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How many times did my biological children come home from school and be required to bring in a baby picture for some kind of school project? How many times have you received a note from school about that?
It happens all the time. I never really thought about it until yesterday. Shy brought home a note from school. They are learning about how they grow and they are to bring in pictures so that they can see how they have changed over the years and how they have grown.
Thankfully, the teacher said that they could bring in baby OR toddler pictures. We don't have any baby pictures of Shy and I guess when she came home she indicated that to DW. DW did inform her that we had plenty of toddler pictures and we would send one of those.
Shy and I together picked out a picture from about a week after she came to us. She was 2 yrs and 2 months old at the time. That will be the youngest picture we will have of her. I know in future years, we are not going to have a teacher who will ask for a baby OR toddler picture. It won't be their fault either. The fact that Shy is adopted, as important as it is to us, will become less and less a part of who she is as time gos on.
Invariably one of the teachers will post the baby pictures on the bulletin board so all the kids will have to guess who the child is. Then there will be some event for parents to come into the school and all the parents will look at the picture of Shy and wonder what kind of people her parents are who couldn't even follow the instructions to send in a baby picture and sent in a picture of a 2 year old. I know.....I am getting ahead of myself and who cares what anyone else thinks.
What can I say? It bothers me.
I geuss what is important is that it doesn't seem to bother Shy all that much and she quickly got over it. She is happy with the picture we picked out. But what will happen if she is the only one without a picture as an "infant"?
I guess this is my problem and not hers. I have to be careful not to make it her problem. I do wish we had at least one baby picture of her though.
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Not having a baby picture may be more common now than when your other kids were younger. If Shy goes to a school in a higher socieo-economic area, there may be more older adopted kids, including some adopted from abroad. If the school is in a lower socieo-economic neighborhood, there are all the more reasons not to have a baby picture-- people move, parents break up (and may not effectively communicate when a baby picture is needed for an assignment next week), there are natural disasters, photos are stored in cell phones and not printed, etc. In fact, the longer it has been since she and her classmates have been babies, the more likely it is that other folks will have lost baby pictures (or at least easily accessible ones) along the way too.
ReplyDeleteBut if it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure there is a booklet or letter (a parent's version and a version to give to teachers, I think) or something like that put out by a national adoption group that deals with all of those problematic school assignments -- life story, family tree, baby pictures, etc. You may want to google it.
As a foster mom, adoptive mom, and a teacher I was always very careful to avoid these kinds of assignments. As the first comment said, there are many reasons why children don't have baby pictures, but what I realized is that most of the reasons are reasons that are painful. When the assignment could not be avoided my kids went online or through magazines and picked out a baby picture to adopt as their own! You can find traditional baby pictures, or as one of my kids did, can choose one where the baby is playing but the face isn't seen.
ReplyDeleteGail Underwood Parker
www.upbeatsanddownbeats.blogspot.com
It's too bad the social workers never took any pictures of her when she was younger.
ReplyDeleteI put your blog on my blog list, hope you don't mind me linking!
www.allaboutelizabeth-anne.blogspot.com
I understand the angst. It's your problem because you so don't want it to be a problem for her at some point. We are very lucky because P's social worker gave us a couple of photos of him from the time before he came to us. They aren't newborn pictures but one is from about 8 months and the other from around 9 months. I guard them with my life. I've scanned them and printed extras, saved the scanned images on carbonite, and keep the originals in our fireproof safe. Crazy, but I know how lucky we are to have them. I don't know if this would be worth it to your or not, but an adoptive parent on a forum I frequent had used a photo editing service that "regresses" photos.
ReplyDelete