would really appreciate some advice

[Desmoulinsonatable]

So, our beautiful LOs now have their feet firmly under the table. Littlest LO has very clear and mostly positive memories of BF. Although we think at least some of these are being conflated with FC memories. We have no desire to negate or change this in fact we are pleased and always make sure that we confirm that they were loved very much and that it good to still love their BF. It is tricky however in this light to explain their removal (for pretty extreme neglect) and wondered if anyone else had had experience of this with older LOs. Thanks in advance.

We use these general lines for our DD's

BM (learning difficuties) we say "she loved you but she wasn't able to make good choices to keep you safe and looked after"

With the BF (let's just say less nice) we say "I'm sure he loved you in his own way, but he maybe didn't know how to express that love, and when he was drinking he wasn't able to be a good dad or partner"

Thank you Sanders. We are pre AO and have no life story book yet. I want to tell her the truth but also keep it positive.

We've yet to get to this with lo as he's only 15 months but we will go along similar lines in that "BM did really love you but she didn't know what she needed to do to look after you. They tried to help show her but it was just something she wasn't able to do even though she wanted to." We will then probably go Along the lines of sometimes there are things that we can't do no matter how hard we try and keep practicing like X, y or z and that was the case for her. She did keep trying but she still wasn't able etc.

Not sure which age you need it to suit, but we use the image of a brick wall - each of the bricks has something written on it (food, drink, safety, comfort, cuddles, etc etc). We talk about how every baby and child needs all of these things to be there together, otherwise the wall falls over and the child isn't OK. "It was very sad but your birth family couldn't always give you those things..." So far, LO has not questioned the "why" of this, which is of course where it gets trickier.

IamnotaspoonIamafork that is a brilliant idea about the wall.

Not much to add Desmoulinsonatable our little one has few memories of birth family but says he loves them. We say they love him too. We give concrete examples of why they could not look after him, not able to feed him. So fa (aged 5) no real issues with this and he seems to accept and understand as far as we are aware.

Thanks all. They are 5 and 6. Gorgeous kids but only been in FC a year so had a big chunk of little lives with BF and very strong memories.