Books and Resources we have found helpful while fostering.

These are some of the resources that I highly recommend to foster parents/adoptive parents or even just parents with difficult children.

They have totally changed how I parent and how I see my children’s behaviors.

A lot of children just need to be taught how to deal with frustration and how to calm themselves in the same way they need to be taught how to read.

It is a rough hard road and if I help make it even a little easier for just one family than I will be happy.

Parents of children from hard places we can do this!

For Parents:

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The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children

This book really helps introduce the concept of collaborative problem solving and helping teach kids how to deal with frustration.

There are some videos on youtube also of Dr. Ross Greene teaching on this concept.

The Connected Child

Such a good book about how to parent children from hard places and answers a lot of the why’s behind the behaviors.

Goes with the TBRI training.

Empowered to Connect

Similar to the connected child but with more biblical principles added in.

They have the study guide available for free on their site!

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Trust-Based Relational Intervention® Training(we bought the training videos but there are free online resources as well).

Similar to The Connected Child and Empowered to Connect but more in depth.

For the kids:

The Angry Octopus

Teaches easy to follow relaxation techniques in a fun story about an Octopus that gets angry.

Dealing with Feeling Angry

A great kids book that gives them ideas of what to do when angry.

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The Rabbit who wants to fall asleep

We read this book every night!

It has helped so much with reluctant sleepers!

Sea Otter Cove: A relaxation story

Another great book to help teach little one’s how to calm down and relax.

Bubbles

aDSC_7391I am always surprised when my boys still want to play with bubbles.

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They of course started battling with them.

Which did not surprise me…

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We also tried Pipe cleaners for bubble wands for the first time and they did great!

We used them in this touchable bubbles recipe.

They did not seem very touchable but they did great for just blowing bubbles.