Book for very young child on journey from birth parents to foster parents to adopted parents

[Applesnotcakes]

Hi there, posting on behalf of a friend who bizarrely seems MN resistant. Does anyone know if there's a book suitable for young children to talk about their life experiences in moving families?

My own birth experience is unusual - I have a donor conceived DD - and we had a book called Our Story which was a great support in talking to her about where she came from when she was little

My friends are adopting and the foster parents from the child's first year are keen to keep contact and my friend is concerned it all makes for a complicated story - why is the child not with birth parents, why did someone else have them for a year and why are they now where they are - 2 lots of rejection could be felt - and it could all be quite confusing.

The child is 18 months so its early days but certainly in my own situation it was good to talk about my daughter's origins before she could even understand it - just so it was something she had always known and there wasn't a great moment of revelation. Is that same approach possible here? Or even appropriate? Is there a story book that can help?

I know little about adoption so do please excuse me if I'm being insensitive in any way. Just trying to see if MN wisdom can help.

[NigelLikesSalad]

Hi Apples,

The child should have a life story book that will explain, in an age appropriate way their story. If a book isn't available then they should have a life story appointed person through the adoption agency they can speak to and get help from in speaking to their child about their own journey.

There are some nice books on amazon for children if you have a Google but obviously they aren't going to be the exact story for their child.

[MintyLizzy9]

Lots more adoption books popping up on Amazon lately, I've bought a few in the last few weeks.

[Leeza2]

Hi apples, the approach you use with your daughter is exactly the same one that your friends should use . And their child's sorry is actually quite simple compared to most adopted children , as he/she's only had two moves.

I hope Nigle is right , and there's a helpful life story book provided with support and training from the LA. But I've never actually known anyone who's had this made available to them. More typically , the life story book arrived years late, it's completely inappropriate and there's no training .

So it's more likely that your friends will have to make up their , perhaps adapting an existing story book to meet their one needs . It doesn't have to be long or complicated and the simple, age approached truth , is always best.

So for a toddler you woudo say eg

BP couldn't look after baby because they had a lot of problems in their lives and they couldnt even look after themselves . They didn't always remember to change the baby's nappy or feed it and sometimes they left it alone. Or there was lots of fighting in the house and baby was scared .

So SW looked for a new family for baby to grow up in . While they were looking for M and D, baby went to stay with john and Mary , who were foster carers . It was their job to look after babies while SW looked for a new family .

Or whatever . It's good if the story. An be written from the child's perspective ( not necessarily in the first person ) and be truthful . It's easy for the AP take want to make it all about themselves , how happy they were to get the baby . They think this is " nicer " because it avoids all the unhappy feeling of everyone else in the story . But that's not good in then long term , as the story is to help the child deal with its own feelings .

It's not Therapy for the AP or a consolation prize for the BP

HTH

[Leeza2]

I'm sorry for all the typos above , must stop posting from my phone. I mean

Age appropriate
It's good if the story can be

And I should have said you are a lovely friend to try and help her with this. I hope you can break down her MN resistance - usually the adoption threads are lovely ( as long as the trolls don't get us )

[Applesnotcakes]

Thank you so much for the responses. I'll have a look on Amazon but leeza your ideas are really helpful. I think they will need to make their own story and what you say about that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for that.

Really appreciate the replies and I will definitely keep trying to steer her to MN. I think people here can be amazing and it's often much easier to find someone with similar or relevant experience than it is in real life.