Grandparents and kinship caregivers raising children come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. We may be young grandparents in our 40's, retired grandparents living on social security, or anywhere in-between. Whatever our differences may be we all have one commonality. We are raising children that we had most likely not expected to be raising.

Our feelings and reactions to the situation will vary widely, depending on our health, our financial situation, and what other plans we had for our lives. It can be very difficult when our own feelings clash with each other. While we love these children and would never want for them what the alternative might be, we may also feel that if we had done a better job as parents raising the first batch, we wouldn't be doing this all over again. So as grandparents, our feelings might feel like a pot of goulash, everything mixed in together.

Other relative caregivers, such as aunts and uncles, may experience it differently. Though they may be willing and even happy to step in and raise someone else's children, they know they didn't contribute to the parents' problems, so why are they picking up the pieces? Non grandparent caregivers do not usually deal with the guilt (warranted or not) of "what did we do wrong?"

Some situations might be very different than those described above. Kinship Caregivers, grandparents and other relatives, may be raising children because of the death of a parent or because a parent is in the military and unable to have their children with them. This is becoming more common every day with devastating results.

Whatever our situation, one thing is clear; our lives have changed with the addition of someone else's children. The change may bring happiness or sadness, but there is a change. And with that change, comes stress. Understanding the stress and finding proper ways to deal with it is vital for our own emotional and physical health as well as for the health of our children.