My Kids Know More than Me!

15 Life Lessons from Foster and Adopted Children

This book shares true stories of how foster and adopted children inspire new understandings and teach us fifteen important life lessons. Each chapter explores a life lesson taught through the stories of my foster and adopted
children. Lessons important to parenting and personal character include resiliency, compassion, playfulness, persistence, forgiveness, trust, responsiveness, and gratefulness. Lessons vital to successful parenting include how to listen to your children, how to look at life through your children’s eyes, and how to trust in your children’s expertise. Lessons to help parents meet the challenges of issues large and small include expect the unexpected (and be okay with that), attend to what is important and dismiss the trivial, and live life with purpose. There is one lesson specific to adoptive parenting regarding how our children’s birth families are an integral and important part of our family forever.  

Readers of this book will gain wisdom from life’s greatest teachers—our children. Most parenting books tell parents how to teach and impart wisdom to their children.  This book does the opposite; it has children teaching parents the most important lessons in life.