Second letterbox

[Whatutalkinboutwillis]

Hi everyone.

Am just about to do second letterbox. Our social worker recently visited to do our good bye visit as our child is legally adopted now. We chatted about letterbox and how the second letter was almost die and she asked if we would be adding a photo. I said we would as agreed however she said she thinks ds is becoming too identifiable now he is becoming older and she wouldn't send a photo.

I'm so confused as to what to do. We had a lot of difficulties with the ao due to birth family and dh is now so peed off he has said no photos. However I feel it was what we agreed and I can't help but think of the birth family opening the envelope to find no photo. We live closer than we would like to them and have bumped into birth mum once already - would it be ok to do a photo perhaps from behind or with hat and glasses on? I just don't know what to do for the best.

People further down the line do you send photos?

Thanks for any advice

I have several lovely photos of DS which show him from behind or just a close up of various bits of him, or with sunglasses on.

I'm not sure what to suggest but I am absolutely sure that whatever you do should be informed by what is best for DS not what you arbitrarily agreed to when you barely knew him.

Thanks folks. It just seems cruel when we said we would send photos. I was just surprised our own social worker said not to now he is ours and dh is in total agreement. They live about 15 miles from us and when we seen them it was 10 minutes from our house.

Just speaking from my own situation, but we decided not to send photos despite pressure from SW because we wanted to leave DD as free as possible to do normal things like be in her P1 class photo, which are printed in the paper. If birth family knew what she looked like, we wouldn't have felt sure it would be safe to do that.

Contact is a funny thing. Everything else in adoption is meant to be about the best interests of the child, but when I asked our SW how sending a photo was in DD's best interests, she said, "Well, but contact is for the birth parents."

Oh and I do know what you mean about feeling cruel. We did too. But we decided that DD had to come first.

You are right. I'm going to bite the bullet and do the letter no photo. He starts p1 this year and have already decided to keep him out the photo that goes in the paper as although he has grown he would still be recognised. I feel rotten but decision made. Thanks everyone