LifeBooks - A Child's Identity

Parents who are expecting attend classes that explain childbirth and birth plans. Adoption brings on classes as well, but with different focuses.

Coley and I have spent our rainy Saturday taking our mandatory training classes to prepare us to be the parents of an adopted child. Adoptive children come with their own set of rules and guidelines that biological parents aren't as likely to deal with. For example, we will have to explain to our baby that they did not grow in "mommy's tummy" and that there is an entire other family out there that belongs to them. These classes help us better prepare for these issues and explain the best practices (like my educational buzz words 😉) for tackling these issues. 

We participated in 4 mandatory classes today and one optional one that we felt was important. One of these classes was about dealing with grief. Society often believes that adoption is all positive and that everyone is better off with this process. However, it is often forgotten that our child will have had to experience loss before they are placed with us. Their birth family will have experienced tremendous loss before we meet our child. We have experienced our own loss in infertility. 

Our child will have an entire family that they may not know much about, depending on our situation. We are planning on being open with our child about their adoption and their story, encouraging them to include adoption in their self-identity. This decision also comes with big problems, such as explaining to our child why their biological family created an adoption plan for them and explaining that while they may not be biologically related to us, we are their family. These classes provided us with ideas and testimonies that will help us navigate through these tough questions as our child grows up. 

One idea that we really felt was important was the creation of a "Life Book." This is like a traditional baby book but it includes our child's adoption story. It is created by the adoptive parents when the child is younger, but eventually can be turned over to the child to add to as they see fit. Coley and I are hoping to create a Life Book that will guide us through the tough questions that we will inevitably face and will encourage an honest and open discussion between us and our child about their adoption. 

A Life Book starts with our adoption journey. This blog is kind of our beginning this. We are documenting what is happening and struggles we are facing throughout this process. Once we decide how we want to do a paper version of our child's Life Book, we will create pages that detail the adoption journey for them. We will continue to add information throughout their early childhood and, when our child is developmentally ready, we will include them in the process with the hopes that they will eventually take over adding things to their book. These could be drawings they do that they feel is part of their lives, letters they write to their birth parents, school projects about families, etc. We plan to also ask family and friends to contribute to this book as time moves on so that our child will have a book that truly represents their whole life. 

If you are interested in learning more about the concept of Life Books, Adoption.com has a great blog post on creating one here.