Nadav Zeimer’s Blog
The Stress of Dealing with Childhood Stress
I recently read the book "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. It’s a great read and offered important lessons for me as an individual. I forget that just being alive comes with stress regardless of whether my life is brimming with privilege or not....
How to Advocate for your Foster Child
Advocating for your foster child is a necessary task, but one that can be difficult. Experiencing trauma has a lasting effect on the brain’s ability to learn, and many foster children have gone through some type of traumatic experience. This means that the child may...
Fostering Children with Special Needs
On a given day, there are nearly half a million children in the foster care system, and around one-third of those children have special needs. While foster parents are needed throughout the country, foster parents of special needs children are in especially high...
What is New Alternatives for Children?
Throughout the early 1980s, thousands of medically fragile children were left to grow up in New York City hospitals. Referred to as throwaway kids, these children had healthcare and social needs that left child welfare agencies feeling overwhelmed with the prospect of...
Four Books All Foster Parents Need to Read
Before making the leap to become a foster parent, it’s nice to get some insight from someone who has gone through the process before. Maybe you have people in your life who have fostered before and you can ask them for advice. If that isn’t the case for you, consider...
What to Know About Fostering to Adopt
For those looking to expand their families, adoption is an option you may have considered. The adoption process is long and expensive, and sometimes never works out. After years of trying, our very reputable adoption agency, Independent Adoption Center (IAC), went out...
Advice for Foster Parents Going to Court
Foster parents play a huge role in the court process. Children’s Court exists to protect children and help keep them safe. It aims to establish permanency in a child’s life, whether that’s with their birth parents or through adoption or another living arrangement....
How to Know if Fostering is Right for You
If you’ve been feeling that becoming a foster parent is the path you want to take, you may feel as though it’s something you want to dive in right away. While it’s great you feel compelled to help others; it’s first important to determine if fostering is right for...
How to Cope when your Foster Child Leaves
For many foster parents, the hardest part of fostering is when your child leaves. Ultimately, the goal of all foster situations is reunification with the birth parents. When my foster daughter left, it caught me by surprise how it impacted me emotionally. Though it’s...
Foster Grandparenting
As a first time foster parent, I have a silly non-recommendation to make. It’s something that I have noticed while serving my former foster daughter. For anyone currently caring for a baby in the foster care system or even considering it (do it!), I think you’ll...