Answers to your parenting questions.
What If? Imagining Life in a Different Family
Sleepovers and play dates give our kids an intimate glimpse of life in a different family — and may prompt reflections and questions.
What’s Happening to My Body?
How can you help your child deal with the physical and emotional changes that puberty brings?
Standing Up to Bullies
How can you respond to bullying or protect your teen from becoming a target?
Relating to Relatives
There’s much parents can do to help their teens feel they belong within the larger family network.
Mortifying Moms
You used to be the coolest mom on the block–at least in the mind of your kid. Now she rolls her eyes at everything you do. What’s up?
Preteen Summer Reads with Adoption Themes
Encourage discussion — and a lifelong love for reading — with these adoption-themed books.
Helping Your Child with Peer Exclusion
Parents cannot prevent their child from experiencing exclusion or feeling “different” from time to time. You can, however, lessen the negative effects of this common occurrence during the preteen years.
What Will Their Friends Think?
As kids grow up, they look to their friends for acceptance — and desperately want to fit in.
A New ‘Forever’
Adoptive children can feel familial changes, like divorce after adoption, particularly keenly. Use these tips to help kids adapt to new stepparents.
“I Just Don’t Fit In”
Tween adoptees may walk away from their cultural heritage, family outings, and even their family as they try to fit in with peers.
Wanted: Teens
Adopt an adolescent? People do, all the time.
Can My Child Handle Sleep Away Camp?
Parents wonder if preteens will experience separation anxiety at sleep away camp. Learn how to tell if yours is ready, and then ease the transition.
When Kids Worry About Being Perfect
We want our children to do well—but we also want them to enjoy being kids. How do we help them strike a balance?
Dealing with Adoptee Fears of Loss
Do adoptees who’ve already experienced the loss of birth parents worry more than other kids about their parents dying?
Minimizing Placement Trauma
Pre-adolescents have special needs in a foster care placement. Our expert provides tips on how to make the transition to an adoptive home a little easier.
“When Did My Little Girl Grow Up?”
My daughter is still very much a little girl. But with every passing week, it’s getting frighteningly easier to imagine her teen years.
“What an Embarrassment!”
As my daughter approaches the tween years, she’s becoming more aware of who she is and of how others see her — and me.
Revealing Painful Adoption Details
Children need to know their full stories before the teen years. Why, and how, to explain troubling information.
Ask AF: When Preteens Face Prejudice
My 12-year-old, adopted from China, has recently been saying she doesn’t want to go to school. Last night I finally got her talking. She said, “There are kids who disrupt the class and are racist. They tell Asian jokes.” Her school is diverse, but there are few Asian students. How can I help her?