It’s difficult for us grown-ups to wrap our brains around the circumstances faced by our foster children at young ages and hard to imagine translating it into words.
Fortunately, there are some outstanding, approachable and helpful resources that speak truth and help us all understand each other better. Stories about those who experience similar struggles can be helpful.
These children’s books help explain some of the circumstances in which our kiddos find themselves and help them cope with some of the challenges that they face.
- Kids Need to Be Safe: A Book for Children in Foster Care (Kids Are Important) by Julie Nelson. Children in foster care often feel they are to blame for their situation. How can you remedy these feelings? Check out this book!
- Maybe Days: A Book for Children in Foster Care by Jennifer Wilgocki, Marcia Kahn Wright and Alissa Imre Geis. The foster care process is complicated enough for adults and is especially so for the children involved! This book helps foster children make sense of the roles and responsibilities of those involved in their life while they are in care.
- A Terrible Thing Happened by Margaret M. Holmes, Sasha J. Mudlaff and Cary Pillo. It’s a great book that addresses how a traumatizing event can effect children in day-to-day life.
- Finding the Right Spot: When Kids Can’t Live with Their Parents by Janice Levy and Whitney Martin. This story illustrates to kids that they can still find “the right spot” to live, even if they can’t live with their parents.
- When I Miss You (The Way I Feel Books) by Cornelia Maude Spelman and Kathy Parkinson. This is a good one for children when they miss their parents.
- Families Change: A Book for Children Experiencing Termination of Parental Rights by Julie Nelson. How do you explain to a child when they can’t go back to Mom and Dad? Check out this for some good ideas!
- Ricky Sticky Fingers by Julia Cook and Michelle Hazelwood Hyde. If you have a child who struggles with taking things that don’t belong to him or her, try reading this one together.
- My Mouth Is a Volcano! by Julia Cook and Carrie Hartman. Foster children who struggle with using words appropriately will benefit from this book.
- It’s Hard To Be a Verb! by Julia Cook and Carrie Hartman. This resource addresses children who are hyperactive or have impulse control problems.
- Wilma Jean the Worry Machine by Julia Cook and Anita DuFalla. Is anxiety an issue? Then this book is for you and your foster child.
