Children that have suffered from neglect or abuse are sometimes more difficult to parent. In this course, we interview Allison Douglas, family advocate at Harmony Family Center in Knoxville, TN and mother of four children adopted from foster care, and Sue Badeau, President of the North American Council on Adoptable Children and adoptive mother of 22 children. She offers great tips and information for foster parents, adoptive parents, and anyone raising children from hard places. 

This course covers the following topics:

  • Suggestions on how to parent a very strong-willed, gifted preschooler who is an extreme perfectionist, easily frustrated, and prone to multiple emotional, screaming, sometimes violent outbursts a day. He has no past trauma or other issues.
  • Tips for coping with a child that gets into absolutely everything and can not be left unattended for even a minute.
  • How to cope with sensory processing disorders.
  • How to get respite or in-home therapy when none seems to be available and child is not on Medicaid.
  • How to find in-home help for a child that needs constant supervision.
  • How do you handle when harder to parent kids withdraw after being affectionate?
  • Any idea on how to manage kids who run away or keep trying to push you away?
  • Managing sibling conflicts in transracial adoption/fostering situations where children already in the family are perceived as better treated, simply due to that child having less behavior and defiance issues.
  • How can you help siblings deal with a child who has extreme behaviors? For example, our new 13-year-old son has violent temper tantrums. Our strategy is to remain calm and “ignore” the behaviors until he is calm. Our older kids think we’re letting him get away with murder because we’d never tolerate similar behavior from them.
  • What to do when a child’s behaviors make it really hard for other's in the family to like her (or even love) her. How to connect with a kid that is not very easy to parent or like.
  • How to deal with ODD and aggressive behaviors?
  • What are some strategies parents can use when a child is raging?
  • If you could give just a few pieces of advice to people who are parenting harder to parent kids what would it be?


*Your course will remain active for 180 days from purchase date.