Beach Reading Update

We had a great trip to the beach and I am so thankful we were able to go.

I enjoyed reading Parenting Your Internationally Adopted Child by Patty Cogen. There were lots of great nuggets of information that I will keep in mind as we prepare for our child to come home.

One neat idea that I had not heard of before is something the author calls the "Three-Photo Story." The first photo is of your child before the adoption, ideally the earliest one you have. The second picture represents the "handover" showing you recieving your child from the orphanage director or foster family. The third picture is you and your child and represents the child's new family.

The author suggests combining all three pictures onto one sheet and then making multiple color copies and laminating them if possible. The Three-Photo story is a simple way to tell your child his or her story and open the conversation about the child's feelings. Dr. Cogen also mentions that as the child gets older (possibly at age 4 or 5) the child may want to add other special symbols to the photo story, such as his or her birth certificate, passport, flag of birth country, etc.

I finished the book pretty quickly, so I also read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and Parenting with Love and Logic by Foster Cline and Jim Clay.

I highly recommend Three Cups of Tea, especially to other teachers. Sometimes as a teacher it is easy to get bogged down in the "details" of the school year and lose sight of the big picture. The book is about a mountain climber who eventually built schools in Pakistan and Afganistan. There is also a young reader's edition to the book and I am planning to read it next. I'd like to see if it is appropriate to read to my kindergarten class in the Fall. In Atlanta, is is easy for my students to take education for granted but I think it would be good to help give the children a global perspective about education and how not all children in the world are able to go to school.

Although I did not agree with everything in the book, Parenting with Love and Logic was a good read and I'm sure I'll be able to use some of the strategies as a parent and as a teacher.