From Protecting Adopted Child’s Privacy Series:

3. Gossip often spreads inaccurate information.

Unfortunately, if you allow people to talk about your child’s history, the story that gets around will probably not closely resemble the truth. This can cause issues for your child when he hears a different version of his history from Aunt Marge than he does from you. How will he know which version to believe?

Do you remember playing the telephone game as a child? The first person whispers something into another person’s ear, and the message is passed from one person to the next until it reaches the last person in the chain. When the last person reveals the message that has been passed along, it is quite different from the original message.

Gossip is very much like the telephone game. The story that is circulated is very likely to be different from the truth. In most cases, the story will be embellished in a way that is more “entertaining.” To most people, “more entertaining” is generally more scandalous. While scandal might be entertaining to others, it can be devastating to your child.

Your child deserves to know the truth about his history without embellishment. Your child also deserves to hear these truths from his parents, who love him and are not sharing this information to be entertained. If your child’s story has been circulated through your circle of family and friends, then he is likely to hear a tainted version of his history from someone else who might not share this information with the same love and support that you would.

I shared in my last post, Child’s Privacy: Containment Issues, that my husband and I told our son’s story to one relative, who then told another relative without our permission. Between these two relatives, and with the passage of time, their memory of what they had heard was not the same thing as what we had told. They had been nursing negative feelings toward a member of my son’s birthfamily for years, and yet their memory of what had happened was not even accurate. If I could go back in time, we would have never shared this information in the first place.

Related Topics:

• Adoptees Personal Information Needing to Remain Their’s


• Protecting Adoptees Past Information



• Saying Too Much



• How To Keep Your Child’s Story Private



• On Sharing Pre-Adoption History



• Sharing your child's story...or not