I have a 7 yr. old we adopted openly, although have not had contact with birth mom in 2 years . I recently found birth mom on facebook and am thinking of sending her a message. I support any relationship with birth family when my daughter is old enough to handle it. I welcome your thoughts on this.
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I think this depends…
If this is a way to preserve the connection so that one day your daughter can choose to (or not to) contact their birthfamily, I say by all means. As long as you can truly be non-judgemental being friends with her, of course. Facebook, one has to remember, is often not a very…serious…environment.
For example:
We have a very open adoption and see our daughter’s birthmom and family often, probably at least once every two months, often more….so it was easy to be FB friends with her. What I have not liked is that I’ve had comments about her from several family members. Not cool.
However, bio-dad’s side is different…much much less contact. I have his daughter’s FB bookmarked so that in case we want to contact her (we including my daughter who is now only 3) we can do so. Otherwise, I will not because I feel as if it may jeopardize the relationship we have with bio dad.
I think messaging her would be a good thing. As a first mom I personally hope that my sons adoptive parents will message me and stuff. For me, besides the few visits I have had over the last four years, Facebook is the only way I get to know anything about my son, and usually it’s only through pictures. I’ll take what I can get.
Anyways, I don’t know the details of what made your relationship with your with your daughters first mom end two years ago so I am not sure exactly what is going on that way.
Like JessPond said…it depends. I think messaging her would be a good thing, however *friending* her at this time might not be appropriate.
Yes, Facebook can be a mixed blessing where people sometimes say things that are not …um…respectful…
Fortunatly I have not had that experience in reguards to my Facebook interactions with my sons adoptive mom.
Keep in mind if you DO *friend* her I would use the privacy options to block your friends from seeing that you added her…if that’s a concern for you. Really, you could also block HER from seeing things your friends post as well. They have really detailed the privacy on Facebook recently, it’s really amazing to me.
Also, and I think this is a totally completely separate issue from the whole ‘Should I message her’ question. What you decide to do about what you know about your daughters first mom is up to you, you know your daughter by now. If she is asking about her first mom or her orgins, then she is likely ‘ready’ to know more. I don’t know where the article is(I think it was posted here some time ago) but there was an article about open adoption that stated that the highest benefit for children in open adoption was during ‘middle childhood’ that is..between 5-11 years old, or something like that. So in my opinion, based on your daughters age ALONE(and what I read in that article) she is more than able to ‘handle’ knowing about her adoption and her first parents.
I know there are more factors in the teaching her about her orgins than age of course.
Of course I personally think that it’s the best situation for a child to ALWAYS know about who their first parents are, that they were adopted, that kind of thing.
It is my hope that my son will always know who I am and how he came to be part of the family he is part of. I know that the info on how babies are created and stuff is not appropriate to be taught until a person is going through ‘changes’(ie:for girls,getting a period..etc) but everything else can be known as early as a child starts talking responding to the world, in my opinion.
I hope my thoughts helped you. Just one question, so in the ‘open’ part of your adoption relationship, was your daughter involved personally in that?
Like I answered the last question: I agree with Cindy’s answer! I am friends with the Munchkin’s birthmom and aunt on Facebook. But we’ve done that since he was tiny and he’s still only 2 1/2. I feel like they are extended family and I maintain a relationship with them that hopefully he’ll eventually be able to pick up and work his way into, just like with other family members. I also like that they can see what is going on in our lives day-to-day, status updates, photos etc. I do post more than I probably would otherwise so they can see it.
I think that you might need to consider what goal you are trying to achieve and what you’re hoping to get out of it. The other thing is you could message her and maybe she won’t reply anyway: it doesn’t sound like you know why she broke off contact. I do think the nice thing about facebook is it is kind of passive, so it gives her control over what she sees of what you post etc at her own pace, if that is an issue.
I have created http://www.TiesToMe.com for families to connect with their children’s birth families apart from Facebook. This gives you more privacy, keeping your personal life separate and allowing you to share more details about your children that you may not want to do on Facebook. Hope this is helpful.