The 'so why are they adopted?' question

[Fakinit03]

What are peoples responses to this question? I'm shocked how often I'm asked this and lo isn't even with us yet! I don't want to be rude but I want to shut it down quite quickly that it's not something I'm happy to discuss?

" that it's not something I'm happy to discuss" is a perfectly fine answer.

It's private, not secret, you discuss with the child not with any tom, dick or harry.

I generally only tell people where it will benefit my ds.
So teacher - yes, privately, in case subjects come up in class that could be hard for a child - family genes, evacuees (totally came up!) etc
Doctor but be careful, I once told a doctor ds was not my biological son in front of him. It was totally relevant to the appointment but my son was quite upset and used that phrase for ages afterwards as a way to accentuate distance (in my view) and I wished I had not said it!

Close family because they do need to understand a bit about his behaviour and why he acts as he does and legally if me and dh died, they would care for him. So I share what is appropriate, away from ds.

Good friends generally are not told much, if anything.

Total strangers who do not know my ds may hear parts anonymously of his story if it is relevant, e.g. some people I've met in relation to adoption, people interested in adoption and I have been involved in some training of people who will be adopters. But again I woudl be very cautious to say as little as possible about ds's background and would rather focus on me as the adopter and what had helped me.

Sorry that is dreadfully long-winded!

Thank you LockdownLove for your perspective, it is so helpful.

"so far I e just gone with ah you know just the sort of thing you might expect then changed the subject..."

The only trouble with this is that you don't know what they know. They may have read terrible stories of neglect, physical or sexual abuse.

These may or may not apply in your situation and for us personally 'neglect' was the issue, and not keeping him safe. I am happy to say that here on an anonymous forum. And sometimes, just occasionally, I have named the issue for my son as 'neglect', because I don't want the other person going to extreme thoughts in their head. Again it would only be if it would be helpful for my so in some way for someone else to know the situation. And never in front of my son. I just said the one example of saying it in front of the doctor and how negative it was!

"so are you gonna tell us why she's being adopted?" Oh my, some people are so very rude!

My biggest problem is among colleagues, I'm a midwife so they have a very good idea of what is involved in social care situations. I think the problem is that as professionals we are told a lot about patients social care background and they seem to think this should carry over to personal life, as if they have 'insider privilege'. I imagine if I'm clear with a few people eventually the news will spread (as it so easily does in my workplace' that it's not something I will discuss

I understand that completely, I’m a social worker and there’s that unspoken “thing” around sharing information that becomes very normalised and not in a good way. It’s easy for them to forget you’re not discussing a “case” and they have no need to know.

Fakinit and jelly Maybe you could say something to social work colleagues like 'I won't ask you about your current sex life , you don't ask me about my child's private history!!'

"It was in everyone's best interests, we're extremely lucky and thankful"

Maybe then you need to snap them out of work mode? 'Gosh anyone would think we were talking about a family on your caseload instead of my actual son/daughter!' or a 'Hello, we're not still talking about work'.
In the service I worked in colleagues' children sometimes came onto the radar (often as teenagers) and great care was taken to restrict access to case records and shut down any gossip.
It might be that you need to be the one to just remind them of boundaries, for the sake of you and your child. And yes hopefully word will get round. If you have an ally who might be on board to butt in all incredulous at anyone asking those questions it might help. Or a manager might remind them in their 1-1/supervision.

“It’s his story so we don’t talk about it”

I say things along the lines of ‘ it’s not my story to tell’ ‘ I don’t share the kids personal info’ etc etc. When we were in prep group, a guest adopter recommended keeping all our future kids info private and we followed that advice and I’m glad that we did. I think it’s easy to get carried away once you start sharing info so our decision to share nothing felt safer. Our kids are now 9 and 8 and close family and friends know nothing about the kids circumstances which I am really glad about. It means that the kids know stuff before anyone else does which feels right. The kids choose whether or not they want to share bits of info with family or friends