The Biological / Birth Parents' Needs - Our Approach

We are very careful and discreet in our approach to finding and engaging the biological parents, because we do not want to cause any issues with them as regards their family and community. In many cases, the birth parent's family and community don't know about the baby they secretly placed into the care of an orphanage or babies home, or which they left at a hospital or with a caretaker or in a public place. Taking a less than discreet approach to the birth parent can be traumatic to them in many cases, and besides disrupting their own emotional state and potentially disrupting their social situation, may be counterproductive in that they immediately deny being the biological parent publicly and privately, entrench themselves in this position, and their attitude is formed by this first impression.

The initial contact with the birth parent must be done as considerately as feasible in order to get the most cooperative response we can from the first impression onwards.

In many cases, the biological parent eventually tells their family and often their community, but in their own way and at the best time. For example, a mother may confide in a sister, or in her own mother, gain a base of support, and discuss the best way to move forward to revealing to others and engaging with the lost family member.

Many biological mothers have told their other children and family on the same day, sometimes on the spot and other times within the next few hours, but more often they talk with us secretly and then over the next days or weeks, or sometimes months, gradually engage further with us, the adopted child, and/or adoptive parents. Patience and a step by step approach are very important.

We normally collect information and videos/photos at the time we meet the birth parent(s), even in very secret cases, while also setting up a channel of communication, most often by the Line text chat app, which has high privacy and allows you to hide chats or even delete some of the text and photos within a particular chat. Sometimes they only talk with us on the phone for some time.

Notably, in most cases, the birth parents are greatly relieved of much guilt when they find that their child was adopted into a loving family and has a good life, not living in an orphanage without a mother and father, and wants to find out much more about their child. However, there are quite a variety of responses which we have experienced. The initial response is often shock but with proper handling they usually later want to know more, and we strive to start an engagement leading to correspondence. Matters of adoption sometimes need time.

We always assure the birth parents from the very beginning that:

1. we do not want to cause any problems, only to help people
2. we will keep this a secret between us and them, and nobody else in their community, unless and until they say otherwise is OK
3. we are here to help both sides as the intermediary, unless and until both sides are OK with direct contact (except maybe language translation)

In the best case scenario, the biological parent(s) realizes they are not in any trouble and becomes interested in finding out about their child, and eventually in even meeting them. Having a child come to Thailand to meet their extended biological family has happened many times.

The most common result is that the birth parent, after the initial surprise, is cooperative and wants to find out about and communicate with their lost offspring. We usually get to this point within the first hour to first few hours. However, sometimes it takes days for them to assimilate everything in their mind.

It is very common for the biological parent to also reveal to their family the existence of the previously lost child. This may take some time, as they need to introduce the new family member in their own way.

In the worst case scenario, which happens in only a very small minority of our cases, we can also assure the biological parent(s) that we can secure secrets, and if they wish then we will do our best to stop the adopted child from coming to find their biological parents, if that's what the biological parent(s) want, but we need for them to secretly cooperate with their biological offspring or the adoptive family to some extent in order to better assure this outcome. This is important to gain their cooperation in the worst cases. If so, then we make clear that we can manage the situation if we can satisfy the child's needs by providing the desired information and photos. We let them know that if they don't cooperate, then the child may seek to find them later on their own, and if we could find them, then maybe somebody else could, too. Therefore, it is better for them to provide the needed information and let us control the situation instead of walk away and let someone else return later, someone else who is less understanding and caring of their situation. That's the worst case scenario where we find the parents, which rarely happens. We usually don't need to push them like this.

There are cases in-between these extremes, and sometimes it takes time.

One thing an adoptee should not do is just go knocking on the door of a biological parent and say "Hi, I'm your child!" People have done this before and caused shock and grievous loss of face for the mother, which is not a good first emotional experience between estranged child and mother, and can be counterproductive in the long term as regards attitude and cooperation. We've had people come to us after they did that, e.g., just going to an address on record, and afterwards coming to us and asking us to help them in having their mother stop denying she's the mother, and instead acknowledge that she is truly the mother, and also to try to get her mother to quit denying it to her family and community, too. Or else, to help them try to improve their relationship. Maybe it's too late, very difficult, but we can try. There are biological parents out there who still deny to this day the biological relationship. Too many people have followed their desires for a quick outcome, with inexperienced help.

On the other hand, by approaching the mother discreetly, we have many good mother-child relationships which have gone forward based on confidentiality from their immediate family. Most of them eventually introduce their biological child to their family, but in their own way, and need some time.

There have been various kinds of adoption cases. Searches which include interaction with the biological parent(s) have evolved differently, but they all start with an initial reaction and after some time become a stable position after the biological parent has assimilated the situation. It usually takes considerable time for the biological parents to adjust and develop a stable outlook, and our lady agent's accommodation, reassurance, and guidance can make a major difference.

We use friendly, warm and mature Thai female investigators of class who are experienced in handling different kinds of people.

We do not tell them that we are "private investigators". We also don't look or behave like many Hollywood investigators you can see on TV. Our lady agents are normal people in appearance and demeanor.

Dressed appropriately for the location, usually informally but with respectable class, we try to initially greet the birth parent(s) in a friendly and gentle way with a pretext, as discussed elsewhere on this website, in order to engage them personally, face to face, where they must eventually respond, and we try to guide them in an understanding, helpful, and reassuring way, in order to try to foster the best attitude and long term response.

However, before that, we must find one or both parents, which is usually done by national database searches and/or field work based on the information provided to us by the adoptive parents, again as discussed elsewhere on this website.

Once we find a biological parent, we have methods of engaging in a warm social encounter which temporarily isolates the biological parent whereby we can interact privately so that we keep the secret and nobody overhears us. These are methods which we have developed over time. Which method we use depends on their situation. (We can discuss which method we would probably try after reading about your situation.)

Whether the adoptee is ever able to communicate directly with, or meet, their biological parents and possibly their greater family (siblings, grandparents, etc.) depends on the situation of the biological parents, how we engage them, and agreements we can work out. This can depend significantly upon how the biological parents are approached and eventually interacted with by the adoption tracing specialists, in a first impression way.

When we first started doing adoption tracing cases in 2003, we learned many things from experience. One of those is that we do not include a government official in the field work, normally. This is because many people have a different reaction to somebody in a uniform or with official mannerisms. The reaction can include fear to some extent, which is a powerful emotion, whether or not there is a reason. This is especially true of people who have a poor education, don't know much about the law, and are of relatively low status.

For example, in one of our first cases for finding lost biological parents in the early 2000s, in a very distant part of Thailand, we had a relaxed and friendly female government official go to visit what our records told us were the biological parents of a person who went overseas in the 1970s. Being 25 years later at the time, the couple we were looking for were getting up in their years. What happened is a lesson we will never forget. The couple seemed to have a cautious reaction to the official -- the couple were suddenly disinterested, and only minimally cooperative at best, like they were stonewalling and avoiding the official, and pretending to not know anything about the child, like there must be some mistake. They also seemed a little bit agitated at some moments. The interaction did not get far. The official expressed confusion. We and the official double checked things and the official returned the next day, only to find that the couple was no longer there, and the neighbors reported that they had packed up and moved the night before! They had lived in that house many years. A neighbor said he thought they feared getting arrested or fined for something they did a long time ago.

While that was an extreme case, there are many others where people were not forthcoming when a government official was present, and we've had far better experiences when we did not have a government official present, so we stopped going to residences with government officials long ago.

In fact, our experiences have in many cases been significantly different from what is written in the records of the adopted person about "the background of the child to be adopted." We no longer wonder why we had much better experience in tracing than government officials did before.

We have also been asked at the start whether we had any relationship with a previous visit by officials or others. We've even been asked on occasion whether or not we are plain clothes undercover government officials. No, we are not. We are there on behalf of the adopted child or their adoptive parents, according to the photos and letter we present from them, by an entirely private channel not involving any government agency.

When our adoption tracing specialists visit a place, we adapt our dress code and mannerisms. We approach the biological parent(s) in a very informal, friendly, and pleasant manner, when we start our routine of engaging them socially first. It is very important to generate the right first impression, response, and attitude. We approach them more as an equal, not as an authority nor anybody asserting their power.

As noted before, we do not tell the biological parents (nor most other people) that we are "private investigators". Instead, when asked, we say (truthfully, of course) that we are Thai associates of the biological parents or the adopted person (depending upon who hired us to be their associate in Thailand). Many of our clients become our friends, whereby we can just say friends.

From there, we make clear from the start that we can understand their needs and can conform to their wishes. There is usually a considerable amount of surprise when they realize we are there on behalf of their long lost child, so sometimes we need to give them some time to think about things, which is usually between a few moments to a few hours, but sometimes longer. We are continuously reassuring, and they know we are waiting patiently, there in person.

It is important to not be in a big rush for results. The best results require a very careful approach, based on our experience in adoption tracing. Usually, we have the results on the same day, or within a few days, but sometimes it takes weeks, months, and occasionally even years.

However, with our approach, it is rare that a biological parent does not want to cooperate to at least some extent and communicate. In the vast majority of cases, we obtain cooperation and facilitate two way communications, often with the biological parent's extended family, including the adoptee's half-brothers and half-sisters in Thailand.

 > Why trace? > The biological parents needs

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