There is no guideline or how to book or anything like that giving instructions on how to make contact with the person who you have found. There are a few things that I can think of that should not be done and those are the things that I would like to address knocking on someone’s door in this blog.

Do not just knock on someone’s door. This can be a great concern of triad members and it may damage any future chances for a relationship to develop.

If you are searching for the child you relinquished to adoption the adoptee may not know that he or she is adopted. If the adoptee you are contacting isn’t aware that he or she is adopted it can be traumatic and may need time to adjust and sometimes time to rebuild their sense of identity.

There are some adoptees who may not want contact or feel a need to receive information about their background. It is known that more women than men search and make contact but some wait until later in their lives after a life event such as a death of the adoptive parents, marriage, or having a baby.

Adoptees may fear hurting their adoptive parents or do not want to be disloyal to their adoptive parents.

Depending on the time in the adoptees life, the adoptee may be struggling with identity issues, or establishing themselves as adults or enjoying their independence The adoptee may not want to deal with others emotional issues at the time of contact. The may view the appearance of their birth family as a complication and may not have told others in their life that they are adopted.

The most important of all the reasons why you shouldn’t know on the adoptee’s door is that the adoptee person needs time to think about their emotions, their family, and the possible impact of contact in their life. This will take sometime. It may be days, weeks, months, or longer. Patience and sensitivity is very important.

If you are an adoptee making contact with your birth parent, you also don’t’ want to knock on their door. The birth parent may not have told their current partner and/or family about the adoption and may feel that if they receive a knock on their door as an invasion of their privacy. Furthermore, there are birth parents who do not wish to know their child relinquished to adoption because the birth and circumstances at that time were too traumatic or too painful to acknowledge. I traveled to Florida with an adoptee who met her birth mother. The birth mother made it very clear that this meeting would be the first, last and only meeting between them. The birth mother was raped, and the trauma was significant. More than the birth mother was willing to deal with.

Most birth parents do wish to know information about the child they relinquished to adoption, but there fears, and anxieties may overwhelm them. I have one birth mother in our support group that is fearful that the child she relinquished to adoption will never understand her reasons for relinquishment or that he will think badly about her and be angry and resentful.

Birth parents may need time to prepare themselves to accept possible contact. Other family members may become involved and be affected should a relationship develop.

You don’t want to knock on adoptive parents doors either. They were promised secrecy, especially in the closed adoption era and raised a child as if they gave birth to him or her. They may not understand that society or the times have changed since they adopted their son or daughter.

There are some adoptive parents who fear they will lose their child. So they may need time to think about contact. Some adoptive parents feel anxious about their privacy and happiness and will feel invaded if they receive a knock on their door. They just may need time to understand what is going on and find that contact may strengthen their relationship with the child they adopted.