Life story work. Picking pictures

[darkriver198868]

I am a BM who is starting to look at pictures for my childrens life story book. They are to adopted. As adoptive parents what pictures would you like to see. Also how do you feel about pictures with BP's?

my son was adopted when he was nearly 8. He has lots of pictures from 4 -7, a few toddler ones, but no baby photo. He doesnt have any photos of birthdays or Christmas or other special occasions. He has a number of photos of him with dad, but none of him with mum. No photos of grandparents. I would like to fill those gaps for him.

Personally I don't mind photos of him with birth parents. They loved him, still do, but were not capable of looking after themselves, never mind children. For my son I think its important to know that they loved him and are not people he needs to be afraid of.

That doesnt apply to all children though. Other parents may have different views for very good reasons.

It must be a very tough thing to do. I hope you have some support

I wish we had more!
children want to know their history, they are curious, what does my birth mum/dad/grandparents look like. we wish we could answer that better - or show them.
pictures of happy times

i wish you well, and hope you are being supported

As PP says it depends a bit on the age of the child- with older kids it's hard to avoid. Personally I would love to have any nice photos my child's BPs had.

Send some good ones of both you and BC alone and one or two with you together, then they have a choice.

Not an adopter but a birth mum who's done life story work, I gave them quite a few but I know the ones they explicitly asked for where ones of me as a child, any of my family etc. They had all of his baby photos etc on file from foster carer (I relinquished at birth).

My sister and nephew gave photos in the form of a family tree. Along with photos from seconds old to the day they were last together. No one expects contact in the future, no one in the family uses their own image on social media, preferring to use their pets or interests to protect themselves also. They moved away as part of the pre adoption proceedings so chances of accidental meeting is Zero.
They wanted some privacy and at first gave only three photos of the child with her parents. they were promised of photos back which of course never happened.

HI Dark River, we adopted our child aged 1. Their foster career took so many photos of that year and sent every single one to us. This included photos of newborn in hospital, first Christmas, photos with bp when born etc. I printed them all and filled an entire photo album with them. With foster carers help, we ordered them and tried to put the month taken next to them. This was very important to me. I also printed photos of us decorating their bedroom before they came etc. All of these are in the photo album, in date order, mingled in with our child’s. I hope that one day it will be like a simple story of their life, with bp and ap mixed together and overlapping because that is what happened.
So any photos at all that you can bare to part with or put onto a memory stick. I don’t have photos of extended family but I wish we did.