Life Story Book

[GracieHC]

We’ve just had LO’s life story book arrive. It’s pretty comprehensive and is basically a child friendly version of his CPR. Which has made me
wonder how are we supposed to make sure the book is always available for him but still keep his life story safe? If we leave it on his book shelf I can very see certain nosey family members getting stuck right in, plus it would be easy for somebody to innocently pick it up too.

How old is he? Has he had life story work?
To be honest, depending on his experiences if it has a lot of info from his CPR in there I wouldn't be letting him have free access to it unless some proper life story work has been done

I would make a simple photo book with a few words on each page depending on age. You can then show him this version as he gets older and keep it private.

I’m pretty shocked that they would body in something so private and personal!

Is there any way you could keep it in a bedroom or somewhere more private? Or depending on age, maybe instead of having free access to it, you could just read it regularly together at bedtime, say, or as part of the morning routine.

If he ignore reading age, you could also read it with him, and then just take the pictures from it, copy them into a child's version and then give him that. I'm basing this on the fact that my kids "read" the gruffalo nearly word perfectly to themselves whilst looking at the pictures despite not being able to read because they have listened to it over and over.

The other thing I've been considering is that my kids are really into their Tonie box recently, and you can get Tonies that you record onto. So maybe you could read his life story book onto a Tonie and then he can listen to it rather than just having a written life story book lying around, then just have a simple photo or picture book to go with it? It's less likely that people will put an audio book on compared to picking up a book and flicking through it.

I would write a simplified shorter version for him as long as he is little and keep this version for when he is older.

I have had quite a few conversations with my children about keeping their story private because it is normal. People don't share all sorts of initimate details with others. They are late teenage years now and have been following that advice. Some of their friends know a little, but not much. We all have some bits of information that everyone knows are okay to share and others that we all keep private.