Advertisements
For those of you that have done books for future adoptive placements what all did you put in them? I am amking one for A who is 4. She will be coming to our home this weekend and it is our second visit with she and her brother. Since she is going to see the house I did not see a need to put pictures of it in the book. Do you agree with that? Also when you identifiied people how in depth did you go? Do I need to say this is Aunt so and sos kid? That they have siblings? Or just a name by teh picture and who they are to us?
Like
Share
We did a book, too, but for a 17-month old who is now our daughter. Our agency gave us a lot of suggesitons. They said keep it simple. Photos of mom, dad, sibs, pets, maybe not so many of the extended family so it's not overwhelming.We did photos of each room of our house and wrote captions. For the living room, for example, we wrote, "This is where we read books and watch TV." For the back yard, we wrote, "This is where we play and have fun together." You might want to do this, even though she will have seen your house, it will help her remember until the placement happens. We did captions in bright colors and included some fun stickers on the borders, to make it more appealing to a child.Our daughter still has the book and looks at it from time to time.Good luck and congrats!
Advertisements
Our family book includes photos of the house, yard, neighborhood landmarks (park, lake, schools) in addition to family members. Our CW suggested any site the child would see on a regular basis. We decided to provide a picture pedigree for DH and myself. At the top of DH family page is a photo of his parents with the caption "Meet Tommy's parents. You may call them Grandpa and Grandma Eddy" For his brother the caption reads "This is Tommy's younger brother Allen. He will be your Uncle Allen." I hope this helps you.
We are making the family book now too. I put pictures of us doing our favorite things and made simple sentences like: " Sometimes we make cookies " or " We like to go to the beach " - it's hard to know how detailed to get, but it may just be the social workers who see it in the case of an infant placement. I am leaving out extended family so nobody gets freaked out or overwhelmed! lol...
I did a small photo book of pictures of me, the pets, extended family members, etc.
But for my second placement I made a home video. I put music on the sound track so it wasn't just me chatting inanely. For example, in the section where I filmed the local elementary school I put music of kids singing the B-I-N-G-O song, and it seemed like the kids sitting outside the school were singing it.
One of my placements came with a photo album of the previous placement. She showed me the pictures and introduced all the people as her own family. I was confused for quite a while, because I didn't realize that was the photos from the previous placement (which had lasted only 3 weeks).