Parenting

Back to school season can be complicated! It's even trickier when adoption, foster care, guardianship, or other forms of permanency are in the mix. These free resources for parents and educators will set you up for a successful school year. 

School and Adoption: Navigating the Education system is a 28-page digital resource guide covering everything from trauma, racism, and IEPs to a letter you can copy and send to your child’s teacher.

We've added 40 books to our adoption library! Check them out here, and stop by our head office in Burnaby to borrow one. For more information on our lending library visits our main library page.     

Here are some great new books from the world of adoption!

1) The A-Z of Therapeutic Parenting: Strategies and Solutions

by Sarah Naish

Focus on Adoption and AFABC have always sought to centre adoptee voices and perspectives, but the #FlipTheScript campaign (launched during Adoption Awareness Month in 2014) inspired us to launch a regular column called "Adopted Voice." The series ran from 2015 to 2016.

In ongoing this series, we interview experts about your key questions about adoption.

Are you an expert wanting to lend your knowledge to our families? Email us at editor@bcadoption.com.

Here are some of the articles from our long-running Diary of an Adoptive Mom series. This adoptive mother shares her experiences and secret thoughts of raising three children. This series ran from 2006 to 2010.

Note: Diary entries #1 to #7 are unavailable 

In our Living Openness series, adoptive mother Charlotte Taylor shares her experience navigating the world of open adoption. This series originally ran from 2013 to 2015.

As if the back to school routine isn’t busy enough for families, there is also the added stress for parents of children with special needs to participate in Individualized Education Plan (IEP) meetings for each of their children. Here are 10 tips to help you go in with a positive attitude, a collaborative mindset, and a plan of action.

Advocating for your child’s needs at school is a key part of an adoptive parent’s “job description.” In this article, teacher and parent Alison Wagler shares her tips on how to work with the school as an ally, not an adversary.

One memorable Halloween at the school where I teach, a parent kindly offered to bring in a smoke machine to make the Halloween party more exciting. The party became exciting indeed when the smoke set off the fire alarm, sending 400 kids in costumes out into the rain for an unplanned fire drill.

Adoption has been an option for same-sex couples for years now, but stereotypes about who and what makes a family persist. In this article, a gay adoptive dad shares some thoughts on the unique joys and challenges of being part of a two-dad family.