Your kid is melting down, you are touched out, and the last thing you feel is “connected” yet the relationship is still the path forward. Rebecca Harvin sits down with Angela Coston, founder of For the Sake of One and a TBRI practitioner, to talk about what connection looks like when parenting kids from hard places meets real-life stress, school breaks, IEP meetings, and the long grind of behavior that repeats for years.

We break down Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) into its three practical pillars: connecting, empowering, and correcting. Angela shares simple connection moves that can change the tone of a day, from five minutes of child-led play to the surprisingly effective “order what they order” moment that signals belonging. Then we get concrete about regulation: hydration, sleep, sensory input, and why protein and complex carbs matter so much when “defiance” is actually a blood sugar crash, especially for kids affected by prenatal substance exposure.

From there, we wrestle with the hard edge of trauma-informed parenting: can’t versus won’t, willful disobedience versus survival behavior, and how to hold high nurture with high structure. You’ll hear scripts for choices, “first then” language, shared power, and consequences that keep agency on the child. We close with the backbone skill that makes all of this sustainable: repair, plus the self-care practices that help parents stay regulated enough to lead.

If this helped you, subscribe, share it with a foster or adoptive parent who needs hope today, and leave a review so more families can find trauma-informed tools. What is one behavior that triggers you most right now?

Find For the Sake of One:

Website: www.forthesakeofone.com

We know that foster care and adoption present unique challenges for your marriage, so we created this Same Page Checklist as a conversation starter for you and your spouse. You can download it for free on our website at https://www.havenretreatsinc.org/couples-free-resources-1. Enjoy!

Registration is now open for our annual Bio Kid Retreat weekend June 26-28 at North Florida Christian Camp. Go to www.havenretreatsinc.org for more information.

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