Maybe you are a birth parent in reunion with your adult child. Perhaps you are a birth parent involved in an open adoption with your relinquished child and the adoptive family. Maybe you're even an expectant mother considering adoption and trying to decide what information is pertinent to pass on to your child should you decide to relinquish your rights upon birth. Whatever your scenario, the answer is simple:

Just about everything.

Over the next few days I'll hit on some "big" things that you most definitely want to share as well as some smaller ones that you might not have thought of on your own. But when it comes down to it, your placed child wants to know you, to know about you and how those things make sense when compared to their own history, likes and dislikes.

It doesn't just stop at medical history, though that's the most important one and what I'll be discussing tomorrow. It goes deeper and further than that, far beyond allergies and history of heart disease in the family. It goes beyond even smaller medical things such as whether or not your teeth are prone to cavities and if you fought bad acne as a teen.

Imagine not knowing anything about the person who gave birth to you. (Which isn't hard for those birth parents who were also adoptees.) What would you want to know? What information would you crave? Think about that now and write it down.

And yes, I want you to write it down.

Sharing stories by word of mouth is the easiest way to pass information. But its also the most easily forgotten. Writing it down creates a lasting story that can be read over and over and passed on down the line through your child's family. It may take some time to get all of the information down. (Consider blogging!) But your child will be grateful. And so will other members of your family.

For those birth parents already in reunion or those with grown, adult children (who were in an open adoption), what's the one thing that they most liked to learn? Let us know.



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