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Adoption Life Books: When You Don't Have Much Information
Designing a life book for your adoptive child or foster child may seem overwhelming, especially when you don't have a lot of information about your child's life before he or she became a part of your family. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is getting past the feeling over being overwhelmed.
Designing a life book for your adoptive child or foster child may seem overwhelming, especially when you don’t have a lot of information about your child’s life before he or she became a part of your family. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is getting past the feeling over being overwhelmed.
Each adoptive family varies in the amount of information they may have about their child’s birthmother. Some families have a relationship where the birth mom may actually baby sit for the family occasionally, to seeing them for a visit once a year, to having no contact whatsoever.
Many families have two or more adopted children and the relationships of the different birthmoms with the family vary. One birthmom may be very involved, while others have no contact at all. When this happens, oftentimes a birthmom of one child will go out of her way send notes or small gifts to the sibling of the child to make sure each child feels included and loved.
If you have a good relationship with a birth mom you may be able to get any information you wish for your child’s adoption album. She may even be eager to assist to help dig up information or answer questions to help your child have an amazing book.
If you are an adoptive parent who doesn’t have much information about your child’s birth or birth family, don’t worry. You can still make a book that shares whatever you know and helps complete your child’s history.
For example, though one of the most important parts of the life book is about the biological mother, you may not even have a photo. You may want to include a poem about how a birth mom feels or write something like, “Did you know that your birth mom and birth father passed along a lot of physical traits you to in their DNA. I bet you got your pretty blond curls from your birth mom!”
It seems hard to imagine for many people, but adopted parents may not even know the actual birthdate of their child or where he or she was born. Rather than making a big deal out of this in the life book, write something like, “We think you were probably born sometime during the winter of 2005. The director of the orphanage said that you weighed the same as the other children born around that time.”
Understand that it’s the amount of love and effort that you put into the life book that will most impress your child. As he grows older and starts to ask more questions, plan to do some of the research together to help answer the questions that arise. Until then, get started and don’t let a lack of information thwart you from crafting a loving adoption scrapbook album for your child. Kids love reading stories about themselves and they have the best imagination, having fun make up their own stories to fill in any blanks.