Should I continue with letterbox

[Muminabun]

I wrote a settling in letter to both BP and then did the yearly letter. No response. I have not told LO as I don’t want her to feel rejected. She is angry and negative about BP. I don’t encourage this, I try to be balanced but I completely understand her feelings of hurt and rejection by them. It has occurred to me that continuing with letterbox when there is no reply is giving them an opportunity to reject her every year and that this is not best for my child and her self esteem. Me and DH have talked about giving them three chances and in the third letter outlining as kindly as possible our reasons for not writing unless there is contact. Can I have your thoughts on this please. I don’t understand as my gut feeling is that they did love her and if they did would they not grab at any opportunity to have even the smallest scrap of indirect contact? She has been through enough and I want to protect her.

ThAnk you so much all for taking the time to respond and sharing your stories. You have all given me so much to think about. I have done a bit of reading around and letterbox seems to be beneficial to children when it is appropriate and the birth parents respond. When there is no response I cannot see a lot of evidence that it is beneficial to children although as an adopter I would have a sense that I fulfilled an obligation that I agreed to. On the worse end of the scale I have also read that people feel that it was not appropriate for them to write to their child’s abuser once a year and that sent a negative message to their child. I appreciate this and I also don’t want to deny my daughters anger and teach her that no matter what people do to her she has to be nice to them just because they are biologically related, is this empowering? I put so much thought and detail into the two letters I have sent and I am so disappointed for my daughter as she had questions that she wanted to ask and I am heartbroken they have ignored her, I feel a bit like a simpering idiot. My daughter is doing better than expected, the truth is it will be a long road for her to recover physically and mentally from her experiences as a result of the bps choices. I am going to shorten the letter considerably next year and pull back on that. Me and DH will review each year and go from there as a lot can change. Thanks once again all.

Love is a strange word isn’t it I find I’m torn between feeling sorry for her and then damn right angry I also felt uncomfortable writing so much about my little one I felt in a way that I was invading her privacy it’s a tough one I have decided next time to keep the letter very brief I have to be honest and say that at the beginning I felt more compassion for the Bm having met her that changed slightly and now as I watch this amazing little person grow I feel a mixture of emotion fear of what danger she would be in if she ever wanted to find her anger at the fact bm thought no matter how bad she had been she was not at fault so in no way excepting any reasponsability for her actions I am adopted myself so have in my head that I will always be honest with my daughter and give her what she needs regarding bm regardless of how I feel as in supporting her finding her but honestly my heart says differently

@user149 Thankyou I think also adopters are busy getting on with life and raising traumatised children with special needs. I find I have little left over to give to birth parents and I would rather not get our hopes up once a year. A nice reply would mean a lot though.

I changed the way that I wrote my letters and while I addressed them to their bp's, in my mind I wrote them to my child as a celebration of who they are and as such they have become a really lovely record of their life that I treasure and hope they will in the future (I've kept copies of them all). After 4 years, I suddenly got a brief but pleasant letter back which has happened fairly consistently since and I am so glad that I didn't give up I agree with italian, a lovely way of doing it, and how lovely too that it had that affect!

We stopped writing to the birth GPs.

DD1 who was 8 when we adopted her, was getting upset about the lack of replies, and at her request we stopped. We wrote one final letter saying that DD1 was upset at no reply, and that unless we heard that they wished us to continue we would stop. SWs were happy with this.

I don't know what we would have done if it had been the BM who stopped though. As it is we & she have written twice yearly for over 10 years now.

@Muminabun It's hard to understand your lack of interest in how your negative opinion of their BP is going to negatively affect your own child, especially since you claim that children's needs should be put before adults' needs and that's what makes the BP so hateful in the first place.

I tell my child in regards to their BP that it's hard to succeed when life is stacked against you, and that it's hard to be a good parent under the best of circumstances, and almost impossible under difficult ones. I tell them that because that's what I believe to be true.

Compassion is an important quality IMO. People don't have to be perfect to deserve compassion.

Thanks for your response @notalurker2 although I think you have misunderstood my post not sure I have referred to birth parents as hateful 😳

I just wanted to update this thread and to thank you a,l again for your input. I have since received a lovely letter from BM and feel a weight lifted as I have something post adoption that is a loving contact for my daughter to see. We will continue to write. My only concern is that things are going well and I don’t want to upset the BM by giving her this positive picture while she is in pain from loss. Letterbox is so complicated.

@Muminabun I am glad you have received a lovely letter back and thank you for sticking with it. The letterbox process can be complex and frustrating for all involved. As a birth mum I want to hear my child is doing well- be honest. Say x started school and that’s helped them with their confidence and make new friends, they enjoy maths but their writing isn’t coming along as well etc.

Don’t write with a rose tinted glow of everything being wonderful. Maybe write about coronavirus in it- say “hope that you remained healthy during the coronavirus pandemic, we are all okay here- of course the lockdown limited things we could do and little one did miss going to see friends/school/playground etc, but as the lockdown has been lifted we have started to be able to do these things again. How was lockdown for you?”

My children's birth parents used to write back, but no longer do. This is painful for my children, but we have explained that it has been a long time and their birth parents need to move on with their lives. That does not mean they have forgotten about them. The letters are very painful for them.

I have everything: I have wonderful children, a happy marriage, a good education, a safe life. The birth parents have nothing. I will continue to send letters and let them choose if they want to read them and write back or not. By now I see them as part of my family and I feel a lot of compassion and some responsibility towards them. I don't want to make their life harder. It has been hard enough.

How old is your child? My children are very clear that they want me to continue to write.

We are 4 letters in and have had no response since the first.
This year, we dropped the pictures and sent a much shorter and less detailed letter.
I'm not willing to share if they aren't. Mum has had another baby and kept him but as far as she is concerned we don't know anything about him. Feels like she moved on but we can't move on in the same way.
We will keep writing so we can show our DD that we tried to keep contact going. So she cannot ever say, that we didn't do our best for her.