To coincide with this week's "Foster Fridays" guest post by Jennifer (aka. Mama Lark), I will be giving away one of the following books on openness and honesty with your foster/adopted children. (Winner's Choice!)
- "Telling the Truth to Your Adopted or Foster Child: Making Sense of the Past" by Betsy Keefer & Jayne E. Schooler
- "Lifebooks: Creating a Treasure for the Adopted Child" by Beth O'Malley.
- "Adoption Lifebook: A Bridge to Your Child's Beginnings" by Cindy Probst
To enter, simply leave a comment here or on F@cebook about lifebooks, openness with your foster/adopted children, etc. Specifically looking for tips and/or your personal experiences...
Winner will be announced next Friday, July 13th!
13 comments:
Well I am really interested in telling the truth book as I have some questions I guess or mixed feelings about how when to tell my soon to be adopted son that he was adopted. My parents are old school and keep believing that he may not ever need to know, that he will hate me for being adopted, and many other thoughts, while I have thought from the get go that adoption will be part of our family communication and be something that is normal everyday talk. So hoping the book will help me find a happy medium of what I kind do to let him know how he came into the system and how he came into our house. Thanks for the contest & congrats!!
For each of our 4 boys we have wonderful lifebooks and each "Gotcha Day" we pull them out and pour over the wonderful memories...some real, some imagined (like what the weather was like the day they were born). They are invaluable and give a link to each child's past. I'd love to read the book on telling the truth as some of our kid's do not have things that would really benefit them in any way to know. Thanks for the contest :)!
For my first placement I didn't end up doing in depth life books (new mom, infant twins, yikes!) but made Shutterfly albums. I would like to make more in depth ones this time and am interested in ideas. Thanks!
We are in the process of finalizing our first adoption. Since this a new path we are going down I really found your guest post today full of wonderful insight as to "why" you would keep a life book and the benefits of being open and honest, especially with a child being adopted out of foster care. We have agreed to a somewhat open adoption with the bio mom. It is my desire for her to stay in our daughter's life. I want her to "know" where she came from....always. A life book is another tangible way for her to have an understanding of this especially if "mom" doesn't always stay in the picture.
Any one of these books look like they would be a wonderful addition to have on my bookshelf.
I want all three! It will be so hard to pick if I win. I just want to make sure I am doing everything correctly, I will have a hard time telling some of their stories and I would love to find the worlds
I'm finding it hard to even think about how to tell M his story. It's so horrible, it would scare moviegoers. I'm praying for a way. (also Friday the 13th is my 31st birthday, 13 31....ohhh)
I'm a single foster mom to be, anxiously awaiting my approval which all involved expect to happen in just a couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to guidance in all things foster care, but interested in the book on lifebooks. I have decided we will do family meetings / life books / meal and outfit planning for the following week each Sunday afternoon and I'm really looking for way to make this a positive experience for my kids. I want them to be excited about preserving something beautiful out of a time in their lives that may be perceived by them as a very ugly time - a beauty from ashes experience, if you will.
I could desperately use advice on creating a lifebook! I'm terrible at that sort of thing, but I know it will be so important for the little boy we're adopting from Bulgaria. Openness with him will be a delicate task, I think, since I know he was given up due to his physical special needs. I don't want to say that, but I have a feeling he'll ask. Fortunately, he's a favorite at his orphanage, so there will be good things to share about the first two years of his life.
Best tip I have is to always start with the child's birth no matter when they entered your family.
Even if you have nothing but the date start with that. You can put important things that happened on that day if you have no other details.
Love this giveaway. I love life books and life stories.
All of those books look awesome! We fostered, then adopted our daughter last year and I hate to admit I still haven't officially done a lifebook. My sense of perfectionism has kept me from getting started- I could definitely use some direction! Although she is only 2 years old, we do talk about her "Special Adoption Day" and look at pictures of this already and plan to share her story appropriately with her when she is older.
I'm a HUGE advocate for telling the truth - the whole truth - and nothing but the truth to ALL my kids! Granted, all information is given to them at age appropriate levels. But I think it's so important to be upfront and honest with them and their stories. Anything less than the truth gets processed as shame in the long run because they will find out.
My little guy was adopted at birth through the foster care system. He knows his story but I've not made a "lifebook" per se.
I'd like to read the first book you described to see their take on how to talk to foster children about their stories.
We will be finishing our first foster placement's lifebook this weekend. We had her from birth until ten months. We have gone all out on her lifebook (2 12x12 scrapbooks filled with extenders!) We will probably never do a lifebook quite as extravagant as hers, but you never know. We just want her to know that she matters, she's loved, and it's been that way since she entered the world. It's been great for my sister and I as we have done most of the lifebook, and it has been great to look back at the wonderful memories we had with her. My advice would be to start early on a lifebook- if you're waiting to bring your child home, you can start a lifebook and tell them why you chose to adopt, why that country, etc. Let them know right from the start that they are special and it's no mistake they were placed in your family!
And I haven't done any life books either. I tell my 5-year-old about the night he came to live with us and cried all. night. long. He's beginning to wonder where he was before...
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