It Is Okay If You Do Not Love Them Yet (with Alicia Krasko)

Real bonds with kids are not built face to face. They grow shoulder to shoulder, one small moment at a time, says stepmom coach Alicia Krasko. In Voices of Adoption, host Donna Pope sits down with someone outside the adoption triad who understands its emotional core anyway.

Alicia Krasko is not an adoptee, an adoptive parent, or a birth parent. She is a stepmom coach, and the guilt she coaches stepmoms through, the fear that not loving a child instantly means something is wrong with you, is the same guilt Donna names from her own experience raising her son.

The Guilt No One Talks About

Alicia hears the same fear from stepmoms that echoes what many adoptive parents feel, that if love does not arrive right away, something must be broken. Donna describes her own version of it. When her son came to her at two years old, it took a matter of weeks, not moments, for love to grow. Neither Alicia nor Donna treats that timeline as a failure. Both call it normal.

Bonds Built Shoulder To Shoulder

Alicia's coaching method rejects forced face-to-face bonding in favor of shoulder-to-shoulder time, car rides, board games, even sitting through a video game neither person particularly enjoys. The goal is not a fun activity; it is a low-pressure one the child can tolerate long enough to let a real connection start. That principle holds whether the relationship began through marriage, foster care, or adoption.

Family Built By Choice

Alicia's own story reinforces the episode's second thread, that family is not defined by biology alone. She has stepped back from parts of her biological family and built a new community in its place, a choice many people in the adoption triad make in reverse. Alicia and Donna also name the loyalty bind children can feel, the sense that loving a new parent figure means betraying the parent they already have. That binding gets acknowledged here rather than dismissed.

This conversation is not really about stepmoms or adoptive parents specifically. It is about anyone building a bond with a child on a timeline they did not choose, and giving themselves permission to trust that timeline instead of rushing it. No matter where you are in your journey, you'll find people who understand.

Hear how a stepmom coach explains what it really takes to build a bond with a child who is not yours by birth.

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