When parents and caregivers are raising adopted, foster, or kinship kids, it’s easy to focus on what they need to learn and do to raise their children with resilient, confident identities. Sometimes, parents and caregivers forget that they have a resource available to them that is rich with lived experience: the voices of adoptees and former foster youth themselves.

Listening to adoptee voices is a crucial part of preparing yourself before your child joins your family. The insight and wisdom of adoptees and foster alumni (often also called former foster youth or FFY) can also help parents and caregivers connect with their child’s thoughts and feelings about being adopted across the ages and stages of growing up.

To support and strengthen parents and caregivers who wish to listen to adoptees and foster alumni, we’ve curated a combination of CreatingaFamily.org’s content and other resources we trust and respect. Our lists are by no means exhaustive but we hope they provide a starting point for you to listen and learn.