EPIC Tip Videos
Learn more about parenting and caring for kids from the 4KIDS Clinical Team through their various educational and informative videos available below.
EPIC Tip: Parenting For Teens Who Were Parentified
Many children who come from hard places were often "parentified" by their families. Understanding that the child you are caring for has experienced increased emotional, mental, and physical responsibilities for someone their age, can help you grow in encouraging them to embrace their true role as a child.
EPIC Tip: Promoting Resiliency
In this EPIC Tip, Meiby Nodarse, MHC/MFT, explains the importance of using a strengths-based lens and using Protective Factors to encourage success for a child's future despite a challenging past.
EPIC Tip: When to Ask for Help with Mental Health
In this EPIC Tip, Terri Galindo, LCSW & LMFT, goes through the questions to ask and observations to make when determining if your child is struggling with their mental health.
EPIC Tip: Aging Out of Foster Care
Turning 18 can bring a wide range of emotions. Listen as Ken Lacey, 4KIDS Transitional Independent Living Director, explains what causes these feelings and how to help in such a pivotal transitional phase for children in foster care as they age out.
EPIC Testimonial: Casey Cleveland
EPIC Tip: The Need Behind The Behavior
In this EPIC Tip Video Pamela Souza, MS, explains that children that have been in hard places oftentimes have a hard time trusting. This is why understanding their needs behind a behavior in important. Listen to hear some important steps on how to figure out what an action or reaction may mean to a child.
EPIC Tip: Why Take EPIC Training
EPIC Tip: Loss of Bio Parent to Addiction
Betsy Godoy-Rosado, LCSW, talks about how to navigate the difficulties that come when a foster or adoptive child loses a biological parent to addiction.
EPIC Tip: The Importance of Play
Listen as Meiby Nodarse, MHC/MFT, explains how allowing your child to play freely can help them to express emotions that may be challenging to express otherwise.
EPIC Tip: Coping With The Grief of Foster Care Transitions
Saying goodbye to a child that you have cared for as your own can be tough. Here are some ways to cope with the grief that comes with foster care transitions.
EPIC Tip: How To Love Foster/Adoptive Children
Learn why identifying your own adult attachment style is important in order to best love kids from hard places, and get three tips on how to actively show love.
EPIC Tip: Understanding Teenagers
Learn ways that you can build trust with adolescents and support them as they transition into adulthood.
EPIC Tip: Connection Before Correction
Learn strategies that can strengthen your relationship with your child in a moment of discipline.
EPIC Tip: Infant Mental Health
Understand the importance of early interventions and monitoring a child's development through a trauma-informed lens, in order to prevent later mental health concerns.
EPIC Tip: Food Sensitivities
Learn about how to get to the root cause of a child's overeating, undereating, aversion to certain foods, and other food sensitivities.
EPIC Tip: Setting Expectations
When setting expectations for children that have dealt with trauma, it's important to remember their past, understand their triggers, and know what they have been through in the last 24 hours.
EPIC Tip: Navigating Transitions
Ode leads us through practical scenarios on how creating plans together with our kids can alleviate the negative reactions that often surround transitions.
EPIC Tip: Navigating Discipline
Listen as Holly explains three principles for navigating discipline, while keeping a strong, loving relationship with the child at the core.
EPIC Tip: Preparing Your Home for Fostering
Hear from Amy, 4KIDS Foster Parent, about what items could be helpful to have when a child enters your home, and learn the benefits of meeting a child where they are at in their journey.
EPIC Tip: What is Trauma?
Watch as we briefly discuss the types of trauma and why trauma-informed care is essential when working with kids who have experienced difficult situations.
EPIC Special: The Lukasik's Story
Tom and Linda discusss their most recent experience fostering and how EPIC equipped them to be better caregivers.
Myths & Misconceptions of Biological Parents
In order to truly advocate for children in foster care, we need to see their biological parents through a lens of love and compassion.
May is National Foster Care Month
See what trauma-informed resources are now available to support you in your foster care journey.
Connecting With Teenagers
Learn a few EPIC best practices when it comes to connecting with teenagers.
Tools for Regulation
Learn about self-regulation and practical tools you can use to help kids stay calm and alert both in their bodies and minds.
Regulation in Relationships
Special guest Dr. Jennie Trocchio, Ph.D., discusses with us the vital connection between regulation and relationships.
Self-Care for Parents
Learn how including long-term, short-term, and immediate self-care habits into your routine can help you be a better parent and improve your health and happiness overall.
Navigating the Holidays & Special Events
How can you be proactive and prepare to help your foster or adoptive child be set up for success this holiday season? In this EPIC Tip, one of our 4KIDS Therapists discusses ways you can lean into your child's emotions and have realistic expectations for them surrounding special events.
Inspiring Gratitude
Thanksgiving may be just around the corner, but the benefits of practicing gratitude year-round are endless! Listen as one of our 4KIDS Therapists, Odelaisys, unpacks this idea a little bit more and offers a few ideas on how to intentionally add gratitude habits into your family's life.
Insight for Interracial Families
Kids that are being fostered or adopted by caregivers who do not share their same culture need compassionate adults who are ready to listen and "lean in" to conversations on race with them.
Saying Yes
As parents and caregivers, more often than not we have the tendency to say "no" to our child's requests. When we find creative ways to say "yes," however, we deepen our connection and build trust with our kids.
Setting Limits
Setting limits and teaching your kids how to compromise in relationships is one the best things you can do as a parent or caregiver. Take two minutes to hear some great examples of how to do this!
Celebrating Uniqueness
You are the biggest example for your kids when it comes to celebrating uniqueness. Frame people's differences in a positive light and surround your family with individuals of diverse backgrounds. Give them opportunities to serve people that reflect a different culture than their own. The goal is to have our kids on a journey that unites, brings peace, and allows them to embrace others no matter what!
How to Talk To Your Kids About Race
Hear as one of our 4KIDS Therapists shares some timely insights for how parents and caregivers can discuss racial diversity with their children.
How to Use Engine Plates
The engine plate is a creative way to gauge your child's emotions and teach them the value of using words to communicate how they feel.
How to De-escalate Meltdowns
What do you do in the face of a chaotic meltdown from your child? Using Dr. Dan Siegel's "Hand Model of the Brain," we can learn about the specific parts of a child's brain we need to speak to first to help them calm them.
How to Use Proactive Strategies
In order to reduce meltdowns, teach your children what to do ahead of time and before their stress levels get too high. Listen as Linda Lukasik, 4KIDS Director of Training & Student Services, shares a practical way to do this using "fire drills."
Interrupting Trauma with Positive Experiences
We may not be able to completely protect our kids from having painful experiences, but we can minimize the negative effects by leaning in and sitting in the pain with them. Creating positive childhood experiences for your child by engaging in play and staying emotionally present will disarm your child's fear and strengthen connections in their brain to help them overcome past trauma.
Working with Children in Uncertain Times
Times of uncertainty are stressful. They can be scary, they can be sad, and even overwhelming. Children look to adults to know how to process in these times. When we help kids sit in the uncertainty and acknowledge their feelings in the midst, this helps increase their resiliency.
How to Approach Academics
We all want our kids to be successful. Academics are part of that, but they are not everything. While challenging our kids to do their best, to push forward, to be successful is so important for their well-being, it cannot come at the cost of relationship, especially in times of stress and uncertainty.
How to Parent with Presence
The most precious gift we can give our children is our presence. In the midst of busyness, finding time for connection can seem impossible and oftentimes we end up replacing busyness with connection. But by setting aside even just 5-10 minutes every day, we can grow greater connection with our kids.
Parenting Under High Stress Situations
Parenting under normal circumstances is difficult—it is probably one of the hardest things that you will do. In a high-stress situation, like a family or health crisis, loss of a loved one, a scary situation, or a natural disaster, then parenting can feel like a day-by-day battle. Learn more about how to navigate these seasons and best parent your children even in the midst of stress.