Creating a “Memory Box” For Your Foster Children

One of the things I’ve heard over and over from former foster children is that they often miss out on having keepsakes and mementos from their childhood, especially if they’ve been moved between several homes. Many of us take it for granted that we have baby pictures, grade school projects, and other mementos from our early years—but not a child who was in foster care. Sometimes, entire years of their lives are undocumented because of so many moves.

I remember when our first foster children arrived. I had every intention of maintaining nice scrap books for them. But then reality hit—there was no way I was going to keep up with a scrap book! So I came up with a different idea: Memory Boxes!

It’s been nearly six years, and I still maintain Memory Boxes for each of the kids who is with us for more than a couple of weeks. This past weekend, I had a chance to speak with a woman whose children were in foster care for six months (and have been reunified). She told me that it meant a lot to her that her children’s foster parents gave her photos and mementos from the time her children were away from her. Memory Boxes are not just for the children in our care—they’re for their parents, too.

Here is my (very simple) system for keeping track of mementos for each of our kids. This video is old (no, I didn’t cut my hair—this is what I looked like in 2015!), but it’s still my practice all these years later! The boxes I used in this video are no longer available, but these* would work well!

Hope you find it helpful!

*Amazon Affiliate Link

7 thoughts on “Creating a “Memory Box” For Your Foster Children”

  1. Erin says:
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    This is great! I kind of do the same thing except I add dvds every few months of the pictures that I’ve taken of each kiddo and add these to each box.
    I love the calendar idea!

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  2. Jamie Lynn Kimbrough says:
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    This video is how I “found you” as it was part of the WA CCT video series! This is such a great idea. I also love the idea of taking pictures of the art children create while they’re with you and getting it made into a printed book from someplace like Shutterfly. Making a dvd of images is also a fantastic idea.

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  3. Robin says:
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    I love the idea of a box. I usually do a photo book with some of the pictures captioned by what we were doing and/or who was with us and add a folder of mementoes. I think the box would be perhaps easier for them to keep it all together over time.

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