What To Do If Your Difficult Child Destroys Their Scrapbook

Some kids, regardless of their age, behave in destructive ways.  This happens in birth as well as in adoptive families due to early trauma and attachment issues, but it can also occur due to other issues such as ADHD, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, and addictions.   Sometimes kids' destructive impulses turns towards family heirlooms, photos, and scrapbooks*.  What can you do if you want to create and give a scrapbook to your child but are also concerned about turning over precious photos and mementos to them?

Answer:  Go ahead and make the scrapbook, and keep the original one for yourself.  Take high quality photos of each page individually, and have those photos bound into a photo book from an on-line printer such as Shutterfly.

Order a copy for your (grown? teen?) child, and give them that copy instead of the original.  If they destroy the copy you gave them in a fit of anger, simply order them another one a few months later when things have smoothed over.

You can print multiple copies of these scrapbooks over time.  Isn't that handy?!  

You can also print books out for grandparents too, solving at least one year's "Oh no, what do we get Grandpa?" Christmas gift dilemma.

Problem(s) solved.

*  A life book is slightly different than a scrapbook, in that is has been created specifically for the adopted child to assist the child and family in integrating the child's past into the family's current and future structure.  It also helps the adopted child with issues surrounding belonging and identity.  I encourage adoptive families to create life books and to keep copies of these books in case the child acts out and destroys the original.