No child comes with a manual, but this book is a good place to start if you are building your family through foster care or adoption.
Lower the Bar and Hide the Sharpies is a practical guide for foster parents, adoptive parents, kinship caregivers, and families parenting children with big needs, big feelings, and complicated histories.
Written by Katie Egbert, a mom of nine and child welfare consultant, this book combines real-life stories, honest encouragement, and usable tools for families in the thick of it. Drawing from experiences with foster care, kinship care, older-child adoption, and international adoption, it is designed to help caregivers move beyond theory and into the daily reality of preparing for placements, asking better questions, building support, understanding behavior, creating safety plans, and surviving the moments no training class fully prepares you for.
Inside, you'll find:
Real stories from foster care, kinship care, older-child and international adoption, and parenting children from hard places
Practical checklists and reflection questions
Tools for preparing your home and family
Guidance for navigating big behaviors and safety concerns
Scripts and questions for working with caseworkers and other professionals
Encouragement for the hard days when "fed, safe, and wearing pants" is the goal
This is not a book about doing foster care or adoption perfectly. It is a hands-on survival guide for real families, real kids, real chaos, and real love.
Whether you are preparing for your first foster placement, welcoming an adoptive child, navigating international adoption, supporting a kinship placement, or already deep in the beautiful mess of parenting children from hard places, Lower the Bar and Hide the Sharpies offers practical support you can actually use.
