Kids and Lifebooks: Tips for Social Workers
Every child who is adopted from foster care deserves a clear and detailed record of their life prior to adoption. As a foster child looks forward to a forever family, a life book can help them understand the past and prepare to move forward.
Once a child is placed with a permanent family, life books are a connection to the past that can inform and enhance the future. Made with care, life books are an invaluable tool in helping children through difficult life transitions and allowing them to take ownership of their unique stories.
Simply put, a life book is a book that presents the life story of a child. Like other books, life books can contain significant pictures, artwork, text, and other memorabilia that convey information about a child’s personal history. What kid doesn’t like being the protagonist of their own story for an audience of their choosing?
It’s pretty simple at first…until you start factoring in abuse and neglect, multiple placements, losses and claims, complicated legalities, and disruptions. How can you translate abuse, drugs and rejection into terms and images appropriate for a five year old? You may need to learn some new skills, but a well-constructed book of life can contain a story of even the deepest loss and grief.
key components
When I was a new adoption worker, the seasoned writers in my office created a kind of life book template/checklist. All our life books included:
or information about the birth of the child
or a copy of the child’s birth certificate
or biological family information
or why the child entered foster care
or a history of different investments
or a worker blessing page
To boost children’s self-esteem, our template included a lively birth page. A common phrase was: “When you were born, the doctors exclaimed oooh and aaah…”.
While I believed in all the components of the book of life, I never liked this line. To me, it just didn’t ring true. Many of our children were little drug addicted babies fighting for their lives. Life books are supposed to be about truth.
Truths from the book of life.
Because life books are historical documents, it is never okay to lie. Sometimes, however, you may not know much about a particular event, for example, the time the child was born. In such circumstances, you may need to say, “I bet…”.
For example:
I bet your birth mother was happy that she gave birth to such a beautiful girl, but she might also feel sad and confused because of her bad drug problems.
Official documents, such as birth certificates and hospital birth records, are a great source of factual information, and children love to see important papers that validate their very existence. Foster children sometimes need to be reminded that they, like everyone else, began life at birth.
Another way to promote the truth of the book of life is to involve the child. After all, this is his story. Take crayons and markers and find a quiet space. Young children may enjoy dictating while you write; Pretend they are a guest on a talk show and interview them. Other children may want to write their own words and you turn them into neat printed pages.
Some truths are difficult to explain and accept. But if an event is an important part of the child’s story, include what you can in a developmentally appropriate way. A teenager may be able to understand “sexual abuse” and a biological parent who was “addicted to cocaine and alcohol,” but a younger child may better understand phrases like “touching bad” and “couldn’t stop bad drugs.” “.
Omissions tell a child that things are too bad to share. Then the child can fill in the blanks with much more frightening imaginations and a feeling of guilt or shame. Truth leads to healing, and troubling past events can, over time, fade away and become “just the way it is.”
Family history
Think about your family for a minute. What relatives do you take next? Whose athleticism matches yours? Whose laugh echoes yours in the same jokes? Whose nose is (for better or worse) stuck to your face?
Much of our identity comes from being part of the generations that came before us. Children who live with their biological family can see the characteristics they share with their relatives. They also hear and relive family stories at the dinner table, at family gatherings, and through shared memories.
Children who are adopted from foster care may have vivid memories of their birth family, but relatively few positive stories or happy moments shared. Once the birth family is out of their lives, they lose important connections.
Can you imagine going through life without meeting anyone who looks like you? Imagine what it’s like to go through a major life event, have a baby or get a cancer screening, without knowing your family’s medical history?
Lifebooks can help answer questions that keep kids, teens, and adults up at night wondering. Adoption caseworkers often have access to detailed social histories, old medical records, and other caseworkers who once worked with the birth parents. If visits to the birth parents are still taking place, you have a golden opportunity to collect important data and images.
In my opinion, any possibility to obtain information or images should be considered as a last chance. Additional family photos and details about the birth family will be treasured by the child and her parents for the rest of their lives.
And let’s not forget about the brothers; they have a special magic of their own. A simple page with siblings’ names, ages, photos, and locations can do wonders.
asking why
One of the most difficult and critical parts of life books answers the question: Why don’t I live with my biological family?
It’s not wise to tell a child that their biological father was sick (unless it’s an honest part of the story). Don’t sick people usually get better? And if mom gets better, shouldn’t the child come home? What if mom doesn’t get better? Is she dead or is she dying? Why give the child this concern?
I tell children that their birth father, birth mother (or other caregiver) had adult problems and was unable to take care of themselves. In fact, the caregiver took such poor care of himself that he couldn’t care for a child, any child, at that point in his life.
By placing the responsibility squarely on the adult, we can help children work through nonsensical thoughts that are evidenced in rhymes like, “Step on a crack and break your mother’s back.” Many children with a history of abuse believe that they were bad or in some way responsible for being separated from their birth families. As social workers, we must ensure that children do not carry this burden of false guilt throughout their lives.
I often ask children directly, “Why do you think you are not living with your birth family?” In 10 minutes, I get more information from this question than most therapists in 10 sessions. Depending on the circumstances, I will then discuss each child’s specific situation.
Investments
Location pages are usually the easiest. Start with here and now; make a page about the child’s current school, favorite foods, good friends, favorite sports and activities. Get all the photos you can. Do the same for previous placements in foster homes, group homes, or emergency shelters.
If the child is about to enter an adoptive placement, a favorite page may be one that commemorates when the adoptive parents and child first met. Interview the parents and the child separately, and then share your quotes. Now you are accumulating text for the book of life.
Look for school report cards, awards, and positive quotes from teachers and foster parents. Rewards and praise can help children feel good about who they are, a feeling that can give them the ego strength to cope with difficult transitions.
The Worker’s Blessing Page
As a social worker, you have probably worked with this child for months, if not years. Just before placing the child up for adoption, take the time to write a page for the back of the book of life. Talk about the child’s strengths and what you think is special about him. Include a funny story or thought.
It is important to give a child permission to move on and be happy. This is a powerful message for years to come.
Doing it
A team approach to life books can be very rewarding. If the foster parents can capture a few moments in the child’s life, perhaps take a photo of the birth family and share a photo of the foster family as well, then the book of life has begun. Social workers and therapists can add to the registry.
When the child is adopted, carefully transfer the book to the adoptive family. Train adoptive parents to keep the book of life in a special, secure place. If the child wants the book in her room, make a copy of the original for her to keep. The child decides when the life book comes out and parents should never share the book without the child’s permission.
The book may become part of adoption anniversary celebrations, provide help with a family tree assignment at school, open the door to conversations about adoption and identity as the child grows, and help to deal with the painful loss of his birth family. Then too, it may be something that the child can only appreciate once he has a family of his own. The life book should be available when the child is ready.
Shortly after I began working on children’s life books, I heard from families whose children had had my first typewritten efforts. To my delight, they reported that life books became more valuable over time. Lifebooks provide foster and adoptive children with crucial life-affirming information: basic facts about themselves, as well as an understanding of where they came from and why they have a new family. It also gave them permission to remember and grieve their losses and bond better with their new families. What a gift!