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The children of my adopted son and his wife were all taken into care. The youngest two just a few months ago. The oldest two have been in long term foster care. Within the last month the oldest child, now 14, has found them on Facebook and has demanded to have contact with them. The social worker is setting up supervised contact. They are delighted. I do not know what the views of the foster parents are. So I would suggest that you do not put off sharing the later in life letter with your AD. Lily x

I am firmly convinced that your therapist is correct and that some level of paperwork should be shown to them before they get to ( or when they first show signs of ) " the difficult age" !! It counters any ideas that we are making things up or that the grass is greener in birth family. It balances anything they might get told on social media, etc, They have outgrown the kiddy level " life story" books and need armoured with the truth for the difficult years of waking awareness of life ahead of them. I think they should see at least some clarifying paperwork at that age. 18 is too late in the age of the Internet.

I think it depends on the child. We’ve always been very open with our three - the youngest at 12 is currently having therapeutic lifestory work because she was getting very muddled. She’s always shown more interest than either of my sons - all 12 months and under at placement. My sons are still not hugely interested, though my 16 year old has now started to ask about siblings. Doesn’t want to know anything about hus bps. We’ve talked. It’s fresh in my mind atm because dd - half sib - is doing lifestory work. I’ve told him about the later life letter and said it’s there for when he chooses to read it. He’s not ready yet. None of mine have made any attempts to trace - they’ve just not been that interested. I appreciate it may change and this is why we’re covering it now with DD so that she gets the facts. You know your child best. What do you think?

I agree with Donatella, it needs to be at the pace of the child. One of mine leapt at the offer of extra info, the other thought about it for a year first !! At the very least , the offer is there and we are seen not to be hiding anything and they know we haven't " stolen" them

Many thanks for the advice. I am going to ask my AD whether she would like to see it, but won't ask her until the holidays when there'll be a bit more time to process it. She's very impulsive, has some learning difficulties and finds it really hard to wait even 5 minutes, so I'll time it for when we could - if she wants - look at the letter immediately. I suspect that she'll want to have it, but won't want to read (or me to read) it all. However, I'll be able to suggest we do it bit by bit over the holidays.

Sounds wise to wait , we chose the beginning of the holidays too, In case anything upset them, didn't want it to affect school. Best Wishes, hope all goes ok Pingu

Following this with interest - I have a 13 year old and a later life letter. I had assumed it was for her to open as an adult, but had recently been thinking whether it needs to be earlier

Make sure you photocopy letters in case they get destroyed. Also, if your children want to keep the letters, it’s advisable to consider what happens if they’re taken into school or shared with your extended family or even neighbours.

Good point from Madrid. We scanned stuff, and also told then to keep paper copy here, because it was private, and we knew they would do that, we had waited till we felt they were mature enough to do so, but not all kids could be relied on to do that. Especially maybe one that was desperate to talk about things in the letter. If they hasn't been able to be trusted we would just have shown , not handed over. My eldest always talked with me and my youngest talked with his brother who already knew much about each other's circs. as they were older than usual when adopted and had talked to each other about their experiences previously. Might be worth having a discussion about who your child could safely talk to, if they wanted to talk to anyone apart from you ( and warn that person in case they do ! ) if that safe person, that you know your child would feel able to approach is at school, such as a school nurse, Senco, etc, then that might affect what and when you share. A lot to think about as each child is different. There may be those for whom it would not be helpful to share anything, but I would still lean towards thinking that as much honesty as possible is best. Best Wishes Pingu

Yes, I agree that it will be important to discuss sharing information (or not) with AD, and I certainly would not want the letter to leave the house. I keep copies of all the contact letters that I send together with the ones that I receive in a file, which is for AD when she is older. I'll be adding a copy of the 'later in life' letter to this once I've shared it with AD. Many thanks for the advice - continues to be really helpful.

I would also follow the therapist's advise. My daughters are 10 and 11 and last year my older one asked me to tell her "everything I know". So I wrote new life story books with everything in them. Some of the information goes over her head, but she is slowly working her way through it. She knows much more now than what is writter in her later in life letter. However, I agree with the others that it depends on the child. My daughter actually asked for it. Since she has it in a book, she can choose to read on or not, or ask me about it.

Both of mine had poor later in life letters so we took all the info from the files and put it together in life story narrative work. I have shown them their actual letters but explained there are errors & what they are.

I've just re-read my daughter's later life letter. At the end there is a paragraph about what to do if she wants to make contact with birth family. I definitely don't want that seed to be put in her head!

I always wondered why they put that, “For further information or if you want to talk about what’s in this letter contact.....” part in there. Surely it is for the parents to offer support and information many years after SS have long departed the scene. Although our children’s letter is well written and explicit, the last paragraph pretty much sets up a disruption or reunification.

As others have said it depends on the child. We were put under pressure to share later in life letter when our dd was 12 by post adoption. We had always answered questions and talked about her birth family as appropriate. We had assumed the later in life letter was for when she was an adult. There was some information we wanted to protect her from for a bit longer and so we hesitated. When we agreed to life story work from post adoption she saw it and was horrified about the section we wanted to protect her from. I still think she was not ready at 12 to hear that information about her mother; and it really affected her. Be sure that the letter does not have anything in it that would be best left till a later stage ; you know your child best.

Full names and dob's in LLL here which won't be being shared at age 12/13 (although that is probably the age LO will need more specific info).....apart from that, it is a very good, detailed letter. Needless to say, surnames/dob's removed from the version LO will see; can see the benefits of seeing the letter if the time, circumstances and support are right (but as above, much depends on the background).

Just came across ours the other day - it is very basic and none of the interesting information all of yours have - in fact much less than I have told them already. It's written as if to a primary age child which makes me think the idea was to give it to them as soon as they asked questions. It was never actually discussed - just left to me. To be honest neither of mine have ever shown any interest - my daughter has talked about BPs and her past quite a bit but never wanted to see anything except her photo album. To be honest they would both struggle to read and make sense of the information anyway but it is there if they do ever want to see it

An update. I shared the 'later in life' letter with AD today. She wanted to read it by herself and I'm not certain how much she actually took in as it is very long. She checked with me a couple of things - and also asked me not to cry when I said how upsetting I found it. She didn't want to talk about the letter in any detail but confirmed that she had in fact forgotten the various pieces of information that she had been carefully told over the years in our family therapy sessions (perhaps not surprising as she has memory problems and is also very avoidant). Her initial reaction was one of intense anger with her birth parents, which I told her was a completely natural reaction. She needed a bit of help managing that, and then said something that I had been expecting: that she had "shitty genes" and was worried about what sort of parent she would be. I told her what was known about how her birth mother had been mistreated as a child, that the great thing about adoption was that it broke the cycle of abuse, and that I hoped she would have children as she would be a brilliant mother. AD said that she never wanted to see the 'later in life' letter again (I said I'd keep it safe for her). We played a card game and she went to sleep without any difficulty. Suspect that she'll ask questions over the holiday but really pleased that it went so well.

You dont need to show them the letter to start up discussions of this nature and avoid informal searching for bf. You can just start a conversation with elements of what you know. Or do as I did and approach your LA for asf funding for life story work.