LifeBooks

One of our sessions during the adoptive parents’ seminar was on “LifeBooks.” For those unfamiliar with the term, an adoption LifeBook is more than simply a scrapbook of a child’s life. It is essentially a child’s history, beginning with the story of his birth and including what is known of his birthparents’ story as well. Usually a lifebook is written in simple, interesting terms that a child can understand.

While LifeBooks began as a tool used by social workers for children in foster care, they are now recognized as an important resource for any family formed through adoption – whether internationally, privately, or through government agencies.

I found this list of benefits of an adoption LifeBook online at www.adoptionlifebooks.com:

An adoption life book provides:

	- A concrete tool for meaningful conversation
	- An adoption security blanket
	- Attachment rituals
	- Structure for difficult material (such as reasons for the relinquishment)
	- Ways to normalize adoption language
	- Ways to reduce fantasy about birthparents
	- A front-load for adolescence
	- Opportunities to create positive identity and ethnic identity
	- Space for future events

Creating a LifeBook was never really suggested to us before now, but our new agency does require that adoptive parents create one for any child adopted through their agency. During the adoptive parents’ seminar, we broke up into small groups and were given case studies of true-life adoption situations. Some of them were very difficult and heartbreaking, but our assignment was to create a LifeBook that would be honest and sensitive for the child involved. Afterwards, Pedro and I talked about this subject at length and decided to create a book for each of our children already at home. We want them to always feel comfortable coming to us with their questions and thoughts as they grow up, and this seems like an excellent tool to initiate conversations and let them know we are willing to talk even about difficult issues. We also hope the books will help clarify any confusion they may or may not have over the years, as well as confirm our love and commitment to each of them. The difficulty lies in the differences between their stories. For instance, we have many photos of Isabel over the years with her wonderful birthmom, a few of Owen with his birthmother when he was just weeks old, but no photos or identifying information of Eva’s birthparents. But in reading carefully through our adoption paperwork and Eva’s birth records, I am able to pick out clues that can be woven into her history and as she gets older we can hopefully fill in the blanks together. So there you have it! This is a lengthy post on just one of the lessons learned at our seminar over the weekend. Hopefully it will be helpful to other adoptive parents reading this blog, as it was to us!