Facebook adoption

FACEBOOK CONTACT
FOR
ADOPTED CHILDREN
AND
THEIR PARENTS

I’m a private investigator regularly asked to locate adopted children. I am a former adoption officer with a large local authority and I have an adopted daughter.

I can see the attraction for anyone involved in contact and adoption issues of using Facebook and other social networking sites to get in touch with their lost loved ones.

However, unsolicited and unmanaged contact is probably the most damaging way to bring about a positive outcome for all concerned.

I fully understand the need to make contact. I can see how the adults may believe that their child is distressed and lonely, especially when they are airing their views on social websites.

Most teenagers will go through a difficult time, but for the adopted, adolescents can be a very traumatic and challenging time. Putting their thoughts and feelings on the web’s pages can be likened to a page of their personal diary. Quite often they do not see the dangers of other people reading and internalising what they think are problems solely due to adoption, when in fact they are emotional ‘growing pains’.

Before reading too much into the writings think about your own transition to adulthood. Remember how traumatic that was! Did you want any adults involved with you at that time? I think not! Your friends were the ones you wanted around you. It’s the same on social websites kids want kids, not relatives, especially relatives they don’t know. Absent parents turning up ‘out of the blue’ is a recipe for disaster.

In every case that I investigated I made it known at the outset that if I did locate the child or absent parents, I would let them know that I’d located them but would not divulge their whereabouts unless they wanted to me to. Even then I built in a cooling off period. Once the decision had been made to meet up I then set about counselling everyone involved not least the adopting parents who quite often were the most threatened and vulnerable.

None of this can happen on a social network. This is dangerous and potentially damaging ground that should not be trodden without a well equipped, qualified professional.