Apples, Nuts, and Family Trees

Several months ago, I had a conversation with an adopted teen that expressed the difficulty of feeling connected to his family tree. He told me a story of being asked to complete a family tree at school. When he told the teacher that he couldn't do the project, he said the teacher told him to make something up. "Isn't that stupid," he said. I have to admit, I did thing the teacher could have handled the situation better.

I assumed he would use his adopted family tree. But, after talking to him, I understood how bringing up the idea of a family tree, watching other students talk about their families, and not knowing his genealogy created a little anger and some distress. I don't want my children to have this angst. I want to make sure the know how they are connected to me, Ethiopia, and both families.

I wondered how many of us living in our birth families could really complete a family tree? I started thinking about how I would integrate my children into our family tree. I wanted to connect them to any information I would learn about their birth families. Then it dawned on me that I would have to create the family tree first.

I found this FREE family tree tool that allowed me to complete the family tree in a couple of hours. You should really check it out. I sent the link to a couple of family members and now we have 8 generations and about 260 family members on the tree. There are also two slots for my little ones. I hope to get birth family information because the tool makes it easy to add them too.