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“My six year old
hasn’t shown much interest in her adoption story so truthfully,
I have avoided the difficult talk about her abandonment, her
birthparents and her first year of life in China. She will be in
first grade this fall and now I’m not sure how to prepare her
for adoption-related questions.”
Our children grow
into understanding the happy-sad reality of adoption, and terms
like abandonment, but when these concepts come from us (and not
a schoolmate) we can offer positive support to the process. One
of the easiest paths through recounting an adoption story is by
fashioning a simple, photographic version of a lifebook.
Teaching our children to identify how they feel about their life
story is even more important than the words we use to tell the
story, so creating any foundational tool for adoption
understanding becomes a two-part process:
1) THE FOUR
FEELINGS
A lifebook is
basically the story of an adoptee’s life prior to his or her
adoption. Most of us have very little information about our
internationally adopted children, but we can use what we do
know with powerful effect. As parents, we can really think
about the images we put on a page, and be prepared to talk
about not just the photos, but the emotions that lurk behind
each innocent picture. Even very young children can learn
The Four Feelings: Happy, Mad, Sad and Scared, and can apply
them to people's expressions in photographs as they browse
their lifebook albums. For a child, this is an empowering
step! Identifying feelings is the first leap toward
understanding that adoption is both a happy life-changing
event, and a great personal loss. The written and/or visual
lifebooks we create, or co-create, for our children, are
both historical documents and tools of connection. We can
make them fancy or simple, but if we are willing to discuss
what lies beneath the print and behind the pictures, we can
also reach a special spot in our children's hearts. . .
2) THE PHOTO
LIFEBOOK for Young Children
A visual life
story is easily created by putting chronological photos in a
sturdy mini album. Begin in your child's birth country, with
the earliest referral photos you have of your child. Include
photos of the birth family, foster family or orphanage
caretakers, if you are lucky enough to have them. Add photos
of your child's city or province, the local people and rural
countryside. Use copies of the original images for a photo
lifebook, so that a child can keep the album on her own
shelf.
Periodically
flip through the album with your young child, and
matter-of-factly discuss each photo. No writing required!
Ask your child what she thinks is happening in each photo,
then describe what you see. This automatically, naturally,
and regularly makes parents use ‘tough’ words like adoption,
birthmother, orphanage, abandonment, finding place, Baby
House (Russia/EE), and foster parents. Ask your child what
she thinks is happening in each photo, then describe what
you see or know.
The photos also
give parents an important opportunity to talk about how the
child must have felt at the time of each photo, judging by
the facial expressions and body language in the pictures.
Talking about the emotion in the photos helps children to
think a little more deeply about what they are looking at,
and helps parents get comfortable with adoption conversation
on a truly intimate and connective level. You can end the
baby-album at a first birthday party, or first adoption
anniversary, but it doesn't really matter; the focus just
needs to be on the child's life, pre-adoption, and on her
transition to her new family and home.
Surprisingly, I
have found photo lifebooks and adoption narratives to be as
emotionally important for parents as they are for children.
Helping our sons and daughters with their stories allows us
to process our own feelings about our children's early
lives-- and gives us an empathic place in our children’s
pre-adoption experiences.
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Jean
MacLeod is the author of
At
Home in This World, a China Adoption
Story, and co-editor of
Adoption Parenting: Creating a
Toolbox, Building Connections. Her work
has also been published in Adoptive Families Magazine,
Adoption TODAY Magazine and in the adoption essay books
Passage to the Heart and Finding Happiness. Jean
has co-developed and facilitated parent education
workshops with family therapist, Doris Landry, MS., and
has connected ‘parent-to-parent’ with support groups and
in conferences across the USA, Canada and England. She
is the mother of three daughters, two of whom were
adopted from China through Children’s Hope.
Parent-to-Parent will be a new monthly feature to the
Children’s Hope E-news. Welcome, Jean!
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Life
Narrative Resources
LIFEBOOK WRITING GUIDES
(help for hard questions!)
Kay Graap's
Guide
www.foreverfamilycreations.com/products.html
Beth
O'Malley's Guide
www.adoptionlifebooks.com
Cindy Probst's
Guide:
www.lifebooksource.com
LIFE NARRATIVE BOOKS for
adopted children
At Home in This
World, a China adoption story by Jean MacLeod
Before I Met You:
A Therapeutic Pre-Adoption Narrative by Doris Landry, M.S.
Twice-Upon-a-Time: Born and Adopted by Eleanora Patterson
When You Were
Born in China by Sara Dorow
When You Were
Born in Korea by Brian Boyd
When You Were
Born in Vietnam by Therese Bartlett
Over the Moon: An
Adoption Tale by Karen Katz
Tell Me Again
About the Night I Was Born by Jamie Lee Curtis
Through Moon and
Stars and Night Skies by Ann Turner
When I Met You
by Adrienne Ehlert Bashista
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