thewaitingheart

Often in adoption books you will read a line or quick paragraph about not sharing your child's history with others.  I think it is one of the most over looked topics in adoption.  I hear far too frequently the detailed pasts of small children who come home through foster care or adoption.  I am not sure what the obsession is with other people wanting to ask such details.  Or even why parents feel it necessary to share this?  People would never ask such thing of a divorced mother, or a biological family or an adult.  Quite plainly put it is gossip in most instances.  I always ask myself, what is the end of sharing such information?  Is it honoring to the birth family or to the child?  What will this person do with this information?  Share it with another?  Maybe pray.  But in most situations, the incident is not a current need for the child. It can only harm a child for people to have sensitive information that he or she has not yet the emotional or intellectual ability to process.  Would he or she share this information?  If it is not the public testimony of your child's birth family or your child(that she can tell), I would always err on the side of silence.  Once the information is out to one--- you have no control over how it circulates, how it will affect your child or how it will be interpreted.