Building a sense of self
Every child needs to know the story of their life, and to keep adding to it with support from their adoptive or permanent foster family – not only to make sense of themselves, but also the world around them.
The life story narrative
Throughout life, people address, but can never completely answer, the question, “Who am I?”. This self-awareness, and sense of identity, seems to be unique to humans. We do not just live our lives, we tell ourselves the story of the life we are living.
Anyone who cannot produce a coherent life story for themselves is likely to struggle with other aspects of their way of thinking. They may find it difficult to make sense of information, or to remember things accurately, or to work out what is important and what is trivial. This is especially true of children who have been separated from their birth families. Our brains work best when we have a sense of who we are.
Formal life story work
Formal life story work is a way of recording significant facts, events and information about somebody’s life, so they have easy access to their past, memories and heritage. Life story work is often put into a book, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a memory box, an interactive CD or collage. Any people who are, or were, significant to a child in care can contribute to life story work, such as teachers, brothers and sisters, foster carers and friends. Files and records will be studied, people and places visited, tools and techniques employed to help the child develop their life story. This is usually done by a social work professional, as part of the preparation for adoption or permanent fostering – but families may want to continue developing it once a child has been placed with them.
Although children begin creating an autobiographic self from the second year of life, their life story is really held safely for them by their family. Part of growing up for a child is being told their story by all the members of their family and kinship group. A life story is built that becomes as accurate as human memory can ever be, and fits in with the stories and beliefs of the community.
When children are separated from their family they lose this day-to-day access to their story. It is the responsibility of those who have taken on the care of these children to ensure that they have access to the ‘truths’ of their lives, and opportunities to rehearse those truths in an age-appropriate way throughout their childhood. The need for formal life story work to be undertaken or updated should be considered at every stage of child development.
Informal life story work
Although essential, everything mentioned so far is just a small part of life story work. Children who have been adopted or permanently fostered need daily support to address their identity and past.
Babies do not have a sense of who they are. They get it from their carers. Every little interaction between a child and their carer gives that child a message, and is built into their ‘life story’. It forms the basis of the sense of self that emerges during the second year of life. The issue is not whether life story work is done, but whether it is done well. It will happen whether we take notice of it or not.
Many adoptive and foster children will have received some negative messages about themselves in early life. Others may have been given positive messages but did not have the ability to make sense of such feedback, so they received a distorted version. The purpose of informal life story work is to help children overcome or erase any harmful or distorted messages, which they may have carried with them from the past.
For instance, when an adult walks past a child and smiles, a secure and resilient child will think something along the lines of ‘I am loved’, ‘That person is happy’ or ‘I can make people smile’. All these messages can lead to quite different outcomes for the developing child. If a child thinks, ‘I am loved’, they will feel that they are lovable, and likely to find that the world confirms this belief. If a child believes that they can make people smile, you may have a new comedian in the making!
But many adoptive or foster children are insecure and vulnerable, following early trauma. They may read quite different messages into a daily interaction like this. If an adult smiles at them, they may wonder, ‘What do they want? I am in danger’. Or they may think, ‘They are laughing at me’, or, ‘They wouldn’t smile if they really knew me – no-one understands me’. These messages will have quite different outcomes in terms of child development, none of which is positive.
Children who think along these lines need support to re-write their reactions. Their adoptive or foster carers should try to make sure that from now on they receive enough accurate and positive messages to form a strong personal narrative. These children need to learn to think in different ways, to make positive sense of the world around them, and re-tread their early attachment process. With time and patience, they should slowly, step by step, recognise that their new family loves them.
Building the narrative, building the self
Ongoing life story work, both formal and informal, should help adoptive or foster children make sense of their lives and accept their current situation, as well as who they are. Only then can each child come to recognise that they are a unique and infinitely valuable individual.
Kate Cairns
Kate has written many books on adoption and fostering, looking at topics such as attachment, therapy and trauma. She is also the Chief Executive of AKAMAS, which provides training for those working with vulnerable or traumatised children or young people.
Originally published in the Be My Parent newspaper in March 2009.
This article is published with the kind permission of the people involved. You may download it for your own reference but if you wish to use it for any other purpose, please contact Be My Parent for authorisation: Be My Parent, BAAF, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Telephone: 020 7421 2666/5/4.
Last updated: 27 February 09
