Tapestry Adoption Story Digital

New Adoption Videos

Adoption Videos: Talking to Your child About Adoption ages 0-6 Years

This page is a series of videos from a moderated discussion on how to talk to your child about their adoption. How to use Adoption Books as a tool to help children process Adoption and family issues. The parents particpating shared their own feelings, and concerns about the subjects raised in the children's books.

Produced by Tapestry Books.

Transitions to digital albums.

If you are like so many recreational photographers, the thought of switching from 35m film to a digital camera may seem more trouble than it is worth. On the other hand, if you are like most of us you are already taking photographs with a digital camera or camcorder, and are still trying to figure out what to do with those images. Especially if you want to be creative and use the photographs in an album or digital scrapbook, making sure that the images are organized, cleaned up and that pages are assembled using other elements and text, is getting a lot easier. At the heart of the process is the digital editing software that makes it possible to share photos with customized and themed layouts. For example, Photoshop Elements 5.0 now includes flexible layout options as a starting point for your creations (a blank slate, basic frameworks, or professionally designed themes).

Going digital has opened up the creative possibilities for "art to imitate life". Scrapbooking has moved quite seamlessly into the digital age. "It's indicative not of the ubiquity of computers in modern life, but also of the way tradition evolves." It’s true that many who scrapbook are mostly female, and obviously they know or learn how to use computers and aren’t afraid of the medium. Documenting adoption memories in Lifebooks or albums is a process that you will find yourself doing over a long period of time, and using digital media enables the natural flow of experience and creation.

Lifebook workshop

This weekend I attended a Workshop, How to Make an Adoption Lifebook, sponsored by the Infertility and Adoption Counseling Center (IACCenter). The workshop offered a combination of practical hands on training about scrapbooking (presented by Betsy Schrel), and the more psychological discussion of how a Lifebook can be used as a tool to facilitate a dialog between parent and child about adoption (led by Joni Mantell MSW). The informal "support group" atmosphere of the Counseling Center, attendees that were the Center's clients, and the guidance provided by Ms Mantell, encouraged a revealing discussion between group members about parenting adopted children, and how Lifebooks were one way to give your child a connection to their heritage that encouraged the development of positive self-esteem.

As the only adoptive dad in attendance, no surprise, hearing the "woman's view" on issues such as how they viewed what to tell their children, and when, made me realize the value of this type of setting to share and process something that many might take for granted. There was a helpful distinction made by Mrs. Schrel about the creative storytelling process and the different types of albums that might be created such as Lifebooks, Baby Books, Family Albums, and Travel Journals.

Lifebooks apparently are best created, whether digitally or as traditional scrapbooks, with removable pages, added onto as the child's age or readiness for information develops. Lifebooks are a work in progress, to be used to open a dialog with your child and help them process their feelings about their adoption experience. Even in a domestic adoption, Ms. Mantell makes the point that, parents can set the tone or timing for when information is made available. It is really about how to talk to your child about adoption. It is your child, and it is their adoption story. Privacy of information and how it is shared is a question of parenting, and a choice each parent needs to make.

The thought that occurred to me is why not create two Lifebook albums, one story. One album give to your child and one keep as a work in progress. Only put those pages into your child's album that are developmentally/age appropriate. Each page illustrates and contains different information.

If you take photos, Mrs. Scherl advises, "get started organizing those photos sooner rather than later".  She has a wealth of practical tips such as:

• take existing photos and organize chronologically
• use photo-safe paper that will not loose its color with age
• when making albums, make color copies of original documents, and store the original safely
• always back up your images on disk

There are many ways to tell an adoption story, and the process of doing it will help parents think through those later conversations.