http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/html/uncomp/articleshow?msid=287067

Tell the child about adoption early
ROLI SRIVASTAVA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2003 05:00:02 AM ]

MUMBAI: The Karkhanis couple took 15 years to tell their daughter that she was
adopted. When they did, the bubbly teenager suddenly became reclusive. Four
years later, she came to terms with the fact.



Adoption counsellors want "early sharing with the adopted child" as the central
theme for this year's adoption awareness week which started from Friday.



Counsellors say: "While at the age of six or seven they will ask questions like
why their birth mother left them, at adolescence their sensitivities are
heightened," says adoption consultant, Nilima Mehta.



For Gauri Karkhanis, coming to terms with her adoption was an ordeal.



"I could not accept it. I felt that the people I wake up to every morning are
not related to me in any way."



Adoptive parents fall in three categories — those who tell the child early,
those who do not believe in telling the child at all and those who want to tell
but do not know how to, explains Gaurang Mehta, founder of the National
Association of Adoptive Families. He says most parents fall in the third
category.




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A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown