Readers Respond: Favorite Lifebook Tips

Responses: 1

Some foster and adoptive parents get very creative when it comes to helping a child maintain their history through a lifebook. I know of one foster parent that included a menu of a typical week's worth of meals in their foster home. Another foster parent made sure that there were pictures of birth family and letters from birth mom in her foster son's lifebook before transitioning into the adoptive home.

Lifebook-scrapbook

I discovered scrapbooking soon after becoming a foster mom. I was fortunate to have things like baby pictures, hospital pictures and bracelet. I also had pictures of his birth parents. So I put together a book and began with those pictures and articles. There was much to journal, so I just wrote like it were me experiencing his birth and as though I were feeling what a mom would feel. Although those may not have been their thoughts or feelings, my son feels loved and wanted and frankly that is more important that what might have been or not been written or even felt! He has always loved his book and has been able to share it with family, friends, and even his birthdad. His birth dad thanked me for including him.

—Guest Nancy Peterson