I'm new here. I just joined. I need some advice from people in my shoes who understand.
A brief history: We were state foster parents for several years. M and K (siblings) came to us in November 2000 when M was almost 4 and K was less than a month old. K came with broken ribs
. The abuse that M suffered for the first years of his life was terrible. When he came to us if he was in the same room with you and you changed the tone of your voice during normal conversation he would start to tremble. He would never make eye contact. He had horrible nightmares. The first 4th of July we started setting off fireworks and suddenly M was missing. we couldn't find him anywhere. After several minutes I found him cowered/hiding under the front of the truck. So when he first came he was very fragile emotionally and mentally. He was diagnosed with post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The next 1 1/2 years we spent working with child protective services and the birth parents trying to get these kids back into the birth parents home. There was several months that the kids would spend weekends with the birthparents. Then the dad beat up the mom and went to jail (he is now in prison). She wouldnt work to keep a place to live for the kids and she wouldnt leave the dad so CPS started termination procedings. The parents fought it. It dragged on...finaly the parents lawyers told them that they would definately lose thier rights if it went to court so they decided to relinquish thier rights but only if my husbad and I would be allowed to adopt them since they had been with us 2 years at that point. So they relinquished and we adopted M and K in March of last year.
I have only seen the Birthmom once since then. I ran into her in town. She glared at me with dagger eyes and just asked how the kids were. I told her they were doing good and made the excuse to hurry on into the public restroom I was headed to when we saw each other. When I came out she was gone. I have had no contact with her since then (a yr ogo).
Until a few days ago I opened my mail box to find a envelope from CPS. Inside was a letter addressed to my husband and I. I opened it up to find a letter from the birthmom to M who is now 7.
She just wrote how she misses him and K and how she hopes he is doing good in school, is he playing sports, how she still has the necklace he gave her at their "goodbye" visit etc, etc. , the only thing that really bothered me about the letter was that she said 3 or 4 times in the letter for him to ask me if he could write to her and send pictures.
I talked to my husband about it and he doesn't want M to have any contact or anything (letter writting) until M is about 15. Also, he doesn't think we need to send pictures or anything. Basically he wants to put the letter up and ignore it until M is 15. I'm not sure what I think is right. That is why I am here. I know I think waiting until 15 is a bad idea because teen years are so hard. M knows he's adopted anyways. I'm finding it very hard to just ignore the letter. What I'm thinking is best is to just send some pictures (from me) with no letter. Then sometimes I think that I want to write her a letter and tell her what a hard time M has had the first couple years that we had him and how after some councilling and 1 1/2 years he is just know starting to become a "happy go lucky" little boy. He is only 7 and I think he needs a couple more years to heal. A couple more years to lift the weight of the world that he carried around on his little shoulders for so many years. He knows he is adopted and he knows he couldnt go home because he wasnt safe there. I know he knows those things but he still doesnt really understand it all.
I think "knowing" and "understanding" are 2 different things. I'm hoping someone really knows what I mean by that. I think contact with his birthmom will be okay when he "understands". It may be a year from now, it may be 2 years from now or more. I'm not sure. But, until then I don't think I should give him the letter. I'm afraid he is not ready for it. So, what do I do? Just send some pictures? Write a letter myself telling her how the kids are doing? Do I tell her that contact will be okay once Matthew has some more time to heal and to mature so that he can understand what happened and why? Do I just ignore the letter? What do I do? What have you all done? My heart hurts right now and I don't know what to do.
If you have read this far...thank you. Any advise is appreciated