Over the past fews months, our birthparents, especially our bm, have sent some things for our son that have seemed inappropriate or just weren’t in our taste. Are we required to save and/or use everything that they send? Some things have been broken religious artifacts, some have been clothing that we just don’t care for. For example, she sent size 5T clothing for our son and insisted we take pictures of him in it for her- we told her that, as a then 11 month old, he couldn’t wear it but that we would save it for later and send her a picture when he could fit into it. Truth be told, if I had a choice, I would never put him that style of clothing.
Another example: today, we received a cd of pictures of our son at birth and the first 9 months of his life before he came to live with us. Included was 20 pictures of his bm’s naked breasts. Yes, she was breastfeeding him in the pictures, but her breasts are fully visible. Our thought is to take out the photos we feel are inappropriate. I’m wondering, though, if this is considered “censoring” in OA and we should save and/or use everything?
Related posts:
I don’t think you are “required” to save or use anything.
Friends, relatives, co-workers, etc have given us gifts and hand-me-downs. Included have been a number of clothing items that aren’t necessarily to our taste. They used to make me cringe a little, but once the munchkin was mobile and getting into all kinds of messes it was nice to have some clothes that I didn’t mind getting stained. Those are also the clothes that go to daycare/preschool. The stuff that I’ve found to be really awful “somehow” never fits during the right season and ends up getting passed along to someone else.
As far as anything that has been a gift from his first mom – he has used those items and I have saved all of them. She doesn’t send very much so it’s not a big box. I know they are things that she picked out specifically for him and I want him to know that it meant she thought about him. He may not care and end up taking the whole box to Good Will, but I’ll let him make that decision. I guess we’ve been lucky though because what she has sent may not have been something I would necessarily pick out, but I certainly have no aversion to her taste.
As far as any photos that you find inappropriate – I believe you can censor what you show him when he’s young, but personally, I wouldn’t throw any of them out. Tuck them away in a safe place for when he’s older. Breastfeeding photos make a lot of people uncomfortable, but it’s still a very intimate time that he shared with her, imho.
Save the pictures. You don’t have to do anything with them. Pictures are a part of history that shows that your son’s first mom loved(and loves) her son. To destroy that would be to scorn her love and possibly take that knowledge away from your son. You do want him to know that he has a first mom who loves him and always well.
As for the clothes…well..I would be honest with her and also find someone else for the clothes that you don’t want for your son. I honestly don’t understand what your objection is to the ’5T’ clothing…I don’t know what you mean by that.
As a first mom it makes me very very very sad that my sons adoptive parents likely ‘got rid of’ most of the toys I sent or put the clothes I sent on him.
Personally(at the time) I tried to be apporpriate and give age-related things. I asked many people for advice on what to give, some of the gifts I did just compulsively give. Once I sent kids size 3 cowboy boots(real leather). This was after asking what size shoes he wore(at age 2.5, he is 4 now). I have no idea what they did with those. I have no idea what they did with most of the things I sent.
Just a thought, I have pregnancy pictures and pictures of myself giving birth, the first couple of days of my sons life, and at the time I told the adoptive parents I would send them those, and I never did.(they were there part of that time and took there own pictures as well)
I plan to give them to my son went he is old enough to ask detailed questions about my pregnancy with him and his birth himself. They haven’t asked for them though, so maybe they don’t want them…
I remember the first visits I had at my sons adoptive parents home I tried to look for the toys that I sent, and I did not find most of them. I usually ask what happened to them(because really, gifts are the only way I can show love to my son in a what I think is a real and lasting way) and my sons adoptive mom usually makes some excuse like it got broken(which I actually like, cause it means that he actually *played* with something I gave him) or lost or put ‘away’ to clean up the house…
The truth is that what I give is so similar to the toys he already has(a few times the *very same thing* that it’s hard for them to remember what was from me and what was not.
Really, what impact on your life is it to keep these things. You don’t have to let them be a part of your life if you don’t want them too. But just ‘getting rid of them’ is like scorning the love that your sons first mom has for him. In the future, if you don’t keep *something* from his first mom your child mind doubt the love she has for him because of lack of *proof* for a lack of a better word.
Do you want you son to have a lack of *proof* of the love that his first mom has for him?
The pictures, I want them but am too timid to ask. Plus I don’t know if she has any. We didn’t meet our daughter’s first mom until after birth. Offer them. I would hold any pregnancy pics or pics of them together as priceless treasures.
I would most definitely NOT throw away any pictures and breastfeeding pictures are, in my opinion, most definitely too special to toss.
We haven’t saved every single thing Madison has gotten from her birth family but we do save representative things. Like we saved the dress that Pennie got for their first photo shoot together and we saved the doll Madison’s grandfather made her. We haven’t saved every little hot wheel car or jammies that have worn out, etc. I mean, we just don’t have room!
One thing you can do, too, is take pictures of the gifts and that way you have a record of them even if you can’t save them. Even if you don’t want your son to wear a particular outfit that doesn’t fit him anyway, you can take a picture for him so he can one day flip through an album and see what they got for him. If the clothes do fit, you can do what I’ve done with grandparents (whose taste is often not mine!), which is make sure I put my kids in the outfits and take a photo for them so they know we appreciate the gift.
Open adoption is hard. Finding the balance between “she never sends us anything” and “please stop the avalanch of crap” is hard for first parents. It’s especially hard when you’ve got people involved who don’t openly communicate their desires, which is what I suspect here.
What boundaries have you discussed in your open adoption?
How clear have you made your desires?
How open have you been to hearing their desires?
A couple of things that you said really struck me, aside from the ‘our bm’ stuff – which, I admit, was really hard for me to get past.
You mentioned that they sent broken items, items that didn’t fit or items that weren’t your style. No where did you mention how grateful you were that they were sending anything at all. You seem put off by their attempt to show affection in a manner in which they know how.
I don’t know what the financial situation was for your son’s birth parents, but I assume it was less than ideal – take that into account when you open the next package from them – consider that, while they may have sent you a broken statue of the Virgin Mary, money issues may be the reason.
Maybe ‘items’ are their way of showing affection. You don’t need to save them all – no, but I think you need to make an effort to save the ones you feel hold the most emotional value or are the most appropriate.
I know that my daughters mother has saved items that I’ve sent. I remember I started a ‘tradition’ of buying her Painted Horses for her birthday – I started when she was one. Her mother thought those things were the ugliest and tackiest things she’d ever seen. She HATED them – loathed them. We’ve had conversations where she told me that she once got one (3rd or 4th birthday) and it really took all she had to display it in her room…but she did it because she knew they had meaning – they had a purpose.
14 years later – they are my daughters favorite thing ever. Her mom’s still not ‘in love’ with them, she’s not a horse person, but she knew what I was trying to do and she respected that.
If you’re open to doing something like that for your son – you might suggest that to your son’s birth parents – suggest that they get him a meaningful gift for his birth day and for Christmas – something you can save for him. Tell them you want them to gift him items that mean something – something he’ll cherish.
Don’t just tell them to stop loading your garage down with broken religious figurines…
It’s about compromise and communication. You’re NOT going to get 100% of what you what – but you know what – neither are they. Relationships are about 50/50. You should strive for that.
I’m not making excuses – but I am urging you to step back and try to view this through their eyes. Maybe broken things and things that are to big (5T) are all they could afford – maybe the clothing was on sale.
It’s an outfit right? Wash it, put it in a ziploc bag, take it out in a couple of years, put it on him and snap a few pictures – some for them and some for your son. Is it really going to kill you?
Remember that open adoption is NOT about the adults involved – even though right now, that’s really all it is – it’s about the kid and parents often have to make some sacrafices for their kids…this just might be one of those times.
For the record – not adoption related – but my mother (80+ years old) loves to send my son stuff – ugly, awful stuff. When he was younger, that included clothes…I may not have liked it – but I always tried to put forth the effort to show them that it means something – even if it meant having his 3 year old pictures in my brothers old sailor suit from 1974…it may sound cute, but I assure, it was not…but it meant something and now, it’s grown on me and when I see it, I smile.
Anyway – all that to say, no, you don’t have to keep everything – but I think it’s important that you communicate your thoughts with your son’s birth parents so you can all get on the same page – else this is just going to be a mess.
Thank you, everyone, for the food for thought. We have said to her that we are greatful for her sending gifts but for her to please be sure she has enough to spend on herself first. She sent him a package from her Jamaican cruise, so we guess she’s doing ok financially. My challenge with the 5T outfit was that she immediately wanted a picture of him wearing it- he was only wearing size 12 mos at the time. We have kept her updated on his size, so we were a little confused. The outfit is stored- we promised her a picture of him in it when it fits, and we’ll keep that promise, which will probably be in a few years.
Maybe I’m being a bit prudish about showing my son boob shots of his birthmother. We’ve decided to create a clothed version of the cd for now and put the original away for when he grows up. My comment above was not that we wanted to get rid of all the photos. I was just wondering about the
ones where she’s topless. We’re grateful that they’ve sent us these special memories. We’ve made a photo album of pictures of his birthparents and it’s on his bookshelf where he can look at it any time he wants.
We get lots of stuff from our daughter’s birth family. I do my best to keep everything and think I’ve, so far, only intentionally gotten rid of one toy because it was so loud. I do what has been mentioned with toys and things. I take a picture so I can add it to the scrapbook. If it is anything special, or that was from when her birthmom was little I make sure I put it some place special so my daughter can see it.
I understand the confusion over the 5T outfit but I also have a comment on it. Is it possible that it is a family item? We put my daughter in a shirt that was 3T when she was a year old because it made cute pictures. You could do as she has asked and take the pics in the gigantic outfit and then be done with it.
The pics, I would do just like you said. Save the breast feeding ones for when he’s older.
I should add that we did also tell her that everyone who loves our son has been so generous that he has much more than he could ever use. We told her that we have to pass some things along to other families who might be less fortunate. No, not selectively what she sends- he uses what she sends that he can. I love the idea of taking pictures of everything she sends.
We care about his first family and about him having a relationship with them. When they placed him, their family told us that it would, understandably, be too painful for them to return home to his empty nursery. So we paid for a truck to bring everything down, even though we had already set up a room with things we loved. We integrated both together, also thinking he might feel more comfortable with things that were familiar.
When I read your original post my first reaction, as a first family-to-be, was for tears of sadness to flow. At least your child’s first mother cares enough, what-ever her location or financial situation may be, to send him anything! I’m sure it is painful for her in some ways. You should be appreciative of that much. You make her caring sound like such an imposition on you! Why is this? Yes, different people have different taste. That is no surprise to anyone I am sure. Why make it an issue? So she wants a picture of him in the outfit she sent him that was of the wrong size. What’s the harm in honoring her request as long as the outfit wasn’t too small? Yes, you have the expense of taking the pictures and sending them to her but I have a feeling that is not the issue here. If she has sent something (religious or otherwise) that has arrived broken, why would you not tell her that it arrived broken just as you would have any acquaintance that mailed you a gift for your child? Maybe it was poorly wrapped or whatever the cause but it will not be done differently in the future if she is unaware there is a problem. I get the feeling that there is an unvoiced issue here. Do you feel that you are reminded of her existance every time she sends something? If so, no offense intended but, you need to get a therapist or counselor to help you work through these issues before the tension is shared with your son. I’m no saying you should worship this first mother by any means but you should be just a little more appreciative and sensitive to the fact that you have a son because this first mother chose you to raise the child she could not. Some day he is going to ask questions. Do you want to answer any of them with, “It wasn’t to out tastes so I gave her gifts for you to someone less fortunate,” or “some of the pictures she sent of the two of you were not to our liking so we didn’t keep them.” Wouldn’t it be so much more gracious to be able to say: “Son, your first mother cared enough about you that she sent you these pictures of the two of you before you came into our lives and she sent these gifts that she purchased for you. I have saved them all these years so that you would be able to have them, and be able to do with them as you pleased, once you were old enough to understand their importance.” This said as you hand him the box(es) of the items you have saved over the years. You can be the villian or the hero in this story. Trust me, there is plenty of room for more than one hero in your son’s life. You decide but no matter what, you cannot be replaced as his adoptive mother who loved and raised him. I know I’m only on the outside looking in, via a post on the internet, but I hope you locate the real issue here and deal with it rather than push away your son’s connection to his first family. May God bless you richly.
Sue, there is much about our situation that can not be understood from postings on the Internet and I won’t be participating on this website any longer, as our situation doesn’t fit the wonderful mold of open adoption that everyone dreams of.
We are keeping a box of keepsakes for our son that includes many of the items his first family sends (even the ones that were obviously broken before they were packed) and also the topless pictures of his birth mother that his birth father sent him. Our son’s birth mother is better off financially than we are… What we are dealing with are 2 birth parents who live with mental illness- 1 has schizophrenia with schizo-affective disorder and the other is bipolar with psychotic episodes. We were not fully made aware of these challenges until months after their son was placed with us. So we have been surprised and upset by some of their responses and reactions- and not even half of these challenging situations have been discussed here. They are so often so inappropriate that we have sought outside, non-biased help and have been advised to try to cut back communication with them to possibly the point of going to court and closing our adoption. Our DSS social worker feels strongly that the court would support us in this. But we are desparately trying to find a balance and keep our adoption open. Our son’s birth father’s own family thinks they are too inappropriate and unpredictable and want us to cut off communicating with them. We’re talking about a man who trashed his own mother’s home and threatened us with a lawsuit after he got angry with us for posting the poem “Legacy of an Adopted Child” on our family’s website- we had made them members to share with them their son’s life as much as possible. I don’t want to feel negatively about them, but it’s a struggle when they tell us that we are not our son’s parents, only his legal caregivers, in their opinion. Obviously, this website is not the right place to get support for such an extreme situation and I am sorry to have upset anyone in my hopes of finding help in keeping our adoption open.
Tiffani, I totally understand your decision to pull back from here and I agree that this web site may not offer the best support for families looking for reasons it’s ok to close an adoption, which is the sense I’m getting from you. As I emailed before, there were a lot of red flags in the situation and I wish you’d all had better guidance before placement. I also know from talking to parents that adoptions when the child is an older infant is so so so so much more complicated. There are decisions you made that likely added to those complications (changing your son’s name is a biggie) and then untreated mental illness while not an issue for every open adoption is certainly an issue in yours.
I appreciate how the way things have soured colors your interpretation of your experience, too. I mean, those topless pictures aren’t (from what you said) the p0rn you’re insinuating here; they are pictures of her nursing her son. And while that is CERTAINLY emotionally loaded for everyone, seeing how you present it as something more inappropriate makes it hard to know what else we’re not getting from your stories here. I mean, it’s hard to know what their side is of it and while I appreciate your anger and frustration and fears, I also can’t help but wonder how it’s impacting your sharing with us. I wonder what the full picture is because I don’t get the sense that we’re seeing it.
I’m not surprised that the social worker advised you to close the adoption; it’s usually what people say when things get bad and certainly things have gotten very very very bad. But you won’t get advice about closing the adoption in an open adoption support web site. That’s just not what we’re here for. You can go to almost any other adoption bulletin board or email list and get adoptive parents who will applaud your decision if it’s to close the adoption but you just won’t get that here. Instead you will get people trying to help you figure out how to stay open in a way that works for all of you.
You shoot down a lot of the suggestions and I understand that. You feel like we don’t have the whole story and I know from what you’ve shared with me privately that we don’t. But again, we only have what you say to go on besides which it’s clear that you are set against your son’s first parents in ways that make it difficult to offer help you will hear.
To my eyes, this whole situation is a tragedy. These are parents who maybe SHOULD have lost custody of their son — I don’t know. You say that they were deemed mentally competent to sign away their parental rights but it doesn’t sound like they understand what adoption actually means. That makes me feel concerned for them. I also think you weren’t adequately counseled about the specific challenges of adopting under these circumstances. Like I said, adopting a child whose parents were parenting him for nine months raises issues that aren’t as present in a domestic infant adoption. It also sounds like your son’s extended first family is struggling and may or may not have been inappropriately involved in pushing the adoption. Again, perhaps his first parents SHOULD have lost custody but the circumstances around that loss sound just awful for everyone.
And then there is your son. What is best for him now? Is the social worker right that it’s safest for you to cut off all contact? What will that mean for him when he is older? Is it better for you to all find a way to maintain some measure of contact or is your anger and resentment towards his first parents and theirs towards you so toxic that it will harm him?
I do know that regardless of how you resolve the relationship (and I do hope you will reach out to the Kinship Center since they have experience about more complicated open adoptions), that your son will be better off if you get some help figuring out how to put to rest some of your anger. I’m not saying you have no right to it or that you need to be all sunshine and rainbows but you must resolve it somehow so that you can help him manage HIS relationship with them even if he never has contact again. I mean, they’re his first parents and he will need to figure out how he feels about them on his own. Kinda like how many of us need to accept that our children will have different relationships with our parents than we do and that sometimes lousy parents end up making wonderful grandparents, you know? Even if he never sees them again (and I hope that doesn’t happen), they are important people for him.
I don’t know what will happen for you all but I wish the best for your son. And I also urge you, whatever decision you make about contact, to understand that one day you might feel differently. Even if you end up deciding to shut it all down now, revisit that decision in the future when things have changed and (I hope) mellowed. Good luck to you.