Adoption Parenting Playbook
A show for foster and adoptive parents who are tired of parenting advice that doesn't account for trauma. Each episode breaks down what's really happening in your child's nervous system when behavior gets hard, and gives you concrete, usable tools for the moment you're actually in, not just theory for later.Hosted by Maxine Golden, Clinical Director of Center for Parent Coaching, Brainspotting & Therapy, with over twenty-five years working with foster, adoptive, and court-involved families. Drawing on Polyvagal Theory, Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), attachment science, and somatic approaches, Maxine translates clinical concepts into language parents can use at the kitchen...
It's Not Your Fault
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It's Not Your Fault is a tender, soul-stirring story for children navigating the heartbreak of losing someone they love. With gentle language, faith-filled encouragement, and illustrations that speak where words fall short, this book wraps young hearts in one unshakeable truth: you are not the reason they left.
Survival Responses
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That meltdown, that shutdown, that overly agreeable "yes ma'am" your child gives you before they've even heard the question: none of it is defiance. It's biology. Every child who has lived through relinquishment, multiple placements, or early neglect carries a nervous system that learned to survive first and connect second. Once you can see fight, flight, freeze, and fawn for what they are, the behavior stops feeling like a problem to punish and starts feeling like a signal to answer.
Episode Summary
<...Trauma Resources
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Survival responses are what your child's body does in a single moment. Trauma responses are what that same body starts doing all the time. Hypervigilance at the dinner table. Shutting down over a small correction. A "sorry" that comes before you've even said anything. These aren't random, and they aren't a phase. They're the lasting shape early trauma leaves on a child's nervous system, long after the danger that caused it is gone.
Episode Summary
Where the last episode looked at...
Private Adoption
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Nobody hands you a manual for the money side of adoption, and that silence costs families more than they realize. There's real financial support available to adoptive families. Most parents just find out about it too late, or not at all. This episode is the conversation you wish someone had handed you before you signed anything.
Episode Summary
Adoption isn't just an emotional journey, it's a financial one, and this episode pulls that piece out into the open. We walk through...
Adoption Subsidies
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Nobody hands you a manual for the money side of adoption, and that silence costs families more than they realize. There's real financial support available to adoptive families. Most parents just find out about it too late, or not at all. This episode is the conversation you wish someone had handed you before you signed anything.
Episode Summary
Adoption isn't just an emotional journey, it's a financial one, and this episode pulls that piece out into the open. We walk through...
Building Regualtion
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Your child's behavior isn't the problem. It's the smoke — not the fire. Underneath every meltdown, shutdown, or "why is he doing this AGAIN" moment is a nervous system that hasn't learned it's safe yet. You can't parent your way around that with a better consequence chart. You have to build regulation first — everything else comes after.
Episode Summary
In this episode, we get to the piece that changes everything else: regulation is the foundation, not a nice-to-have. Before consistency works, before conn...
Understanding Early Traumas Impact on the Growing Brain
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
The right support team in place before placement day can be the difference between surviving your first year of adoption or foster care and truly thriving in it. Press play for a practical, trauma-informed roadmap to building that team, and subscribe to catch every chapter of the playbook.
Episode two moves into the practical side of preparation: assembling a support team before a child comes home, understanding what post-adoption support does and doesn't look like depending on how a...
Welcome to the Adoption Parenting Playbook: The Loss Your Child Carries Home
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Every adopted or foster child carries a hidden loss into even the safest home, and that loss is often what's driving the meltdown you're seeing today. Press play for a trauma-informed look at the nervous system science behind adoption and foster care behaviors, and subscribe so you don't miss a single chapter.
In this opening episode, Maxine Golden introduces The Adoption Parenting Playbook and reads through its foundation. She walks through how the book is organized, who it is written for, and what...
