Sticky situation

[Albertachick]

My birth daughter is 17 and the adoption was very much an open one.

My birth daughter is on my facebook and we talk often. Last night I got an email from her...

When I was pregnant with her I wrote a diary and gave to her MOM to give to her, when she was older and felt the time was right...

Well apparetnly she found this Diary before her mom gave it to her.
She asked me about it (or if I even remeber it) and if there was anything else that I may have written or given to her that her MOM is with-holding...

Wow talk about putting me in a spot,,, because I have sent her cards and presents over the years
know I have no idea if MOM has given them to her or not. I would assume that she did, but don't want to rock the boat (so to speak) My birth daughter knows all about me, her siblings
(as I have 3 more children).

So I emailed her back and told her that I absolutely remember the Diary book, and I was sure her MOM was not with-holding anything from her and that she was most likely going to give it to her when she was 18. I asked her if she talked to her MOM about it and if she hadn't then I strongly suggest that she did. I then told her that her MOM loves her very much.


Now the fact that she has held on to this Diary all these years, tells me that she is not with-holding it. After all if she had no intentions of giving it to her she would never have held on to it for all this time

[Shelley]

I think you handled the situation well and agree that her mom is likely not hiding the diary from her or she wouldn't have kept it all these years. Obviously it has meaning to her mom and she likely saved it to give to her/your daughter some day. You didn't say how you answered the question about other things you may have given over the years. I assume you suggested she ask her mom about that as well? I assume you are in contact with your daughter's mom? Can you let her mom know that your daughter asked about if you had given her parents anything over the years that was meant for her?

[Paola]

To Albertachick,

I am an adoptive mother but only to a little guy right now. We have an open adoption with his bio grandparents as his birthmom passed away. They too don't want me to say much about his birthdad and we know why but we made the decision that when he is an appropriate age and responsible enough to handle certain information we will tell him as much as we know. Our son has met him about 8 months ago but not really asking a lot yet. I think as he ages he will and we will always want to fill in the missing pieces to his puzzle as best we can.

We would want the bio grandparents or bio family on the birth father's side to ask us first how we are handling something before they mention something to our son. We would want to work with them on how to proceed with the giving of information. Just because we haven't told him something in his early years doesn't mean we weren't going to. We are probably just waiting for an appropriate age and level of maturity to handle some information.

Not sure if this will help but thought I would let you know how I look at it from an adoptive mom's point of view.

[Karine]

This is a tough one but you did all the right things that I think I would of done. I think if more adoptive couples could see how you handled this there would be more open adoptions. So many adoptive couples are afraid of the birth mom going against them later in life and actually turning the child against them too.. which is silly.
But this was an interesting situation and you handled it beautifully. I think I might of called the adoptive mother and asked her if there was anything you should know about her with holding from the girl, but not sure what your communication looks like there.
Be confident in what you did and how exciting. She will most likely want to know you even more. Sounds like a start to a beautiful relationship