Many adopted children come to their forever families with little more than the clothes on their backs. Some (especially internationally adopted) children have nothing to show for the months or years leading up to their adoption. However, they all have one precious possession.
Their story.
It may have lots of unknowns and holes but it’s all they have and it’s theirs. Not yours.
That means it’s not yours to tell or share. Certainly there will be professionals and caretakers that will need to know information for medical or therapeutics reasons. When information is needed, take care to only share the necessities.
When your child is old enough, he can decide how much of his story he wants to be made public.
In the meantime, you can answer curious friends and family with these responses such as:
- “We know enough information to be comfortable.”
- “We know but we’re choosing to let our child decide how much of her story to tell when she’s old enough.”
- “I’d love to share but it’s really my son’s story to tell.”
- “You’ll have to ask my daughter when she’s older.”
- “That’s private information we’re choosing not to share.”
We knew a lot about Ty’s history before we started working with our agency and had someone advise us to protect it as his. Unfortunately we probably were too liberal with how we shared it. Now we use generalities when sharing and, if he wants, will let him share the details later on.