Honoring Their Story, Holding Their Past
Support healing, identity, and connection with our printable Lifebook pages.
For children and teens who have experienced foster care or adoption, Lifebooks encourage them to tell their life story in their own words and way. They honor the child's journey, helping them to explore who they are, record their unique qualities, and preserve their memories. Parents or therapists can also use them to initiate conversations about loss, family history, and emotions. Creating a Lifebook should always be a youth-led activity, meaning the youth choose what to include and how to share their story.
Why Lifebooks Matter
Lifebooks often include fun questions about who youth are, what they enjoy, and what makes them unique. They also include topics to help them process their past, understand their story, and develop their identity. They are especially helpful when a child’s past includes missing pieces, multiple moves, and challenging experiences. When children understand their history, they are better able to understand who they are today and to create hopes for their future.
Lifebooks can help youth:
- Talk about foster care and/or adoption in a safe, relaxed way
- Make better sense of their past and be hopeful for their future
- Express and discuss their feelings
- Remember positive experiences and accomplishments
- Increase confidence and self-esteem
- Encourage creativity and self-expression
- Build stronger bonds through meaningful conversations with parents or therapists
Lifebooks also connect youth to people and places in their past and present, which can lead to an increased sense of belonging. Working on the book together can also strengthen your relationship and bond with one another.
When to Use a Lifebook
Lifebooks are helpful at any stage of foster care or adoption. Ideally, they’d begin when a child first enters foster care, but they can also start years later or after adoption. It's never too early or too late to create one. For younger children, you can help them start by adding handprints or drawings. Teens might want to include poetry, song lyrics, or memes. What matters most is that the child or teen chooses what to include.
How to Start
There’s no right or wrong way to create a Lifebook. Our printable Lifebook pages are a great starting point. Lifebooks can also be handmade, pre-purchased, or built from downloadable pages like ours and placed in a three-ring binder. Some children will prefer coloring and drawing in their books. Others may like writing, pasting in photos, adding keepsakes, or telling you their story so it can you can write it down for them.
Remember: Lifebooks are personal, and youth create them for themselves. It’s okay if they don’t want to share their book or story with others. Always respect their privacy and the trust they place in you.
10 Tips for Getting Started
- Start simple. Begin with fun pages, like ones on their favorite things, before exploring deeper topics like their birth family.
- Suggest creative options that youth might like to include to express themselves and their feelings, such as song lyrics, memes, magazine cutouts, or stickers.
- Make it a bonding activity, if they’re open to it. You can build trust and grow your connection.
- Talk about their birth family, culture, and history with openness, sensitivity, and respect.
- No photos? Suggest drawing or describing what they remember instead.
- Include proud moments, like schoolwork, report cards, awards, and keepsakes.
- Answer questions honestly while also considering the youth's emotional age. It’s also okay to admit when you don’t know the answer.
- Understand that youth may not be ready for specific details yet. What they believe or imagine may reflect their level of comfort. So, carefully decide whether to address incorrect beliefs.
- Go at their pace. Lifebook creation can bring up difficult emotions, so allow time to think, feel, talk, and process.
- Praise their efforts and celebrate each page as an accomplishment.
Answering Tough Questions
When youth ask about their past, it can be hard to know how much to share. If their story includes painful events or if some parts are unknown, it can be even more difficult. While you don’t need to have all the answers, it helps to prepare for tough questions and topics by considering how to respond in advance.
Try to:
- Be open to conversations and questions, even if they feel uncomfortable for you.
- Offer truthful information in a gentle way that fits the child’s emotional readiness.
- Talk in general terms if there are details they aren’t ready for yet.
- Work with the child’s therapist, foster care worker, or adoption worker on ways to address difficult parts of their story.
The most important thing? Be open to talking. Let them know it’s safe to ask questions and that you’ll be there.
Throughout the Years
Even if they begin with a few pages, Lifebooks can grow into treasured keepsakes filled with meaningful memories and reminders of a youth’s strengths, growth, and resilience. As they revisit their Lifebook over the years, it can bring comfort, spark reflection, and remind them of the caring people who have been part of their journey.
Ready to Get Started?
We have several pages that children and teens can explore and print with you to create their Lifebook. Some pages have two options based on age. You can individually download and print them, so the youth can choose the ones they want. After printing, we suggest placing them in a three-ring binder. Visit our Lifebook pages to get started or click the button below.