I’m jazzed to share part IV of our adoption series with foster and adoptive mama, Renee Henderson. Honestly, I was nervous to cover foster care because I had some preconceived fears about emotional development in the foster care system. Renee shared with us that she has been a foster parent to 15 kids in 4.5 years, and contrary to many foster stories, she adopted three children from foster care. We dove into this quite a bit because it’s important to enter foster care with expectations for how the system operates.

The overarching goal for foster care is reunification with the biological family.

However, a lot of foster parents enter the system hoping to adopt, resulting...

In this week’s episode, we dove into part III of our adoption series with adoptee, Kayla.  Kayla shared that she was adopted at the age of 2.5. She has an older brother who is the biological child of her parents. She is black and was adopted by a white family. She grew up in a mostly white community.

Kayla shared that in many ways she felt as if she didn’t fit into her community. Throughout her adolescence, she felt very different from everyone around her. She felt like she didn’t fully fit in with black culture and didn’t fully fit into white culture. Her parents made an effort to bring aspects of black culture into her life, with books, dolls, and by taking...

I this week’s episode I dove into challenging behaviors like hitting, kicking, and biting. When we see these behaviors in our tiny humans it can spark feelings of shame, disappointment, and embarrassment, especially if it’s happening in public. When we can work through our own feelings about the situation, we can better serve our kiddos. Rather than reacting, we can take the time to respond in a way that helps our kiddo to process the emotion behind the behavior. 

It is developmentally normal for a tiny human to react to a big emotion by using their bodies when they don’t know what else to do with that feeling. When your kiddo hits or bites another kiddo,...

In this week’s episode of Voices of Your Village I dove into part two of our adoption series. I had the opportunity to chat with birth mom, Annaleece, about her experience being pregnant with her birth daughter, making the decision to place Charlie for adoption, and the relationship that she has with her now. 

Annaleece shared the circumstances that led to her becoming pregnant at the age of 17. Having experienced sexual abuse, Annaleece was working through that trauma. She moved out of her parents’ house and soon after she found out she was pregnant. Initially, adoption wasn’t on her radar. Her relationship with the birth father wasn’t ideal, but she...

In this week’s episode, I dove into the first part of our adoption series with adoptive parent Shelby Dickinson.  Shelby lives in California with her husband and two children. Her 3-year-old son Owen is adopted. She shared with me the process of Owen’s open adoption and the dynamic that she has worked to establish with his birth mom and family. 

Shelby and her husband had a unique experience with Owen’s adoption. From the time they first started pursuing adoption, to the time that they had Owen in their arms was only 7.5 weeks. Adoption is typically a multi-year process. They did use a facilitator rather than an agency, which does tend to speed...

In this episode of Voices of Your Village, I was jazzed to connect with my long-time colleague Teresa Stewart to chat all about nap transitions. Teresa has master's degrees in both child development and maternal and child health. She has always been passionate about supporting children and families. Although she worked in policy and advocacy early on in her career, her own experience of motherhood led her to more direct education and support work. She spent many years teaching classes and overseeing programs for a company called Isis Parenting. Suddenly the company closed, overnight. This eventually led to starting her current business running online groups, sleep consulting,...

In this week’s episode of Voices of Your Village, I’m chatting all about sleep and why sleep is so crucial not only for our health as parents and caregivers but also for the health of our tiny humans! Sleep gives your heart and blood vessels a break. It is the time when the body can slow down enough to repair and heal. While we sleep, the chemicals flowing in our bodies strengthen and fortify the immune system. It’s when your body recharges and refuels. Sleep is also the time when your brain clears out unnecessary information that you don’t need to remember and stores things into long term memory that you do want to remember. 

I also dive into...

In this week’s episode, I had the opportunity to chat with Barbara Demske, IBCLC, about all things breastfeeding. Barbara experienced immense challenges while nursing her first son. That difficult journey became the catalyst that drove her to become an IBCLC to offer support to new moms who may be struggling to meet their breastfeeding goals. She is the face behind @firstlatch on Instagram and offers e-consultations. Barb and I dove right into all of the questions ya’ll sent my way!

What is normal, in terms of breastfeeding, for a newborn? When will my milk come in? 

Barb recommends getting some sort of prenatal breastfeeding education. This can be...

In this week's episode I dove into something I call the triangle of the growth. When I’m looking at tiny human development I’m looking at three things. I’m looking at the sensory system, emotional development, and at speech and language. These systems are incredibly interconnected and in order to get a full picture of development, we really need to consider all three. 

We all use our sensory system all day long, every single day. The feeling of a chair supporting our bodies, the sound of music playing in the car, the feeling of our clothes on our skin. All of these things are processed by our sensory system. If the sensory system is overloaded and...

This week I was jazzed to chat with triplet mom Desiree Fortin about parenting with the grandparents. Two months before Desiree gave birth to their triplets, she and her husband Ryan moved in with her parents. Desiree shared that she was on bedrest and Ryan was working so living with her parents and having her mom take care of her was a real blessing. 

Desiree shares that when her triplets were born her parents sacrificed so much and were totally hands-on in taking care of the babies. The triplets were all diagnosed with GERD and in addition to needing to eat throughout the night, they also needed to be held upright for 30 minutes after each feeding. Her parents dove...