule a prime teachable moment? Like most of you, we don’t allow our kids to run in the house. So, when one of […]
Connected parenting would be so much easier if there weren’t so many kids. I often find myself handling one meltdown only to have another kid meltdown. Or worse yet…two melting down at the same time! I have always wanted a big family. In fact, I told Ryan before we got married that I wanted six […]