Foster Parent Well
Jump into "Foster Parent Well with Nicole T Barlow," where the adventure of Christian foster and adoptive parenting gets a little easier, a lot more joyful, and deeply fulfilling. Nicole's here with a mission: to guide you in parenting with a heart full of steadfast faith, unshakable endurance, and infectious joy.
This podcast is your cozy nook in the vast world of parenting, blending laughs, learning, and lots of love. It’s where self-care meets faith-filled encouragement, and mindset shifts help you navigate the rollercoaster of fostering and adopting. For every parent out there looking to refill their emotional and spiritual tanks, Nicole's got you covered with stories, tips, and expert advice that speak directly to the soul of a Christian foster or adoptive parent.
With "Foster Parent Well," it's like sitting down with a good friend who gets it—the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Nicole dives into the unique challenges and beautiful moments of parenting children with trauma, all while reminding you that taking time for yourself isn't just nice; it's essential for providing the stable, loving home these kiddos need.
So, why not make this journey together? Join Nicole and a vibrant community of faith-driven parents, all dedicated to transforming their lives and the lives of their foster and adopted children. Tune into "Foster Parent Well with Nicole T Barlow" for your weekly dose of encouragement, laughter, and wisdom. Hit subscribe, and let's start fostering and adopting with faith, endurance, and a joy that lights up the room.
Foster Parent Well
Supporting Biological Children in the Foster Care Journey
Have you ever wondered how fostering can transform a family's dynamics and individual lives? Join us on today's Foster Parent Well podcast as we welcome Daniela Coates, a licensed master social worker from Texas with a profoundly personal connection to the world of foster care. Daniela's unique upbringing in a foster family, inspired by her father's volunteer work, offers rare, emotional insights into the integral role of birth children in fostering decisions. Hear how her childhood experiences shaped her understanding of family and care, and discover why it's crucial to include birth kids in the foster care journey.
Communication is key within foster families, and Daniela's story underscores this beautifully. She shares candid anecdotes about how her parents navigated the highs and lows of fostering, keeping the family mission alive while ensuring every child's voice was heard. Learn the significance of open dialogues, involving children in decisions, and maintaining individual connections to strengthen family bonds. Daniela’s reflections will resonate with anyone looking to balance family dynamics while embracing the rewarding, yet challenging, path of foster care.
We'll also explore the intricacies of birth order and sibling dynamics in foster care. Using relatable metaphors and strategies, Daniela guides us through integrating new children into existing family structures without causing disruption. From ensuring one-on-one time with birth kids to employing the "three R's"—rest, reconnect, and reassess—this episode is packed with practical advice for maintaining family stability.
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Website: https://nicoletbarlow.com/
Welcome to the Foster Parent Well podcast, where we have real, candid, faith-filled conversations about all things foster care, adoption and trauma. I'm your host, nicole T Barlow. I'm a certified parent trainer, a certified health coach and an adoptive parent myself. This is a space where you can find support so that you can care for your kids with a steadfast faith, endurance and joy. I want you to are here today. My name is Nicole T Barlow and I am your host. Today we're going to be talking all about birth children and kids that are already in the home when we begin our foster care journey. We're going to be talking to Daniela Coates. Daniela is a licensed master social worker in Texas. She is passionate about serving the entire family, including birth children.
Speaker 1:Daniela is a self-identified birth kid. Her parents fostered when she was a child and eventually adopted her youngest sibling. Having grown up in a home that fostered and adopted, daniela was a temporary sibling to many children. Now she has spent most of her career working in foster care and adoption. Spent most of her career working in foster care and adoption. She is currently a therapist at a group practice in Texas. In addition, she founded With Siblings, an organization that has developed trainings and resources for parents and professionals regarding kids that are already in the home. Most recently, Daniela wrote and released a children's book, the Day Lily Turned Uninvisible. That tells the story of a birth child in a foster family. Well welcome, daniela. We are so excited to have you here today and hear from your perspective. So tell us a little bit about you and how you originally got introduced to foster care.
Speaker 2:It's kind of a long story. I am currently an adoptive mother who also has kids by birth. So I've got six kids total four by adoption, two by birth. I'm also a licensed master social worker in Texas. I'm under supervision, working as a therapist, and then I have my own organization called With Siblings, where I do like resources, trainings, those kinds of things for foster adoptive parents. That's kind of where I am right now in the realm of foster care and adoption, very much still in the thick of it with both my profession and my personal life. As far as how I got introduced to foster care and adoption, we'd have to go back like oh, 20 something years when my parents began the process.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So it really actually starts even before that. There's a camp for children in foster care that my dad first volunteered with and that was kind of his first interaction with kids who are in the system in some way and he was really impacted by that camp and so that was kind of what spearheaded the journey for our family and got us into considering foster care, considering adoption, and then we just began the process of becoming licensed. But my family actually planned to adopt from the get-go. So it was like the matched adoption situation where it's a lot of hurry up and wait and we waited for a really long time. We waited about, I think, three years before we were actually matched with a sibling group. So that's kind of the start of my journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how old were you at the time?
Speaker 2:When we started with the process and home study and those kinds of things, I was probably around seven or eight.
Speaker 1:Okay, and do you have other siblings at home too?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. I'm the oldest of my family of origin, or kids in my family of origin. I have two younger biological brothers, and then I now have an adopted younger sister.
Speaker 1:Sure, and what was that like as a child to start that process right? Did you understand what it meant and how were you mentally navigating that process itself?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I feel like I was all in. I understood, I got the mission kind of thing. I understood what the reasoning was that our family was doing this. I thought it was important. I felt like our family could welcome other kids, you know, to join our family and of course I didn't have any sisters, so I also was really excited about that possibility that I might have a sister as well. So I was a little bit of a selfish reason there that I was excited about it.
Speaker 2:I can remember, like my parents you know we'd have, we'd be presented with sibling groups. That would be, you know, we could potentially like the better home study for and that kind of thing. And I can remember, like my parents telling me bits and pieces of like some of the things that experience, some of the reasons that they were in care and even just making sure like I was on board. I mean I can remember a number of sibling groups that were well older than me, but I didn't care about that. I was like there's three girls Great, Sounds, awesome. So there was some you know perspective. Obviously, when you're a kid sometimes you understand some things and you miss some other things. So I think that was one of those, but overall I was very involved. I can remember, like my mom, making the little photo album you know to give to the kids before they came to us. I can remember that and being a part of that and those pictures and those kinds of things. So I remember being very involved in that whole beginning process.
Speaker 1:That's sweet. Yeah, I think it's so important that parents involve the kids that are already in the home in that process, and I mean, I think your perspective as a child and being naive in some of the ways, I think it's true of parents too.
Speaker 2:I was gonna say the same thing.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think before we get into foster care, nobody knows like you just don't know and even placement to placement can be so radically different. I think we're all a little naive before. I mean we don't know what we don't know.
Speaker 2:Right, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So then, once a child was placed with your family, did your perspective change? Did your views change? How did you navigate through that?
Speaker 2:Oh, did my perspective change? Oh man, yeah, yes, my perspective changed, and so did my parents and all those kinds of things. It was a whirlwind. Our family was accepted for three kiddos, so we had three already, and then three kiddos joining as an adoptive placement. That's a. I mean, that's double the kids first of all. Right, we can all acknowledge that. We know that that happens in foster and adoptive families sometimes, where it's not just, uh, not just a singular, you know, but there's like sibling groups, which is great that families are able to do that. But also that means that there could be a more children than are already in the home.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I went from one to six. Yeah, you understand.
Speaker 2:Yes, so, anywho, we had them join and we did the visits. We did the pre-placement type visits and I remember my parents went first to those visits just to make sure they could meet the kiddos before we did, and the kids were actually not in the same home together, so like they went to a couple of the kids' home and another one of their homes and I remember my parents coming back from one of their visits with one of the older kids and they were just talking about it and talking about what had happened and my dad mentioned that at the end the oldest kiddo had said hey, dad, catch. And then he threw a football at my dad. And I remember when my dad told me that story, I'm like wait, what? And like I had all these feelings, these reactions, like who's? Who is this kid? He just met my dad.
Speaker 2:Why does he get to call him dad? What? What right does he have? How does he he get that privilege? I've been here for the last 10, 11 years. Why does he get to come in and have that role all of a sudden? So, um, that was, I think. Probably, if I look at my feelings evolving over the process, that was probably the earliest, second pinpoint like oh, I had some some hard things I was feeling and some big things I was feeling in that time and then it just kind of evolved from there. Obviously, I was, I am I shouldn't say was, I am a big rule follower.
Speaker 1:First, born yeah first born.
Speaker 2:So, being a rule follower, you know kids come into the home that don't know or necessarily care to follow the same rules and that can be really frustrating and you know you can feel like sometimes I felt the need to defend my parents, like stand up for them and the rules and helping where I could help, which was something I was really happy to do. I was happy to help, especially with the younger kiddo. I really loved them a whole bunch.
Speaker 1:All of that is very, very important to kind of take us through that mental process that you are going through as a child, because I think that's a concern of a lot of parents when they're entering into foster care. What about the children that are already in my home? How is this going to affect them? I mean we had a 10-year-old in our. I have a biological 10-year-old and when we started this process I mean we wrestled through that how does this affect him?
Speaker 1:But actually I mean we went through this kind of for him because we believe that we should sacrifice for other people, we should lay down our lives for other people, and we wanted him to be brought up kind of understanding that we don't just say that, that we really believe it, that we really live it out. But we saw him struggle through some of that stuff. He is a rule follower. He was an only child for 10 years, and so I mean I think we we're as parents, when we start to enter the foster care system, we we're trying to navigate not only how do we process all of this for ourselves, but how do we walk our kids through these things as well. So what are some of the parents? What are some of the things that your parents did to help you navigate through all of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the primary initial thing is talk about it. Now I can't speak for my brothers and kind of how they perceived it, because they were younger than me, right, if I was seven, then my brothers were like four and one, so the conversations with them would have been different than they would have been with me, and so I recognize that, I recognize that there's nuances in that, but I would say that's how they started. It was just we have the conversations and the fact that I understood the quote unquote mission right, I understood kind of the reason we were doing this. I think speaks to that because it's what you're saying. They wanted to instill in me the understanding of, like we're serving other people, we're doing this to help kids, and if they hadn't done that then I don't know that I would have had the same level of buy-in, if you will, and an understanding.
Speaker 2:If there's no understanding of why things are the way that they are, then it can make coping really challenging.
Speaker 2:So that was probably like one of the main things that they did and then, of course, like I mentioned, involving me even in the kind of decisions over the kids that came to our home not that I got the ultimate choice or anything but to say, hey, there is a I don't actually remember ages, there's like a 15 year old and a 12 year old and a 10 year old.
Speaker 2:Is that okay with you? So just involving me in that, I think, also made a really big difference as far as that goes. And then, even as we went along the process and after the kids were in our home, they still made sure to spend individual time with us, whether that was letting us stay up later or taking us out for dates, one-on-one, or whatever it might be. I was actually homeschooled at the time, so it made it a little bit easier because the other kiddos went to school. I was at home, so it made it a little bit easier as far as that goes. But that was another just really key thing my parents were very involved, making sure that we still had that time and attention with them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really good and, I think, really important. And you said something else about letting you not just talking to you about what was going to happen, but letting you have some sort of input. So here's a question Did you ever say no? Did you ever say no? I don't feel comfortable with this.
Speaker 2:Eventually. At the beginning I wasn't saying no from the get-go, but during those kiddos being in our home I did say things like they've ruined everything, yeah, like I wish things could go back to how they used to be. I miss our family, yeah. So and that's not technically saying no, but it is being very forward about the fact that I'm not okay with it, right, and as a child. And yes, there were eventually times where I said no and there were times where my parents did move forward with it and I was able to cope and move through that would come to join our family. Our parents would ask us beforehand are we ready for another placement, do we need to take a break? And so we were just very involved throughout the entire time and I would say 90% of the time we were like yeah, absolutely, we need to welcome some more kids. So it was something that we were our whole family did together.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I love how they kind of rallied you guys, you know, all together and made this a family mission, not just something your parents were doing. You know we had an incident Most of the time my biological son was the same way or then, after we adopted, we considered fostering again and so we consider, you know, we took everybody, had a say-so, and we would always tell our kids like you have a say-so, you have a vote, but you don't have the final vote right, like it's not you, big kids said no, no, we can't right now. We are still recovering from this hard season and I just don't think that we should be doing this right now. And so we didn't. We knew that they needed some time to heal, right and recover and for us to breathe and be at our best selves so that we could be able to serve really, really well when we were ready.
Speaker 2:Right. A no for now doesn't mean a no forever Correct, and I also whenever I talk to parents and just in general, if we're thinking just people in general making choices, if we say that someone has a voice but they don't have any agency in that voice and their voice holds no power, then what good is having a voice? So if you let bio kids give their voice, but then their voice never impacts any decisions, then what does that say about the power that they hold in their voice? And so, again, I know it's a delicate balance, as is everything, but that's something I think is so important for us as parents to consider when we're fostering or adopting with birth kids too.
Speaker 1:I think there's things that we can walk through with our kids that if they're saying no, we can kind of push in Like why are they saying no? Are there things that we can educate them on or we can support them in that would help them be a yes if everybody else is at a yes right. But again, like I said, with that one situation with our older kids, there are some times when I think we need to really listen to where people are and to be able to respect where they are and to take that into consideration.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I love that your parents kind of gave you that voice. How do you think that your experience in the foster care world growing up impacted you as an adult?
Speaker 2:There have been a lot of questions you've asked me that I just can't help but like grin from ear to ear because the answer is not what I would have either expected it to be or it's kind of like comical, how against what I said it would be is you know that sort of thing? Well, what I said it would be is you know that sort of thing? Well, foster, care and adoption shaped every aspect of my life. Basically, there's really no going around that. I said from a young age I am not doing this, I will not foster, I will not adopt. I know what it costs, I know the challenges and not financial costs, but I know the emotional, the whatever cost. I've counted the cost and I'm not doing it. Instead, I'll work in the field, because as a kid I can remember even just wondering what good is any of this experience? What is this going to do for me? How is this going to be beneficial and turn for my good in any kind of way? And so I was like, okay, do I take these skill sets and do I become like a teacher? You know, I know how to work with kids. I've done that. Maybe I do that. No, I did not become a teacher. That's not for me. For me, I wrestled with how could I use the skills that I've gained in my family and decided I'd become a social worker.
Speaker 2:I was working for a foster care and adoption agency, training foster parents, licensing foster and adoptive parents. From there I continued to be confronted with the need like there are. There are still kids that need to be placed in homes, and at the time it was just my husband and I. We didn't have any other kiddos and so we talked about it. And I can remember when I called my dad, crying, saying crying, saying I didn't want this, I didn't want to foster, but now I feel like I need to. So the tears weren't like necessarily grief, but more a shock, like wow, this is not what I expected of my life.
Speaker 2:And so we got licensed pretty quick because I worked in the field, so I knew exactly we didn't get licensed with the same agency, but I worked in the field, so I knew exactly we didn't get licensed with the same agency, but I worked in the field, so I knew everything we had to turn in.
Speaker 2:And so we did it pretty fast.
Speaker 2:We got placed with some kiddos, and, well, one kiddo and then we got two of their siblings a few months later, and then, six months after that, we adopted all three of them, and then, about a month after that, we got their fourth sibling, and you know how it goes, and so, if you notice, though, like we didn't have any birth kits at the time, so we actually adopted first, and I don't think that I could have done it any other way.
Speaker 2:I mean, I say that, goodness, how many things that I say I couldn't do, I wouldn't do and I did, but because of my experiences, I think that was a very deliberate choice, though for us that it was something very different. My birth kids will never know a life without their adopted siblings in it, because my adopted kids were their first, and so some of the feelings I had like feeling kicked out and replaced my birth kids will never experience, which is not to say it's the best way or the way to foster or adopt, but I'm really grateful that they won't have to go through some of the things that I went through, but their experiences aren't easier either.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, what do you think I mean talking about? It wasn't just feeling kicked out of your family, but there were other hard things, right? What were some of those things that pushed you as a kid that maybe your kids experience now, maybe they don't, but that parents can look out for yeah, for the well-being of all the kids in our home.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely. One thing that I experienced a lot was this feeling that birth kids report in their research of feeling kind of across the board or at least it's a trend that comes up is feeling invisible, and that's not just in the home, I think. Automatically we think as parents oh, that's in the home, because there's different needs and there's more kids and whatever it might be. But it's not just in the home. There's different needs and there's more kids and whatever it might be, but it's not just in the home, like for me. I grew up as a pastor's daughter for the first, like 11 years of my life, and so I went from being known by everybody in the, you know, in our faith community and I mean not in an arrogant way, but loved by everybody. I mean, you know, I knew everybody. And so, going from that to, all of a sudden there's three kids that show up in our family and no one seems to care about me anymore. They only want to ask about my siblings, they only want to talk about them and know what it's like being a sibling to them and hear about their interests and all of those things, and nobody seemed to really notice me anymore or see me. And so that invisibility piece really went across just contexts for me piece really went across just contexts for me.
Speaker 2:And also just hearing things. Like you know, I was, like I said, I was a real follower and I like to serve others and help others. And when I would hear others say things like, oh, they're so sweet, Don't look at them being such a good, big helper, or something of that nature as a kid, I'm like, excuse me, you don't know what they're like at home or you know those kinds of things. It's really hard and I know it's a delicate balance, even as a as foster adoptive parents. Sometimes how do you, how do you balance like truth telling with like empathy and understanding, compassion? So that was a hard balance for me to as a kid trying to figure out that. But it really turned more into I just kept it in. Nobody really knew, nobody was correcting our community to say, no, things are actually really hard. Thanks for asking. Nobody was doing that. So it was a lot of isolation in that way as a foster adoptive family and as a birth kid especially.
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's so hard to navigate and we were talking about this before we started recording today. But I I think that's so hard to navigate and we were talking about this before we started recording today. But I do think it is so hard to balance protecting a child's story, protecting them, having empathy and compassion and also being realistic with people about the impacts of trauma, because the reality is is that it's not about the child in themselves, it's the effects, it's the impact of trauma on their lives and now and now in our lives that kind of disrupts everything and people don't understand. So it's hard to play that balance right of. How do you help people understand what your family's going through and how to support your family unit as a whole?
Speaker 1:how to support the kids that are already in your home, how to support you as parents so that you can do all the things, but still still kind of protecting the kids and what they're going through so that we're not overexposing their stories Right, yeah, it's a hard balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and as a kid, how do you hold that? Did you? And I mean your, your biological siblings? Did you hold people's stories, or were you like listen? I mean you? You said that you just kind of stayed invisible but did. Did your brothers ever say listen? It's really hard.
Speaker 2:I will say there was one time I can remember where it was like a really close family friend and I had shared with them I don't remember specifically, but I remember sharing with them just how hard things were and instead of being met with understanding or reflecting or anything of that nature, I was met with like correction and scolding, and they even went and like talked to my parent about it. And so I learned that it wasn't safe, it was not safe to tell even close family friends about it. And there was one time, even at home, that I had expressed what I had said to you earlier like they've ruined everything. You know, I wish that this wasn't how it was. And my dad responded with kind of the same thing. And my dad was able later to reflect that he responded that way to me because I was expressing the things he felt and he resented those in himself. So how could he accept my emotions if he couldn't accept his? So I think all around we were having a hard time figuring out how do we be true to our experiences, and so there were times, but overall, yeah, I did just not say the thing after.
Speaker 2:I think I learned partially that came into our home after the first three kids. Well, even the first three kids were closer to my brother's ages than mine. I always remained the oldest, but my brothers it didn't always stay that way Like they were sometimes had. They sometimes had kids older than them and sometimes younger than them, sometimes the same age as them, and so I think for them their perspective was probably different too, because there were a lot more like. They played a lot more with them, and whereas I would have taken on more of a helper role and those kinds of things, so I can't remember them saying a lot you know about like the stories of other kids.
Speaker 2:But our parents did tell us particular things like we would know, we would have like a baseline understanding of the reason that they were in care or those kinds of things. But we always knew not to share that story with other people. Right, sharing about the kids in our home wasn't going to be an appropriate thing to do, but we could I mean, we could talk about our emotions, but we weren't going to share anybody else's story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, now that you're on this end of it, how do you help parents navigate the needs of kids that are already in our home with the kids that they're bringing in? How do you help parents navigate those situations? And I mean, do you even help parents navigate their placement preferences and the age of the child that they're bringing in? Do you disrupt birth order? Do you not disrupt birth order, like all the things right, like how do you help parents walk through that now?
Speaker 2:Birth order is such a hot topic in this realm and foster care, adoption, when you have birth kids. I actually like I've devoted some of my trainings and resources to this because I know that it's kind of what parents want to know sometimes. The tricky thing is it's really not what's most important. Dr Jana Hunsley has done some research on the experiences of birth kids and in that research they were measuring for like predictive factors. So what are things that make a difference in the experiences of birth kids? And birth order wasn't high up there on the predictive factors. Instead, I like to reframe it when I'm talking with parents, we're thinking about like roles in the family and like kind of family systems, those sorts of things. Birth order can fall into that, but it also isn't exclusive to birth order. So my role in my family can change without my birth order changing, or my perception of my role in the family can change without my birth order changing, or my birth order can change and my role in the family doesn't change. So birth order is kind of this tricky thing that I think we put a lot of weight in when really we should be asking more questions like what is? What is the child's perceived role in the family and how is their role changing and how is their perception of their role changing? Those are the things that I want to know. Use examples with parents when I'm talking about this.
Speaker 2:If you think of a baby mobile, you've got all the little characters or plushes or whatever hanging down and everything's balanced. But what happens when you add a few to the mix, all of a sudden it's not balanced anymore, and so that's the experience. It can be the experience of birth kids. It's like where do I fit? How do I, how do we find things balanced again? How do we get back to equilibrium?
Speaker 2:And so sometimes that means that people in the family shift roles. They shift, you know, in the ways that they function. So that's kind of how I try to help parents think of it instead is, with every kid that comes into your home, there's going to be changes in the way that a family operates. Every kid because there's each kid is going to be changes in the way that a family operates every kid, because there's each kid is going to be different. And so if we're thinking back to the baby mobile, like you might find equilibrium with one set of kiddos that's in a house, in your home as a placement, but then when they leave and another kiddo comes, everybody's probably going to have to shift again. And so just this constant movement and changing positions in the family, whether or not it's related to birth order and so that's one thing that I really try to help parents to understand is that it is a huge, monumental change for birth kids, no matter how you stack it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's true for everybody. I think everybody has to understand that when you're adding people to your family regardless of how or when or why or whatever when you add people to your family, it's going to shift the way that your family works.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I know for me every single placement that we took two weeks in I panicked because now I'm out of this brand new mode, right, but I haven't found a rhythm yet, and so I can expect that kids in the family would feel that times 10, because they also don't have any control. They're not the ones kind of helping navigate the system right, Like they're just kind of a reflection of what the adults have chosen. I can imagine that that anxiety could kick up a lot more for them than even it does for us as adults, because it still is there for us as parents. It still changes the way that we operate in our home.
Speaker 2:Right. And if we're thinking about, we as adults have probably a greater understanding of why things are the way that they are, and sometimes kids either don't have the developmental ability to understand or kind of comprehend and to cope. It could be that, but it also could be that parents haven't given the information, and so that's another hard and delicate balance. As parents, how much do we share with our birth kids? How much do we not share with them, and how does that help them to cope and to understand, or is it too much? How do we know where the line is drawn? So I know that's a really hard place for parents as well.
Speaker 1:What is like your top tip for parents that already have kids in the home but are looking at taking in foster kids or adopting or something of this sort?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, in the research there's two things that are pretty primary, that I talk about a lot with parents. That's one-on-one time, which I've already kind of alluded to in my own story. It really does make a difference in the experiences of birth kids, and that's not to say, oh, only spend one-on-one time with birth kids, right, because that would create some odd dynamics in the family and that sort of thing. But it is important, it has been shown to be important, as we've chatted here today, and just involving them from the very beginning, making sure that they're on board, and if they're not, can we pause, like you had alluded to. Right, if our family's not ready, even if it's after placement, the same is relevant at the beginning. If our family is not ready, if everybody's not on board, then is there anything we can do to help everyone to be on board? So communicating from the very beginning.
Speaker 2:And then I like to use, I say like there's three R's after, like a placement, leave, so that's rest, reconnect and reassess. And so when a kiddo leaves the home, the family should be resting. Like we all know that when you have kiddos in care, you have more appointments, you have visits in the home, you live life at a faster pace and so just taking that time to rest is really important. And I know it's hard because we get a phone call and we know that there's kids who need a place to be, but we need to make sure we're resting.
Speaker 2:Reconnecting, which is that one-on-one time that I mentioned, connecting together, doing the things that maybe you can't do the same, whether that's because of particular needs of kiddos who were in your home at the time, or maybe even financially, you know there's, I know, that things get expensive when there's more people in the home. So being able to reconnect with each other during that time and then reassessing, which is really that communication piece that says can we keep doing this? If we can, does anything need to change, like, are there rules or expectations that need to change? Are there, you know, like arrangements in the home, you know where people stay, or do we need to rest longer? So just having those conversations, spending time with birth kids, can just really make a world of difference in how they experience their life as a birth kid in a foster adoptive family a foster adoptive family.
Speaker 1:I love that. Well, this has been a really big week for you. You just had a book that came out, and so talk to me a little bit about what your book is, what it's about and who it's for.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my book is called the Day Lily Turned Uninvisible and it's obviously kind of builds off of what I've mentioned about that invisibility piece of birth kids. So this book is written with in mind birth kids and foster adoptive families. It tells the story of a birth kid named Lily, and a new kiddo joins a family and all of a sudden things are really different for her. People aren't noticing her. People are noticing the things that she does. She's having to do some things on her own.
Speaker 2:She just doesn't quite understand why have all of these things changed?
Speaker 2:She thinks, maybe I'm invisible, and it's comical, right, because, like, literally thinks that she's invisible.
Speaker 2:But it's her perception, right, it's her perception of her experiences and her interpretation of her experiences. And so she does these things to try to see if she can turn herself un-invisible, and it doesn't seem to work. And so she feels defeated and her mom is able to provide insight to her, but not just insight but empathy and understanding. And so these really key components, and even that communication piece of, we're empathizing or validating those emotions and we're able to provide insight because we do have a different perspective than maybe our kids are able to see. And so Lily's mom in the book is able to do that for her, and then we see just that things start to change, whether that's her perception or that, you know it's not as new anymore. Who's to say, you can interpret that as the reader, but that's kind of the journey that we see Lily go through, and so I'm so excited for this, to be out there and to be speaking, for giving voice to some of the experiences that birth kids relate to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think this could be a huge resource for lots of parents in helping our kids that are already in the home kind of navigate the changes that may be happening. So I thank you for stepping out to do this right and having the perspective that you have is so valuable, and I think that this resource is just going to be so beneficial. I will leave a link for the book in the show notes, but also tell our listeners where they can find you.
Speaker 2:You can find me on. Instagram and Facebook are the easiest places to find me. Instagram it's at with underscore siblings, so that's where you can find me on Instagram. Facebook is a little bit more challenging, but it's Facebook slash with siblings, tx, because I'm in Texas. So there you have that, and so you can follow along there. That's where I post most of my content about birth, kids and whether that's helpful tips for parents, things to consider or even just resources. That's where most of that comes from. I also have a website for that, as well as even just a personal website, which is daniellacoatscom.
Speaker 1:Awesome, Daniela. I will leave all of those things in the show notes for listeners to be able to connect with you. I'm so thankful for you and for you coming on today and sharing with us and giving us some insight of how we can have better families all the way around.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1:I have put all of Daniela's contact information in the show notes, so be sure to check out her resources. As we wrap up today, I'd like to pray for us. Heavenly Father, thank you for this opportunity to serve. Thank you for this opportunity to come alongside of you in the work that you're doing in families and in communities. Lord, help us support everybody in our home well. Help give us discernment and understanding. Help us see each individual as we seek to support them throughout our journey. Lord, we love you. We trust you In Jesus' name, amen.