And that was WRONG, because it is deceptive. It is one of the worst lies and once a child catches you in this, and they eventually do, they never trust anything else you say to them again. My entire family fabricated a preposterous story about my birth father (BTW, I am the 2nd immaculate conception ;-). Even as in my earliest childhood, I recognized the fallacy in their story. It wasn't until I turned 21 that a cousin told me the truth. When I adopted my daughter, I made certain she understood she was adopted from the earliest years. On the other hand, I chose not to have an open adoption as I believe that creates confusion. My daughter chose to meet her birth mother and then chose to come home to her family.
You have misunderstood me. I told my 3 children at a very early age that they were adopted. They heard the word adopted long before they could understand what it meant, but they knew it was something good. It was information about birth parents that were not told to us, the adoptive parents. They came from a very respected adoption agency and we were told nothing about their birth parents and the birth parents were told nothing about us.