found my birth son on myspace. sent parents a letter in dec,heard nothing. he's 17 open adoption. contact him?

Leyka**

Definitely NOT he is 17 years old not legally an adult yet so if his PARENTS dpont feel that its appropriate for you to contact him and they havent reliped to you as of yet, take that as "No" they are his parents and if they wanted you involved then they would have let you kno so by now... im sorry but i dont think its right for you to reach out to him without HIS PARENTS consent

WierdWiseWonderful

Harsh as this may sound, he has a Mum and Dad. He may not want to have contact with you. Yes you 'gave' birth but they raised him. He is not your son, he is their son.

Birthers are NOT mothers

It's an open adoption, but you haven't asked for a pic or info on him in almost 18 years? Wow, your concern for your offspring is inspiring! Yeah, he needs you like a hole in the head. If you make contact, you need to be damned sure you plan on sticking around in his life, not just feeding your own curiosity.

Ta-Da

I say, it won't be long until he is 18 and wouldn't be surprise that any teen would fudge their age up a few months and try out the freedome before they are entitled. Thank goodness he isn't 13 and saying he is 18 if I found that I would find his parents to let them know. It just seems it can't be that long until he is an adult and his aps can't control his world.

LiteChat

Do seek the advice of an attorney and a Professional counsel er, 17 years seems like a lot of time to waste if you really did want a relationship with your "son". Pardon me, but parents are the ones that take the time, effort and sacrifice to raise their children. Not the ones than comfortably watch them from the distance...and then conveniently come to "reapa' the fruits of the adoptive parents labour. Where were you when he took his first steps? came back from his first day at school? or first date? How many bills did you pay to fix his teeth? or to pay for anything, for that matter?

durdenslabs

Maybe he got the letter but is to scared to meet you face-to-face or write you a letter. I'd say send him an email or comment on his myspace account and see if he responds. If so, good. If not, well...he was adopted so he might not want contact.

onfaithalone

i would def contact him

Pip

Whatever way you choose to make contact it is worth dong so no matter what the outcome.

When I was coerced into surrendering I was told to forget him, get on with my life, I would never be allowed to contact him only he could do that but he would be 'too happy' with his adoptive parents to want to contact me.

The law changed over the years but I didn't know that as I convinced myself he wouldn't want to kmow me. I came across his details on Genes Reunited as he registered with his original name and I contacted him without thinking it through. Fortunately he did want to know and had been searching for years.

JennaBear

yeah, i'd contact him. it's myspace, people get contacted by totally random strangers. if he doesn't want to talk to you, he's old enough to decide.

grapesgum

I suggest that you contact Claudia Corrigan D'Arcy at her blogspot (link below). She was in a similar situation with her son. She did contact him and they are in reunion. He was a few months away from his 18th b-day and his adoptive parents had a $hit fit about the contact. They got pretty ugly about it so be careful there.

Even though it is supposed to be an open adoption they might get nasty with you and try to poison your son against you. Understand that it sounds like you did not hold up your end of the openness so they are probably going to resent your interest now and see it as an intrusion.

http://musingsofthelame.blogspot.com/

Does your son know that this was supposed to be an open adoption?

Good luck!!

mapleleaf2

You have every right to contact him via his myspace page, but I do wonder why you weren't interested before now? You have had 18 years to express interest and get to know him.

My son was stolen via a coerced surrender that actually violated criminal code laws regarding abduction of a minor. I searched for him for 19 years, putting my name onto numerous registries in case his adoptive parents wanted to open the adoption, and even hired at PI when he was about 8 to try to find him. If I were you, I would have been trying to trying to find and contact my son. Why didn't you bother until now?

One obstacle you have already put in your way is that if you did voluntarily surrender him without having been coerced, then he has every right to feel angry and rejected about having been given away. His reasoning (and the reasoning of 90% of society) is that, after all, if you had really loved him you would have kept him, right? People do NOT give away those they love. Mothers in the animal world fight tooth-and-nail for their offspring unless they have rejected and abandoned them at birth. Did someone convince you that giving him up was 'the loving option'? Sorry, sister, but they lied to you and you had better "follow the money" to find out who made a profit off of the adoption (agencies can make up to $25,000 or more off a healthy white infant).

Good luck in contacting him. I think you were sold a bill of goods though regarding adoption. It *is* legalized abandonment and most mothers realize that we don't give away children we love -- we fight to keep them. You may want to explore if someone convinced you otherwise or used a tactic such as open adoption to convince you to surrender your child. I know many natural mothers whose children refuse to have anything to do with them as they feel their first experience in life was to be rejected by their mothers and adopted by people "who actually loved them." We KNOW we loved and wanted our babies (most of us did anyway -- can't speak for "Dreamweaver" here who knew she did not want her baby), but our children may not know or believe this.

Rushevents

Speaking as an adopted child I can speak on this pretty well.

I do believe you should contact them but you should not do it directly. If I were you I would get an intermediary to make first contact or alternatively a letter - not an email addressed to him to ask if he is even open to knowing you.

When I was 17 that answer would have been NO!. Now that I am older I am curious as to who they really were other than the bit of info I have. If my birth mom had contacted me I would not have seen her but I would have kept her name and contact info.

Your child may be different than me but if you just show up out of left field you give him no room to react and get used to the idea.

It would have felt like an ambush to me.

So yes contact him just don't do it directly.

Ghetto Superstar

Oh God, I hated that. My birth dad sprung a myspace attack on me, and after that I chose to cut contact completely.

Be careful with this.

cats3to2

It's considered very poor form in contact ettiquette to contact the parents instead of the adoptee. Even if the adoptee were 12, it would be better to call and ask to speak directly to him/her and then tell him/her to let the parents know who is on the phone.

Many adoptees are so angered when their parents go through the adoptive parents to talk to them that they cut off all contact permanently. The reason being is, they feel they had no say in their adoption, and here they are able to speak for themselves and they are still being negotiated like a contract. One other mom I know who made that mistake got lots of contact from the parents but her son would never speak to her. They even invited the mom I know to their house and the fully grown adoptee locked himself in his room until she was gone, all becuse she contacted his parents instead of him. That never ended. It was a completely failed reunion.

I contacted my son by phone being careful to follow all the rules of contact ettiquette, making him write down my phone number before telling him who he was speaking to, and breaking it to him very gently and slowly. And I told him to tell his mom, that this was not a secret and that went very well. She was a little miffed that I hadn't ASKER HER if I could talk to him and I explained it all and pointed out that she was an adult and could handle hurt feelings where as we couldn't expect that from him.

It's also bad form to make contact by letter because letters can go astray and you can't see how the reaction is going on the other side. Phone contact is considered best. You can easily give them the option of hanging up and put the ball in their hands at that point.

So now that the letter option has backfired, you need to call on a non school day and ask to speak to him. First have him write down your number in case he hangs up out of shock. And if he says he doesn't want contact, that's it. You don't make contact again. You've put the ball in his court.

And do not show up at their door. That's the worst contact method. It scares them.

Fear me dear, for i am death.

i think it's best to contact him
I wouldn't wanna live not knowing and questioning who my mother is

Carol c

If it was me, I would contact him. I would keep it low key without any pressure but just letting him know I am available to talk if and when he is ready. I wouldn't be too gushy, but see nothing wrong with letting him know I have always loved him and want what's best for him.

mom to be

Since you gave birth to him, you should know if he is 17 or 18. If he is 18 he is an adult in the eyes of the law. If your adoption is open, go for it. Don't wait around for anymore "what ifs".

...

WOW, seems he made the page for you... give it a go.

ETA-ignore the person below me...... you ARE his mom as well as the person who raised him, one does not cancel out the other!! If he made that page after you send the letter he is probably hoping you will contact him.....just send a simiple note letting him know you are there for him when he is ready.

Lovely Princess

If you are his birth mother yu should contact him and let him decide whether he wants you in his life or not. He is 17 and old enough to make his own decisions. And if his parents now don't want you to contact him it's probably because they've never told him where he truly came from. Try to contact him just be careful don't come in too drastically remember this is your first attempt in 17 years he might not take that very well. Talk to him more as a friend more then a parent remember he already has parents.

Cal

He may have reasons for lying about his age on myspace that have nothing to do with you. I would wait until he is actually 18 to contact him directly.

When you do so, make sure that you make it clear that this is the only contact you will be making with him unless he writes back and expresses an interest in further contact. Leave the ball in his court. It's very scary being contacted by a birth parent. You want to make it perfectly clear that you will not be stalking him or pestering him. But, also make it clear that the lines are open whenever (and if ever) he wishes to communicate with you. Also, don't mention the letter you already sent to his parents. Maybe they shared it with him, and maybe they hid it from him, but either way, it's best just not to mention it.

If he doesn't respond after that, then I'm sorry, but he doesn't want contact with you right now, and you must respect his wishes. If he does respond (whenever that might be -- it could be years later), then you two can proceed from there.

BLW_KAM

I'm an AP in an open adoption. Just yesterday my daughter forwarded me an e-mail joke and I noticed she copied her natural mother on it. I sort of twisted my head and thought, "Wow, she's communicating with K directly." I had to stop and think for a moment to figure out how I felt about it. It's hard to let them grow up.

My daughter is 10 and I'm the one who put her natural mother in her parental controlled e-mail address book. I'm the one usually nudging everyone to stay in contact and here she did it all by herself without me. After I recognized I was having control freak thoughts I relaxed and realized she has every right to communicate with her other mother without my approval.

So if I were in your shoes, I would send him an e-mail to the 18 year old MySpace page. I don't see anything wrong with it. Since you have an open adoption, it seems well within your rights. Who knows, maybe he put the account there hoping you would find him?

PS His parents may be ignoring the letter or maybe they never received it. It's a possibility.

kidmindi

I say contact him on the public site and sese what happens.

I recently found my brother on myspace.

AdoreHim

I have 2 adopted children. When our oldest turned 18 we heard from the attorney that was used in our adoption that our son's sister was looking for him. We had to chose to tell our son or not, we did, and he has a pretty good relationship through email, myspace and telephone, and an occasion visit to their home town. It was very positive. If you truly want to meet your birth son, do all you can to find him. You know when he actually is 18 so then he would be legal to make up his own mind. Good luck.

Lisa needs a vacation!

Yes. I would contact him. He has a right to know you. Do not come on too strong, just let him know that you are interested in opening that door. Whatever you do, let him take the lead and let him do things in his own time. He did not have any choice in adoption, so let him make the choices now.

H******

Yes. It's an 'open' adoption I don't see the problem

I would've been over the moon to have my Mom contact me this way, how wonderful

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