Approximately 6 million people in the United States are adopted. When you extrapolate that out to biological parents, adoptive parents, and siblings, you have one in eight people effected by adoption. No wonder so many people are trying to find birth parents. Unfortunately, people are making many mistakes in the search. Avoid making these mistakes and finding answers will be a lot easier.

Mistake #1: They Don’t Write it Down
This is a common mistake that rookie private eyes make. When you are searching for your birth parents, you need to think like a private eye. Start by writing everything you know about yourself and your birth place down including the hospital, the agency, and anything else you can think of down. Keep it in an adoption journal for quick reference.

Mistake #2: They Don’t Ask the Family
Whether they are scared or embarrassed, it is a big mistake. Many times adoptive children do not ask the one person who has the most information. The adoptive parents hold all the records. Ask them! They may actually know the name of the biological parents. Don’t forget to write all this information down as well.

In addition, ask other family and friends as well. You never know who may have kept in contact or have that one memory or name that may help. It could be a date or a city. Write it all down because it could be useful later on in your search.

Mistake #3: They Don’t Ask the Agency for Information
As the adoptee, you can petition the adoptive agency for non-identifying information. While it won’t give you a name, it does give you all kinds of fun facts about your biological family. This information can help you narrow down your search later and may tell you if you have biological siblings. It can include:

• Age of biological parents at time of birth
• Age and sex of biological sibling at time of birth
• The ethnicity of your biological parents
• Possible reasons why they gave you up for adoption
• Medical History
• Religion
• Geographic Location at time of birth

Mistake #4: Don’t Use the Internet to Search Public Records
At this point, many people simply give up. They feel they cannot afford to hire a private detective to search for their birth parents. Therefore, they just give up. They do not even consider trying to do an Internet search for themselves. This is a huge mistake. You can search birth records, adoptive records, and even do a people search from the privacy of your own home all you have to do is look.

When you find your birth parents, it may not be easy but not finding them is even harder. You can start your search today by looking through adoption records.

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