Contact thoughts.

We recently received another contact letter - the 2nd from this member of the children's birth family and it got me thinking. Nature vs nurture is a long argument with valid point for those sitting on both sides of the fence and I would personally like to believe that a nurturing environment has to play a major role in how children develop.

It was a lovely letter - hand written neatly, very thankful of our last letter and the artwork we included. I decided that with each letter I would send hand and feet prints from each of the children along with some of their more recent artwork. It is the only way I have of showing how the children are growing and developing. The latter is easy to achieve. They bring home mountains from preschool on a weekly basis plus they love drawing, colouring, sticking and painting so these are often things we do at home especially on rainy days when the garden isn't such a tempting distraction. The former is not difficult either, it just takes a bit of organising for example where can they wash all the paint off without covering the house. The garden and the paddling pool were perfect the first time I did these as they could paint, get covered and get washed without even entering the house!

Once a mass of paper is assembled it falls to actually writing the letter to accompany it all. I find it very  hard to write to a stranger. I have never met these people and the chances are I may never meet them so trying to include things that they will find interesting or want to know as well as striking the right tone is really hard. I like to make the letters as personal as I can - information about their development, the things they enjoy and any special events.

One piece of advise the contact team give out is to ask questions in the view that it promotes 'conversation' but I have no idea what to ask. 
I always print my letters. I know it is less personal that  handwriting them but my hand writing is appalling and I have 3 letters to do so I do cut and paste chunks that are common across them all. I do try and use nice writing paper and envelopes - I have some pale blue with birds and butterflies, a funky orange with a book motif and some stunning Beatrix Potter paper with matching envelopes, all bought for these letters specifically. I hope it shows that I care about these letters and that I understand how much they must mean to the children's birth family.  

So, I ask. What would you write about? What would you include? If you were a birth family member getting contact letters what would want to hear about? What would you like to receive?