Taking a New Look at Your Expectations

As adoptive and foster parents encounter challenges and struggles, many of them discover that much of their frustration and disappointment is rooted in their own unrealistic expectations. Watch as Michael Monroe provides insight into the importance of realistic expectations and how by holding their expectations loosely, parents can actually begin to make progress toward greater healing and connection.

10 Questions Adoptive Parents Ask

This video collection contains ten short video interview sessions with Dr. Karyn Purvis and Michael Monroe, offering helpful insights and practical advice in response to many of the the questions that are commonly asked by adoptive and foster parents.

Watch the first video in this series – How Do I Handle Manipulation & Control – or click here to watch all ten videos.

How Can I Be Fair?

Parents can often feel pressure to respond to each of their children with ‘sameness’ instead of true ‘fairness’ based on individual needs and development. Watch as Michael Monroe offers helpful insights about the important question of ‘fairness’ and encourages parents to focus on meeting the unique needs of each child in order to help their children heal and grow.

Should I Parent My Adopted Child Differently Than Birth Children?

Parents often struggle to blend the parenting approach they used before they adopted with the trust-based parenting approach they are now using to meet the unique needs of a child from a hard place.

Watch as Dr. Karyn Purvis explains how parents can effectively meet the needs of all of their children — biological, adopted, foster — by using a parenting approach that focuses on building trust. In addition, Dr. Purvis offers valuable insight to help parents explain changes in their parenting approach to their older biological child, and encourages parents to give these children a voice as the family welcomes new children through adoption and embraces their needs.

How Trust-Based Parenting Can Impact Your Marriage

Trust-based parenting was developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and focuses on the parent-child relationship. However, the principles and strategies that it teaches are no less effective when applied to other relationships — most importantly the marriage relationship.

Watch as Michael Monroe explains how trust-based parenting can positively impact your marriage to bring about greater connection througout your family.

Building Trust By Saying Yes

Children need a balance of nurture and structure in order to learn to trust and grow. Parents can provide this balance by learning to offer “yes’s” (nurture) as much as possible, along with the “no’s” (structure) that are invariably required to protect and teach their children.

Watch as Amy Monroe explains the importance of saying “yes” to your child (as much as possible).