So which school of thought is right when it comes to sharing your child's story, or not sharing your child's story? It depends. As I said in my last post, as with so many other topics, there is just no one right answer.

I do think that any "right" answer has to have at the core, respect for the child's privacy and feelings. However, there are many ways to handle this while still respecting and protecting the child.

For us, “right” is somewhere in the middle.

I like to share our adoption stories, as it is my sincere hope and prayer that by sharing our stories, I can inspire others to adopt. I want to advocate for kids…older kids, waiting kids, minority kids and special needs kids. I want the whole world to know how great my kids are, so maybe they’ll change their attitudes towards adoption for the better.

Being a “blogger”, I have the unique opportunity to share my stories with some of the adoption community, and others who are interested.

That being said, although I share a lot of details, I also keep a lot of details private, especially personal details about our children’s lives before they came to us. I try to share “my side” of the story…how we got to know about our children, what the process was like for us, what our trip to get them was like or what having them escorted was like, how they adjusted, how we adjusted, etc.

When I share personal details of my children’s lives, I make sure it is things that we openly talk about…happy things…special things…things that they are proud of.

For example, when I told the story of how we adopted Marcus (domestically as a newborn) on my blog, I shared the entire experience from our point of view, and while I discussed his birth mom some and gave a tiny bit of basic info, I did not give any of her personal details, information or circumstances. I shared our story, while still protecting her privacy and Marcus’s privacy.

Parents adopting babies have a lot more control over things…we have adopted several older children and all three of them have been very open about their early lives. Ben openly tells people that his first parents died. He doesn’t share how (and neither do we) but it is not a big secret why he was available for adoption.

I think it’s important for adoptive parents to see what your child’s comfort level is with sharing information, and guiding them (if needed) with coming up with appropriate responses to peoples’ questions. All kids should know that they can and should say, “that’s private” if they are uncomfortable with a question.

With our older girls adopted domestically, it is a little more complicated because they have a difficult background that would not be appropriate to share, but after some discussion with us, they have decided that they are comfortable saying that their first mom was not able to take care of them when people ask why they were adopted.

With all of our children we have tried to find a happy medium…sharing very personal details only with very close family and friends (and even then not everything), not sharing much of anything with nosey people in the grocery store and sharing my side of things with the adoption communities in an attempt to be an adoption advocate.

How have you handled sharing your child's story or not? I'd love to hear it. :)