By Sara Tiano When Mya Zavaleta was growing up in her Connecticut adoptive home, she turned to the night sky to feel a sense of closeness with her birth family thousands of miles away. “Even though we’re not together, we could be looking up at the same stars and the same moon,” she said. “It’s something so small, but really powerful.” Born into poverty and civil war in El Salvador, Zavaleta is among thousands of children called “deseparacidos” — the disappeared — who were separated from their families as a result of the war. Zavaleta’s mother left her and her seven siblings, splitting them up ..read more

Cobbled Streets, A Better Together Production, 30 minutes A panelist of five adults who grew up in foster care dig deep into their experiences in the conversation showcased in the short film “Rebecoming Me.” The group of professional, highly successful individuals share their experiences growing up in Colorado’s foster care system. While many of the statistics and experiences shared in the film center on that state, the stories aren’t unique to youth growing up in Colorado, and can be applied to the almost 400,000 youth currently growing up in foster care as well as the millions of individuals ..read more

By Dionne Joseph Eyal Dagan and Chris Poore’s children are thriving. Seven-year-old Sam just competed in his second golf tournament, while his 6-year-old sister Bella is busy exploring her passions of fashion, art and dance. Both children were adopted by the couple and as with any family, they’ve had their ups and downs — including medical challenges with Bella, who was born six and a half weeks early. That’s when Dagan and Poore discovered adoption medicine. The New York-based couple had been matched with Bella’s mother in a pre-adoptive arrangement, who lived in Florida. When health issues c ..read more

By Taíno Bendz Resource parents and kinship caregivers play a vital role in guiding and protecting the children they care for. In today’s digital age, social media, online bullying and excessive screen time pose unique challenges for children affecting mental health, physical health, learning development, their ability to focus and how they form relationships. Children might already have harmful digital habits in place when they enter your home, which can impact your efforts to create a supportive environment. Here are some practical strategies and actionable advice to safeguard children again ..read more

Journalist Harrison Mooney shares his personal experience as a young Black child growing up with his white, Christian, evangelical family in the memoir “Invisible Boy.” Mooney won the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for nonfiction in 2023 for the book that documents his experiences of being raised in a strict Christian family, surrounded by almost no one who looked like him. He dives deep into his relationship with his family and the struggles he has in understanding where he fits into the world and his family. This means breaking through history, biblical teachings and his own personal narrative t ..read more

In the spring of 2018, Sarah and Jennifer Hart drove their SUV off a northern California cliff into the Pacific, killing themselves and their six adopted children. The mass murder rocked the nation, sparking intensive coverage of the women who committed the heinous crime and gaps in the national child protection safety net that allowed them to escape intervention even as concerns bubbled up about the children’s well-being. In her critically acclaimed book, “We Were Once a Family,” journalist Roxanna Asgarian takes an incisive look at another element of the case: how the children came to be sep ..read more

By Stacey Goodson, M.S.   Being a teenager in 2024 is hard and comes with its share of challenges. Teens today must navigate social media, unchecked hormones, emotional intensity, peer relationships, time management and high school… to name just a few.  Teens in foster care have an additional set of challenges. Not only do they have complex and chronic trauma resulting from the experiences that brought them into foster care, but they’re also away from family, school, friends and neighborhood, likely living with people they don’t know. I can only imagine how hard that must be for them ..read more

At the very outset, Jessica Sinarski, LPCMH, states this activity book aids readers by helping them “put some of the essential elements for healing into practice with the children in your life.”  Printed in the traditionally wide dimensions of activity books, “Riley the Brave’s Big Feelings” mixes playful activities with serious, necessary messages that would help both caregivers and the children alike. It is not a kid’s playbook, but rather one that should be navigated by an adult and child together. It starts by explaining what the term “feeling” denotes; explaining it as a mix of “sens ..read more

The book “The Parenting Map” offers several solutions to “consciously create the ultimate parent-child relationship.” At first glance this seems like a tall order and, as a reader, you might wonder whether the pages of the book (more than 300) can deliver on such a premise.  But it does. The way the guiding map is presented is clear-cut and concise. Dr. Shefali delineates three stages in the journey — stage one progresses “from frustration to clarity,” stage to from “dysfunctional patterns to conscious choice,” and stage three moves from conflict to connection.  Each of these three s ..read more

By Danidy Espinoza As the oldest of eight children, it was my destiny to assume the role of my mother’s sidekick. My role felt heroic, but the older I got, the more I just wanted to be a kid. I resented my mother almost the entirety of my childhood and saw her more like an irresponsible older sister I had to constantly look out for. She was diagnosed bipolar schizophrenic. Her disease made my life physically and mentally draining. Every day I helped with household duties, cooking and cleaning. I also prepared baby bottles and even changed my younger siblings’ diapers. And if my mother was havi ..read more