Mothers often spend hours creating baby books or scrapbooks for our children. A Lifebook is a special kind of baby–scrap book for adopted children. Just as a mother often writes milestones and important tid-bits of information in a child’s baby book, a lifebook is where adopted children might look for the story of their lives.
There are many ways families can help children answer the important questions and understand their own unique history. “Life books, ecomaps, lifemaps, and lifepaths are all tools used by foster/adoptive parents and children’s therapists to help children of various ages understand and find ways to visually represent the answers to questions of how they came to be separated from their birth family and where they will ultimately belong (Fahlberg, 1991).”
A lifebook, is an account of the child’s life in words, pictures, photographs, and documents. Adoptive families may include pictures of the family before the child arrived, and important information, names and pictures of people who have taken care of the baby or child.- “An ecomap is a visual representation of a person and the important people and activities in his or her life. A child’s ecomap may have a circle in the middle of the page with a stick figure of a child, along with the question ‘Why am I here?’ Lines are drawn out from the circle like spokes to other circles representing the court, other foster families, siblings, school, or to other topics such as ‘things I like to do’ to visually represent what and who is important to a child and to help the child understand how he or she came to live with the adoptive family (Fahlberg, 1991).”
- “Lifemaps or lifepaths are visual representations to help children understand the paths their lives have taken and the decision points along the way. They may have stepping stones to represent a child’s age and a statement about where and with whom they lived at that age. They may have lines that go to a drawing of a house representing any foster homes a child lived in, the years the child lived there, and a mention of who lived with the child at that house, if known (Fahlberg, 1991).”
The important thing is to include information to help children understand their past history. Information about their birth families and birthmother. An explanation about why their birthmother decided to place her baby. An explanation of why and how the child entered foster care. Information about when and how decisions about moves and new placements were made. Information about how and why the adoptive family was selected.
Baby pictures and pictures of birth parents should always be included, if possible. If there are no baby pictures, children may want to draw a picture of what they think they may have looked like. Any information is better then none so writing, “there is no information about your birth father” at least acknowledges the father’s existence. It is important to be honest, and provide age appropriate information.
Some families create a main lifebook and then offer the child a photo copy of pages and pictures in a small easy to look at book. Before starting the transition process it is a good idea to collect everything you possible can. For an older child purchase some disposable cameras and allow the child to take pictures of the current foster home. Gather all the information you can about your child’s past and collect pictures and other pieces of information to put in the lifebook.
Just as every mother spends years adding to our childs baby book, scrap books and other memories adoptive parents add to their child’s lifebook important information about who the child is and where they came from.
For more information about Transitions:
- Getting Ready For Your Child’s Arrival
- Adoptive Parents WAIT!
- Transition is All About the Baby or Child
- Planning For Transition
- When Travel Is Required
- Transition of Siblings Anna’s Story
- From Orphanage or Institution to Home
- From Foster to Forever in the Some Home
- Toddler Transitions
Reference material and quotes for this article from: Fahlberg, V. 1991. “A Child’s Journey Through Placement.” Indianapolis Indiana: Perspectives Publisher. Photo credits for this article: 
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For more information about parenting special needs children you might want to visit the Families.com Special Needs Blog and the Mental Health Blog. Or visit my personal website.