Notes from a caseworker's file on the birth family should be included but identified as hearsay, not fact. For a child about whom little is known, she would include stories or articles about children in similar circumstances. For her Korean-born child, Penny collected articles and information about political and social issues in Korea. Including this information has given my daughter a much broader spectrum on how she fits into the whole scheme of things, a timeline of what's happened to her individually parallels what's happened in her country. Penny does not shy away from including difficult information as long as it is nonjudgmental and framed in developmentally appropriate language.
All history contains positive and negative elements.
It is important to a child's sense of self to understand the negatives as well as the positives. Penny points out that withholding information may cause a child to imagine something harsher than the reality. She also notes that some of the most excruciating experiences make the best scrapbook entries. Memories of an awful year the child managed to live through may strengthen a child's self-esteem more than a record of only upbeat successes. The more facets, easy and difficult, included in the book, the fuller and richer the portrait of the child that emerges.