Our son is 14. He is still wanting to know his birth parents surnames. I have told him we are not allowed to find out until he is an adult due to data protection. Feel awful for not telling him the truth but he is very immature and would definitely be trying to find out information. The birth family all live close and have been in and out of prison
Have I done the right thing?
I definitely think you’ve done the right thing - there are so many posts in the archives where teenagers have found their relatives on Facebook and it has ended in disaster - they just don’t have the maturity to deal with the complexity of the emotion involved. It sounds like your sons birth family would be fairly easy to trace and also to get in contact with. They sound as if they could be presenting your son with all sorts of temptations and dilemmas which he would find very difficult to resist. It is an intoxicating allure meeting with birth family. My children knew the surname - but would have found it hard to remember or to spell and weren’t tempted in the same way. In fact my daughter was afraid of being found. Look through the archives and see what you can find
Hi Terraced House,
Yes I agree with Safia - you have really done the right thing. We recently hosted a webinar with Childnet (a child internet safety organisation), where we urged parents to not tell their children birth family surnames until they were old enough, as social media searching can be so tempting and can be undertaken with little support or guidance.
I will post the link to the recorded webinar on this thread and other boards when it is ready as you may find it interesting in relation to this subject.
Best wishes,
Charlotte
Hi All,
As promised, here is the link to the internet safety webinar we ran a week ago. https://www.adoptionuk.org/adoption-uk-webinar-with-childnet-making-the-internet-a-safe-place-for-your-child
Best wishes,
Charlotte
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