Quote:
|
Originally Posted by nee18
I was just curious, for those of you in open adoptions, how you handle displaying photos of your child's birth family? Our son's not even a year old yet, so, as many other posts of mine have said, we are still trying to navigate our OA situation. Here's my situation to better explain: I made a photo book about things we did with our son in 2008 and I included pictures of us with his bfamily, which seems totally logical to us to do. However, I'm hesitant to sit it out because my husband's family is so threatened by the OA. I don't want to hide our son's birthfamily and we have been trying to educate my DH's family on OA as we go, hoping to increase their comfort level, but they're just not "there" yet. They were not all on board with the adoption from the beginning, but have fully taken on our son 100% as part of their/our family now, which we are so happy about. I just don't want to sit out the album and have them feel threatened or insecure by our relationship with our son's bfamily. But, I also think eventually they are going to have to get used to it because our son's bfamily will, hopefully, always be part of our lives and we want our son to be able to talk about them and share photos of things he did with them, etc. We don't ever want him to feel like he has to hide his relationship with his bfamily. We want him to be proud of it and feel comfortable talking about it with his whole family, not just me and my DH. What do the rest of you do with pictures around family that's not so on-board with OA?
|
We have pictures in many places including kiddos' bedrooms, in photo albums and in the main areas of our home. And I speak of our relationships (with the birth parents of our kids, which are not not easy or ideal) often in order to make it a normal part of conversation instead of something that some people want to skirt around and would rather pretend doesn't exist or doesn't matter to our children. Otherwise, I am teaching them that it is okay for them to be uncomfortable, teaching them how to treat us and our child. I feel like it is important for them to understand that this is our choice for our family (just like when we decided to adopt and some were against it) and that they will have to find peace with it because it wasn't changing just because they were uncomfortable. I would not want to hide those pictures from anyone to make them more comfortable because I don't want my children to think I'm hiding their birth families from anyone, or that I'm embarrassed of the fact they were adopted into our family.
I would recommend you put the album out because in the end, if they are going to uncomfortable with and threatened by your choice for your child, it is for them to deal with. And I would hope that they are able to find some peace with it in the near future before your child begins to understand that his family isn't accepting his other family.
Blessings...