What I enjoy most about your videos, is when you talk about parenting challenges. I admire the rational and compassionate way you handle each situation. Understandably, parents often resort to anger, shouting, and threats which make the parent feel better for a short time and sometimes work on the child for a brief period, but usually they escalate the conflict and they never work in the long term. Thank you for an honest and sincere video
Thank you and thank you for your beautiful view of parenting! I'm definitely not perfect. I slip up and shout once in awhile. However, I agree that this doesn't do much for us and finding more connected approaches is more helpful long term.
I couldn't leave a message on the other video so I'm leaving it here. The song that you wrote and sing with your guitar is really a good song. Most importantly it's full of love and joy. The words and the melody sink perfectly with your chord progression and overall rhythmic feel. A song like this is a perfect gift for a young child and thank you for sharing it with all of us.
Wow, I love all your content! We are in the baby step process of becoming Foster parents. I have been trying to consume myself with as much knowledge as possible. I feel like these videos are going to be tremendously helpful. Thank you so much, Nick and thank Robert too because his openness has been so insightful as well. You guys are awesome!
Thank you! Feel free to pass along any tips for dealing with challenging behaviors you may have. 😀 Also, love your channel! I was going to send you an email, but yours isn't posted. Is there a good way to contact you?
@@letsgodad sorry, I thought it was listed. I’m so on the struggle bus with all this you tube stuff. Learning as I go. Thehousewithallthekids@yahoo.com
You boil it down so well in this video around the needs that drive behavior, and with compassion for the kids. Rough two-report week at our house this week and leaning into our support networks, too, and couldn't do it without you all. Sending good vibes and hoping your refresh and recharge time this week goes smoothly.
Thank you! I'm sorry it has been a rough couple of weeks! Sorry I missed group Friday! I had a spontaneous work event. I'm sure they have come around you, but let me know if there's anything I can do to help!
What is the need behind the behavior is such an important question. I will need to ask myself that next time things get CrAzY. And I like the advice to find something fun. Sometimes it's been so long since you've seen them smile that you forget what it looks like. Great advice!
I think you are one of the people who keeps reminding me to ask what the need is. But thank you! Fun is so important. I think many of the kids we've had would have thrown fits all the time if we didn't have fun together!
Hello, thank you for your series. I greatly enjoy hearing from Robert, and his staff :-) We are 3x adopters from foster care, with one failed adoption :-( current age range 16-29. In the past we had one of the acting out behaviors you described: "Our big ‘surprise’ was discovering a cedar chest in the family room being badly scratched / carved up with scissors or a knife. I was furious - partly for the damage, but more the feeling of betrayal. Didn’t he appreciate the opportunity he had? Didn’t he appreciate us? Was he one small step from hurting the animals… or other kids? There was a lot of yelling at this point. I demanded explanations. I demanded that he decide if he was going to be able to live with a family or not. From the social workers, and his therapist I demanded one answer: was there a hidden ‘violent’ side of him that made him a danger? In the end, it was as my son had struggled to explain - “I needed to know if you would send me back if I did something really bad”. I was still pretty mad, but I was able to resolve this event (after grounding, TV restrictions, etc.) into a project where he had to work with me and repair the damage. We spent a whole day sanding, staining, and refinishing the chest. While not happy about it, we are able to look back on that as a turning point where he began to trust us, and we began to see past his ‘Mr. Sunshine’ demeanor and start to hear about his past. Kind Regards
Thank you for sharing your story! I can relate to your feeling of betrayal. It seems like a lot of kids from hard places push to see if we'll give up on them. This is so emotionally challenging when we sacrifice so much for them! My line is when we begin to feel like members of our family are in danger of being significantly physically harmed. Other than that, we will stick with kids through almost anything.
The Q&A's you do with Robert could be geared to helping the other children in the household by Robert explaining the process so they feel more at home. After all Robert's been through the process. Just a thought.
About the damage to the door, I would recommend contacting a company that handles furniture refinishing and repair. I worked for a company that does this (not in your area unfortunately) and they refinished wooden doors as well. It can be surprising what is actually repairable.
Thank you! Good to know! I was worried about that. I am probably going to wait awhile until we are past some of the destructive behaviors before doing more repair work. I already made the mistake of repairing a hole in the wall too soon.
Man you are describing my main concern. I have my first meeting with an agency next week and hope it goes well. Hope things get better soon, maybe the warmer weather will help.
I know how you feel! I've been there. Ha! Everytime my family meets to discuss a new potential placement I am there! 😅 Behaviors are a concern with many kids. Not all kids are as dramatic, but some are. Keep in mind I tend to be drawn toward hard to place kids (like many of the ones who end up in most photolistings). Truthfully, I would take even more difficult kids if I were alone and didn't have to worry about anyone else's safety. I've grown a lot and learned just to hang in there. Early on my mantra was, "I don't have many skills, but I can hang on for dear life." This attitude helped. Then after months or years of therapy, and care; kids let their guard down and healing happened. Time is the great healer if healing is the focus.
I love your videos Nick and look forward to more as you make them. I would like to see more interaction between you and Robert however, especially outdoor activities. Does Robert have any friends in your neighborhood? I just know he doesn't spend 24/7 with you! lol
Thank you! We plan to make more. Robert spends time with several other boys, but not really from our neighborhood. COVID has been weird but typically he is always involved in some type of sport.
First.and foremost I would like to say, I really enjoy your videos mainly because of your honesty. Not everything is rainbows and sunshine, as many videos are. Your videos both make me feel better and scare me. I’m not really sure why they do, because I work in a behavior program, lol. I was licensed to adopt many years ago and a situation arose where I had to take in the children of a friend, so I wasn’t able to follow through after. During this last year, I decided to renew my licensing and I’m waiting to be informed when the classes will be offered again. Do you have a contact email for your channel? I’d love to ask you a few questions and get your opinion on a few things. Thanks for all you do.
@@letsgodad Hi again, I went to emails you over the weekend. I looked in your about section, but I don't see your email, only your name and a subscribe link. Could it be, because I'm on a device and not a regular computer? I hope all is well.
So, how's Robert handle these situations since he's been adopted and he knows he's permanently your son. Does he run and hide, or get upset and stuff in fear of you getting upset with him because of the other problem child in the house?
Great Question! Robert and I were very close to making a video about that today! Maybe we need to. Yes he gets upset. He worries that I will get hurt a lot. Any loud noise from kids when they are raging makes him worry about me. There are some other things going on in this too, but I'll let him share about that when he is ready.
@Burannu Robert is a very smart guy (which is one reason we knew something like dyslexia had to be behind his previous inability to learn). When he's ready, he wants to do a video about how he handles the stress of challenging behaviors from foster kids. ...I'm not sure that I will come across as wise in that video, but I'm looking forward to hearing what he says.
I'm not a foster parent, but having multiple opportunities to work with and help children through the years you learn all sorts of things they'll try to get away with in the absence of their parents LOL. I had one kid that was I swear constantly whining about everything and anything. Usually related to his brother or sister telling him no, get out of their stuff, etc. Always everyone's fault but his. If you got after him he'd literally climb up the wall and hide in the storage above the closet in his room. Well that was until one day he did that and couldn't get back out...haha, you grew and now you can't fit into your favorite hiding spot LOL. After a few years of course he started outgrowing those sessions of continual whining and grew into the well I'll just run off type of person. Of course you'd get upset and go try and find him. After a couple times doing that I finally said enough, I just let him run off. About an hour later he comes back in the house and says "You never came to look for me"...your right I didn't, I knew once you calmed down and started thinking logically again you'd come running back in the house. Weird after that he never ran off again, course I knew 3 places he'd run off too, one was the garage, the other was a friend's house 2 houses up the street, or he'd go to the park across the street to play. He was never very good at running away and trying to hide LOL. Both his parents worked all the time so I was kind of their step in baby sitter LOL. So for the past 13 years really. You get to know everything they do, don't want to do, all the excuses, etc. One of the ones I look back on now and find funny considering what he does now compared to back then. When he was 6-7 years old, trying to get that kid to take a bath, or a shower was like you were trying to kill the kid LOL. Now you can't get him out of the shower. His brother was the same way, and well we won't talk about the hours his sister spent in the bathroom LOL. Getting the youngest though to get in the bathtub or shower was horrible. I swear we spent more time arguing with that kid to get him to just go take a bath or shower than it would have taken if he would have just done it to begin with LOL. Turned out one reason why was his dad thought it was just hilarious to dump freezing water on him while he was in the bathtub so of course the kid hated it and couldn't get through to him that his dad wasn't even there to do that to him. After he got past that fear, then onto the next battle....boy wash your dang hair LOL. That went on until he was 9 unfortunately requiring one of us to physically go in and help him wash his hair. Never really did figure out the problem with that as to why he wouldn't do it himself...I finally said to him one day, you are almost 10 years old you need to be doing this on your own buddy, you don't need an adult in your washing your hair for you, time to learn how to do it on your own and be able to do that stuff yourself. So it slowly went onto him finally doing it all himself, but jeez what a chore that was to get him to take a bath, shower, and wash his hair on his own LOL. The funny thing is though, the youngest boy, the one that everyone always said would never amount to anything, the one that would always have to have all of us doing everything for him because he just was too lazy, was the only one in 3 kids who actually graduated high school. I told him the day he graduated he was free to wave that diploma in his brother's and sister's face, the 2 people who always tormented him, picked on him, made fun of him, put him down, hurt him, etc. were the ones that failed, while the littlest one was the one that actually succeeded. Yeah, turns out his brother and sister was always doing things to him while nobody was around, which is where many of the above mentioned fears and issues came from. Luckily as he got older and bigger they weren't able to get away with stuff anymore but what a span of 13 years its been with those kids. The girl is now a nurse, the oldest boy is an automotive technician, and the youngest is leaving in 2 weeks for Army basic training. So obviously the sit in baby sitter did something right for them all to eventually succeed, but man what a battle it has been with all 3 of them. I love them all like they were my own, but geez sometimes you just want to hit the parents upside the head like WTF are you thinking, get your a** home and deal with your kids for crying out loud. Can't imagine what you have to go through Nick. I don't have the foster care stuff to deal with, mostly just friends and family with kids that I deal with so its not nearly as bad as having to deal with a kid who's parents just haven't been there and done anything to help them, those are the kids I'd really love to be able to one day help, and hopefully give a permanent home to a couple of them. I've watched a few of the videos with kids that are up for adoption, some of them are just so sad you can tell the kids are really hurting for someone to just take them home and love them forever.
Hey Nick it wasn’t a rant, you are trying to help educate carers/foster parents that it isn’t all flowers and love, there are downers you have to go through & survive! You need Bear Grills 😂 But by taking that deep breath and counting to 10, or on some occasions 3’856’782, you do what is right for the YP. And I can imagine that these YP have had so many promises broken, it’s hard for them to believe that some adults are genuine and honest. Peace to you and 🍕-they don’t do a hug emoji!
What I enjoy most about your videos, is when you talk about parenting challenges. I admire the rational and compassionate way you handle each situation. Understandably, parents often resort to anger, shouting, and threats which make the parent feel better for a short time and sometimes work on the child for a brief period, but usually they escalate the conflict and they never work in the long term. Thank you for an honest and sincere video
Thank you and thank you for your beautiful view of parenting! I'm definitely not perfect. I slip up and shout once in awhile. However, I agree that this doesn't do much for us and finding more connected approaches is more helpful long term.
@@letsgodad I have made more mistakes that I care to remember. What I believe matters is recognising and addressing them.
I couldn't leave a message on the other video so I'm leaving it here. The song that you wrote and sing with your guitar is really a good song. Most importantly it's full of love and joy. The words and the melody sink perfectly with your chord progression and overall rhythmic feel. A song like this is a perfect gift for a young child and thank you for sharing it with all of us.
Wow, I love all your content! We are in the baby step process of becoming Foster parents. I have been trying to consume myself with as much knowledge as possible. I feel like these videos are going to be tremendously helpful.
Thank you so much, Nick and thank Robert too because his openness has been so insightful as well. You guys are awesome!
Enjoy your break! I can completely relate to what is happening in your home. Hang in there, you got this dad!
Thank you! Feel free to pass along any tips for dealing with challenging behaviors you may have. 😀
Also, love your channel! I was going to send you an email, but yours isn't posted. Is there a good way to contact you?
@@letsgodad sorry, I thought it was listed. I’m so on the struggle bus with all this you tube stuff. Learning as I go.
Thehousewithallthekids@yahoo.com
You boil it down so well in this video around the needs that drive behavior, and with compassion for the kids. Rough two-report week at our house this week and leaning into our support networks, too, and couldn't do it without you all. Sending good vibes and hoping your refresh and recharge time this week goes smoothly.
Thank you! I'm sorry it has been a rough couple of weeks! Sorry I missed group Friday! I had a spontaneous work event. I'm sure they have come around you, but let me know if there's anything I can do to help!
Hang in there Bro! You’re in our thoughts and prayers.
Thank you!
What is the need behind the behavior is such an important question. I will need to ask myself that next time things get CrAzY. And I like the advice to find something fun. Sometimes it's been so long since you've seen them smile that you forget what it looks like. Great advice!
I think you are one of the people who keeps reminding me to ask what the need is. But thank you! Fun is so important. I think many of the kids we've had would have thrown fits all the time if we didn't have fun together!
Hello, thank you for your series. I greatly enjoy hearing from Robert, and his staff :-) We are 3x adopters from foster care, with one failed adoption :-( current age range 16-29. In the past we had one of the acting out behaviors you described:
"Our big ‘surprise’ was discovering a cedar chest in the family room being badly scratched / carved up with scissors or a knife. I was furious - partly for the damage, but more the feeling of betrayal. Didn’t he appreciate the opportunity he had? Didn’t he appreciate us? Was he one small step from hurting the animals… or other kids? There was a lot of yelling at this point. I demanded explanations. I demanded that he decide if he was going to be able to live with a family or not. From the social workers, and his therapist I demanded one answer: was there a hidden ‘violent’ side of him that made him a danger? In the end, it was as my son had struggled to explain - “I needed to know if you would send me back if I did something really bad”.
I was still pretty mad, but I was able to resolve this event (after grounding, TV restrictions, etc.) into a project where he had to work with me and repair the damage. We spent a whole day sanding, staining, and refinishing the chest. While not happy about it, we are able to look back on that as a turning point where he began to trust us, and we began to see past his ‘Mr. Sunshine’ demeanor and start to hear about his past.
Kind Regards
Thank you for sharing your story! I can relate to your feeling of betrayal. It seems like a lot of kids from hard places push to see if we'll give up on them. This is so emotionally challenging when we sacrifice so much for them!
My line is when we begin to feel like members of our family are in danger of being significantly physically harmed. Other than that, we will stick with kids through almost anything.
The Q&A's you do with Robert could be geared to helping the other children in the household by Robert explaining the process so they feel more at home. After all Robert's been through the process. Just a thought.
About the damage to the door, I would recommend contacting a company that handles furniture refinishing and repair. I worked for a company that does this (not in your area unfortunately) and they refinished wooden doors as well. It can be surprising what is actually repairable.
Thank you! Good to know! I was worried about that. I am probably going to wait awhile until we are past some of the destructive behaviors before doing more repair work. I already made the mistake of repairing a hole in the wall too soon.
Love your vlogs - and rants :)
Man you are describing my main concern. I have my first meeting with an agency next week and hope it goes well. Hope things get better soon, maybe the warmer weather will help.
I know how you feel! I've been there. Ha! Everytime my family meets to discuss a new potential placement I am there! 😅
Behaviors are a concern with many kids. Not all kids are as dramatic, but some are. Keep in mind I tend to be drawn toward hard to place kids (like many of the ones who end up in most photolistings). Truthfully, I would take even more difficult kids if I were alone and didn't have to worry about anyone else's safety. I've grown a lot and learned just to hang in there. Early on my mantra was, "I don't have many skills, but I can hang on for dear life." This attitude helped. Then after months or years of therapy, and care; kids let their guard down and healing happened. Time is the great healer if healing is the focus.
Also, Good luck with your meeting!
@@letsgodad I am working on getting your attitude mainly patience lol.
I love your videos Nick and look forward to more as you make them. I would like to see more interaction between you and Robert however, especially outdoor activities. Does Robert have any friends in your neighborhood? I just know he doesn't spend 24/7 with you! lol
Thank you! We plan to make more. Robert spends time with several other boys, but not really from our neighborhood. COVID has been weird but typically he is always involved in some type of sport.
First.and foremost I would like to say, I really enjoy your videos mainly because of your honesty. Not everything is rainbows and sunshine, as many videos are. Your videos both make me feel better and scare me. I’m not really sure why they do, because I work in a behavior program, lol. I was licensed to adopt many years ago and a situation arose where I had to take in the children of a friend, so I wasn’t able to follow through after. During this last year, I decided to renew my licensing and I’m waiting to be informed when the classes will be offered again. Do you have a contact email for your channel? I’d love to ask you a few questions and get your opinion on a few things.
Thanks for all you do.
Absolutely! You can find it in the About section on our channel homepage. Thank you!
@@letsgodad Hi again, I went to emails you over the weekend. I looked in your about section, but I don't see your email, only your name and a subscribe link. Could it be, because I'm on a device and not a regular computer? I hope all is well.
@@robertpozzi4900 I'm sorry about that! You can email letsgodad777@gmail.com
So, how's Robert handle these situations since he's been adopted and he knows he's permanently your son. Does he run and hide, or get upset and stuff in fear of you getting upset with him because of the other problem child in the house?
Great Question! Robert and I were very close to making a video about that today! Maybe we need to. Yes he gets upset. He worries that I will get hurt a lot. Any loud noise from kids when they are raging makes him worry about me. There are some other things going on in this too, but I'll let him share about that when he is ready.
@Burannu Robert is a very smart guy (which is one reason we knew something like dyslexia had to be behind his previous inability to learn). When he's ready, he wants to do a video about how he handles the stress of challenging behaviors from foster kids. ...I'm not sure that I will come across as wise in that video, but I'm looking forward to hearing what he says.
Doing in home health care for the developmentally disabled for the last 20 years yes clients do like to push the buttons to get emotions
I'm not a foster parent, but having multiple opportunities to work with and help children through the years you learn all sorts of things they'll try to get away with in the absence of their parents LOL. I had one kid that was I swear constantly whining about everything and anything. Usually related to his brother or sister telling him no, get out of their stuff, etc. Always everyone's fault but his. If you got after him he'd literally climb up the wall and hide in the storage above the closet in his room. Well that was until one day he did that and couldn't get back out...haha, you grew and now you can't fit into your favorite hiding spot LOL. After a few years of course he started outgrowing those sessions of continual whining and grew into the well I'll just run off type of person. Of course you'd get upset and go try and find him. After a couple times doing that I finally said enough, I just let him run off. About an hour later he comes back in the house and says "You never came to look for me"...your right I didn't, I knew once you calmed down and started thinking logically again you'd come running back in the house. Weird after that he never ran off again, course I knew 3 places he'd run off too, one was the garage, the other was a friend's house 2 houses up the street, or he'd go to the park across the street to play. He was never very good at running away and trying to hide LOL.
Both his parents worked all the time so I was kind of their step in baby sitter LOL. So for the past 13 years really. You get to know everything they do, don't want to do, all the excuses, etc. One of the ones I look back on now and find funny considering what he does now compared to back then. When he was 6-7 years old, trying to get that kid to take a bath, or a shower was like you were trying to kill the kid LOL. Now you can't get him out of the shower. His brother was the same way, and well we won't talk about the hours his sister spent in the bathroom LOL. Getting the youngest though to get in the bathtub or shower was horrible. I swear we spent more time arguing with that kid to get him to just go take a bath or shower than it would have taken if he would have just done it to begin with LOL. Turned out one reason why was his dad thought it was just hilarious to dump freezing water on him while he was in the bathtub so of course the kid hated it and couldn't get through to him that his dad wasn't even there to do that to him. After he got past that fear, then onto the next battle....boy wash your dang hair LOL. That went on until he was 9 unfortunately requiring one of us to physically go in and help him wash his hair. Never really did figure out the problem with that as to why he wouldn't do it himself...I finally said to him one day, you are almost 10 years old you need to be doing this on your own buddy, you don't need an adult in your washing your hair for you, time to learn how to do it on your own and be able to do that stuff yourself. So it slowly went onto him finally doing it all himself, but jeez what a chore that was to get him to take a bath, shower, and wash his hair on his own LOL.
The funny thing is though, the youngest boy, the one that everyone always said would never amount to anything, the one that would always have to have all of us doing everything for him because he just was too lazy, was the only one in 3 kids who actually graduated high school. I told him the day he graduated he was free to wave that diploma in his brother's and sister's face, the 2 people who always tormented him, picked on him, made fun of him, put him down, hurt him, etc. were the ones that failed, while the littlest one was the one that actually succeeded. Yeah, turns out his brother and sister was always doing things to him while nobody was around, which is where many of the above mentioned fears and issues came from. Luckily as he got older and bigger they weren't able to get away with stuff anymore but what a span of 13 years its been with those kids. The girl is now a nurse, the oldest boy is an automotive technician, and the youngest is leaving in 2 weeks for Army basic training. So obviously the sit in baby sitter did something right for them all to eventually succeed, but man what a battle it has been with all 3 of them. I love them all like they were my own, but geez sometimes you just want to hit the parents upside the head like WTF are you thinking, get your a** home and deal with your kids for crying out loud.
Can't imagine what you have to go through Nick. I don't have the foster care stuff to deal with, mostly just friends and family with kids that I deal with so its not nearly as bad as having to deal with a kid who's parents just haven't been there and done anything to help them, those are the kids I'd really love to be able to one day help, and hopefully give a permanent home to a couple of them. I've watched a few of the videos with kids that are up for adoption, some of them are just so sad you can tell the kids are really hurting for someone to just take them home and love them forever.
Yep. Watch out for those videos though. Often adopted kids steal your heart then have a hard time learning how to love you back. It takes some time.
Hey Nick it wasn’t a rant, you are trying to help educate carers/foster parents that it isn’t all flowers and love, there are downers you have to go through & survive! You need Bear Grills 😂
But by taking that deep breath and counting to 10, or on some occasions 3’856’782, you do what is right for the YP. And I can imagine that these YP have had so many promises broken, it’s hard for them to believe that some adults are genuine and honest.
Peace to you and 🍕-they don’t do a hug emoji!
Thank you and that's OK... We love pizza! Man, I loved Man VS Wild. Someday I should make a spoof UA-cam channel: Man VS Wild Children. 😅
Yeah maybe some of your foster kids could play the ani....... anyway 😉
Do you have 3 boys right now?
Ha! This week it felt like I had 30. I keep looking for all the extra ones that I know must be adding to the chaos. They must be here somewhere right?
@@letsgodad hahaha they come out when you aren’t looking. I love your channel and your relationship with Robert always makes me smile.