Help for Parents Coping with Divorce, Adoption, Teenager and Relationship Issues

For over 20 years, we foster parented over 250 children in a variety of setting that included raising them in our private home, to private child care ranches.  For 12 of those years, I conducted parenting workshops for the state of Oklahoma as well as Texas and some national areas,  training foster parents, social workers and clinicians in the concepts of child development, stages of grief and the impact of separation and place on children, their development, their families, and the community.  I had hundreds of opportunities to work with families on an individual basis to strengthen the connections of child and biological or adoptive parent.

Here, you will find articles on those experiences, and about kids and parents in just about any situation.  If you need more information on a particular parenting issue, please feel free to contact me through the contact us page.

My husband’s law enforcement career combined with my family counseling and our foster parent experiences, have given us a broad foundation in families and crisis intervention and management.  We’ll talk about the struggles we have as parents, and the challenges kids have in growing up.  Together, we can make it better.  What can’t be cured, can be improved.

We’ve been through a lot over the years, and what good is wisdom if you can’t pass it on?  What I don’t know, I’ll ask Lynn, my husband, the man with the winning smile.  He’s not perfect, but, after all these years, I’ve decided  you can’t fault a man who’s not fond of cats but empties the litter box willingly.  He says he’s “odor-driven” but I think it’s just because he loves me and maybe the cat. Shh.

As I sneak peaks at the past, I think “What a ride!” I’m glad we don’t know the future because some of what happened to us was really hard. Really. And, lots of it was just indescribably good. If I could have looked ahead, I probably would have run from the sad and then rushed the good and just messed it all up.

After all these years, we find ourselves retired from foster care, police work, and teaching.  I’m learning to leave the future alone, worry a bit less.  I want to write, enjoy my loved ones, and laugh at the dog and cat, who is sitting on my shoulder as I type.  

I’m not sure we made much of a difference in the large pool of life, but as I tell my tale, maybe you can find a chuckle and a tear here and there. At the very least, you’ll learn about what we did, how we lived and what we learned.  Keep the light on, and read.