We just put together a "Lifebook" for Elena. For those of you who haven't heard of this, the Lifebook is an interesting concept - it's a short book that documents the child's life from the child's perspective, focusing on recording memories and life events that occurred prior to adoption. Lifebooks are important in that they document te child's life, and help children keep the connections t o people and places that have been important in their lives, and understand and come to terms with all the information about their past experiences in a
healthy, constructive manner.
The Lifebook is different from the "Elena" book we put together in the past; the earlier book is really about Elena's adoption, when we met her at the orphanage, and what we did when we came home. We tried to put that book together from Elena's perspective, but it's still really about us - us as a family, yes, but it doesn't really touch on Elena's earlier life.
The lifebook covers Elena's whole life, starting from when she was born, and includes everything we know about her early life.
There are several tricks to writing a lifebook, not all of them obvious. It needs to clearly discuss how and why the child was seperated from her mother or family, in an age-appropriate manner. In some cases (although not in Elena's, thankfully), those reasons can be horrifying, and in all cases they can be at least a little sad. Those negative things make it tempting to just glide over the issue and make do with half-truths... but that's not fair to the child, who deserves to know everything about her past. Having a lifebook that covers these issues helps the communication between child and parents, and is something that the child can consult later and ask questions about at her own pace.
The lifebook also needs to clearly cover common misconceptions that adopted children have - for example, it's not unusual for adopted kids to think that they weren't ever born, they were just created. (That's not as silly a misconception as it may seem, if you consider how one might differentiate non-adopted kids, who "grew in their mommy's tummy," with adopted kids who did not.) As another example, children often believe that what happened to them - particularly the seperation from their birth mother - was somehow their fault. The lifebook needs to clearly explain exactly who made decisions that affected the child's life.
The lifebook is also supposed to be a lifebook: it will change and expand as Elena grows, partly with her input. (It's looseleaf, so additions are easy.) In fact, she already has some ideas on what other information she wants to include in the book. And, I should add, the lifebook is private. Elena might choose to share it (or some of it - again, a looseleaf makes selecting only certain pages easy) when she's older, but it's her choice...because it's her story.
The Lifebook is different from the "Elena" book we put together in the past; the earlier book is really about Elena's adoption, when we met her at the orphanage, and what we did when we came home. We tried to put that book together from Elena's perspective, but it's still really about us - us as a family, yes, but it doesn't really touch on Elena's earlier life.
The lifebook covers Elena's whole life, starting from when she was born, and includes everything we know about her early life.
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| The cover of Elena's Lifebook |
The lifebook also needs to clearly cover common misconceptions that adopted children have - for example, it's not unusual for adopted kids to think that they weren't ever born, they were just created. (That's not as silly a misconception as it may seem, if you consider how one might differentiate non-adopted kids, who "grew in their mommy's tummy," with adopted kids who did not.) As another example, children often believe that what happened to them - particularly the seperation from their birth mother - was somehow their fault. The lifebook needs to clearly explain exactly who made decisions that affected the child's life.
The lifebook is also supposed to be a lifebook: it will change and expand as Elena grows, partly with her input. (It's looseleaf, so additions are easy.) In fact, she already has some ideas on what other information she wants to include in the book. And, I should add, the lifebook is private. Elena might choose to share it (or some of it - again, a looseleaf makes selecting only certain pages easy) when she's older, but it's her choice...because it's her story.
