WE ARE ON A MISSION TO HELP FOSTER AND ADOPTIVE PARENTS BUILD A STRONGER BLENDED FAMILY.

• We know that wishful thinking doesn’t build a blended family: doing does. That’s why we offer you the tools, strategies, and support you need to take step after step toward your goal every day. 
• We deliver through easy to implement online courses, books for parents, workbooks for kids, and our nurturing membership community. 
• We take the guesswork out of strengthening a strong, resilient, and cohesive family so parents like you can be the best parent for all of your children, and you can experience the joy of parenthood again.

WHY DO WE DO IT?

We’re on a mission to equip and empower foster and adoptive parents to end the chaos and start thriving again.

Why? Because every parent can rise to the challenge of parenting kids from diverse backgrounds and needs; they just need the right guide to show them how.

Our founder, Gail Heaton, understands the unique challenges parents face when parenting biological children alongside foster and adopted kids from traumatic backgrounds.

Why? Because the children already in the home when a family fosters or adopts have some specific challenges they face being the siblings to special needs brothers and sisters. No one is supporting this population of “resident kids” until now. These kids deserve the best preparation they can get.

That’s why we’re taking the mystery out of sibling relationships and the overwhelm out of parenting children from diverse backgrounds and needs.

You can build a successful family from the strengths you already have inside you.

Gail Heaton

Gail Heaton is the mother to seven children (five biological and two adopted). In an effort to help her adopted sons heal from their early abuse and trauma, she gained valuable experience and training as a Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) practitioner and Circle of Security Parenting facilitator. This led to her working with foster and adoptive families supporting parents in both the pre- and post-placement phase.

As her biological children got older, they began to reveal to her how difficult the transition had been on them to welcome siblings who had come from traumatic backgrounds. She desired to learn all she could about how to support all her children. This led her to complete a Master’s program, which allowed her to research and write about the needs of resident children in adoptive and foster families like hers. The result of this research and education became Suddenly Siblings, the support platform she founded for resident children and their parents.

Gail has written for print and multiple online publications on topics related to fostering, adoption, and supporting the resident children. She is co-author of Suddenly Siblings: Adventure in Fostering & Adoption and author of My Flight Training Manual: Flying Above the Clouds in Sibling Relationships and In Their Best Interest: Preventing Secondary Trauma in Siblings of Foster and Adopted Children.  You can reach Gail at [email protected].

Molly Heaton

Molly Heaton is an adult resident sibling, a big sister for 15 years to Russian-born, orphanage-raised, twin adoptive brothers with special needs due to early trauma. Although Molly was excited gaining new brothers through international adoption, as a young child, she was wholly unprepared for the changed family dynamics that affected her. As an adult, Molly has been able to process much of her past and offers her unique insights to parents through the platform called Suddenly Siblings™, which supports resident children like she was.

Her speaking engagements are popular as she shares both the good and the not-so-good parts of being a sibling to children who need so much from their parents, sometimes to the detriment of the resident siblings. Molly works in partnership with her mother and co-author, Gail Heaton, MA, to bring training to both resident children and their parents who want to offer their children the best support possible. She is often asked to share her wisdom and perspective to parents eager to understand what their children might be feeling about the changes in the family brought about by adoption.