[shoshanna]

Have you made (or do you plan to make) a life book for your adopted child? If so, what are you going to put in it? What will it be like?

[MJ7]

I have made a book for both boys--a couple. I include much of what would be in a baby book plus info on foster family. Lots of pictures, letters from cw's and foster moms, us his parents.. etc..There is a book available through www.tapestrybooks.com called This is Me. I strongly recommend this esspecially for kids from the foster system. You can preview the books chapers on the website and see if it is relevant for your type of adoption. It provides the older child (when they're able to read it) lots of important information.

[heritagemom]

My dearest friend makes books for her adopted children and when they are old enough to understand, she tells them how they came to live with them and how much they were loved by both their birth mother and father and her and her husband. She also makes copies of their books for their birth mother and sends them through the agency to them. She feels like it's her way of saying thank you to their birth moms for letting her be their mother and it helps her feel more loving and compassionate towards a part of their lives that she was not a part of.

[MJ7]

We did a few different types of books to help our boys understand each step of the way. We made little photo albums of them as babies with thier foster fams and with us when they were placed. There are no words (they're 2 and 4) so it's a good start. Then I have thier THIS IS ME book which is when they are much older because of the sensitive information. I have a life book for the grade school years that has captions next to pictures that I scrapbooked. I have some documents like origional birth certificate, hospital bracelet, first hair clippings, adoption certificate, ceremony pictures, dedication stuff. All the stuff that happend up to finalization basically.
The point of this last life book is to fill in the gap of thier lives before things were "normal". I want them to have some concept of the special journey that took place for us to have become a family.
I also did a Welcome to the Family book introducing us for each boy that went to committee to be viewed. Though it was written in a story book format for the kids, it gave the committee a sence of how we relate to children.
MJ