Today’s episode is about learning to better understand all the children in our homes and how they are experiencing life in our families — this includes the ones who joined our families through foster care or adoption, and the siblings who were there first.
We often talk about foster care as a calling for moms and dads, but the truth is, it changes the entire landscape for every single person under that roof. The kids already in the home are making huge sacrifices too: sharing their parents' time, their space, and their toys. But every kid processes this journey a little differently.
Matthew Haines is a foster and adoptive dad. But long before he was a parent in this space, he was a kid growing up in a home where his parents fostered for many years and adopted from foster care. He shares about what it actually felt like to navigate those shifts, how his parents intentionally invited him into the way his family cared for kids, and how it shaped how he cares for his own family today.
Plus, we close out the episode with Dr. Nicole Wilke, Mackenzie Jamison and Philip Pattison, who share their own firsthand experiences of growing up in foster and adoptive families.
