Is it wrong?

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My parents always kept a medical file for me from when they had taken me to see a childhood psychologist for an assessment when I was 13. I was never allowed to see it. I didn't even really know where it was... until today. My mother needed to check some receipt from a purchase while at work and I happened to be in my childhood home alone because I'm visiting for the holidays. Mom called from work and asked me to go into her filling cabinet to find the document she needed to check. So I did. Just as I hung up the phone I saw it -a folder with my name on it. Sure enough, it was about 20 pages of in-depth description of assessments by 5 of my school teachers and the psychologist who had seen me almost 20 years ago. This included surveys about my attentiveness, obedience, friendliness, IQ tests, and a number of really quite scathingly unfavorable reviews of my behavior by my own mother.

I took the folder and put it in my suitcase. I feel like it is my right to have and to manage this personal medical information. Isn't it?

I understand how you feel.

But I still would have asked for it first. I feel like that would have been better all around.

If you took it, I would put it back. I really would. But, as an adult, you do have the right to see your records. Just tell them that you saw the records by accident, and that you would, please, want to see them.

I wish I could see my records!

It has your name on it, it’s yours. Keep it.

Don't take anybody's comment too seriously. The only opinion that matters here is yours.

That being said, as an adult I certainly prefer sole possession of personal information, so I would keep it. Consider that if you got to peek at this file, you can imagine circumstances under which this data will fall under the eyes or into the hands of others. If this concerns you, then keep the file. If privacy isn't that high a priority for you, then you've got other options.

But it was taken out of her parent's file cabinet...

She's entitled to it----but it's proper to ask for it---because it was among her parent's property.

I guess something could be said for the fact that she was allowed into her parent's files to get something--and that the parents knew that she might find her file.

Probably, it would have been better for her parents to have given her her files upon her reaching adulthood. That would have been the fair thing to do.

This is an interesting conundrum.

Given that they are your medical records which are of the most personal in nature, I don't see how anyone could argue that you don't have a right to them.

Kortie gives excellent advice here though. If the owner of any type of tangible property discovers that property to be in the possession of someone else, that doesn't give the owner the right to reclaim the property free from adhering to normal rules of property rights, trespass, etc. I realize she was not trespassing.

Since they're in your possession now, I probably would copy them as someone else suggested, only because your mother may scrub the notations she gave and then your records would no longer be complete. Then, put it back, tell her you noticed the file when looking for her receipt and you want the file.

All in all, I feel like she shouldn't have taken the files; she should have asked for them.

But Fern didn't commit a cardinal sin, in my opinion.

Well when I was 13 my mother shouldn't have told me that I was going to school, then pushed me out of a car door in front of a psychologist's office (with NO explanation to me at all). -I mean, do you know how awkward it is to come into an assessment like that? They thought I was crazy when I said I didn't know why I was there! She shouldn't have driven away and left me there all alone to find out that she suspected there was something wrong with me. She shouldn't have broken down and refused to talk to me about it afterwards. She shouldn't have hoarded my medical records for 20 years. She shouldn't have told me I wasn't smart enough to become a scientist. She shouldn't have done a lot of things. It's okay though. Shoulds and shouldn'ts asside I love my mom, and she loves me. She just messes up sometimes. So do I. I just need to set one more thing right. It would give me closure on a major part of my life.

I think I'll tell my mom that I took them, but I won't ask. If I ask that gives her the option to say "no". That gives her an option to make herself comfortable at my expense again. So I'm just going to tell her I have them when I'm leaving, just so she's not looking for them or worried they are lost. I mean, what possible use would she have for them anyway? I've been living financially independently from my parents for over a decade now.

Obviously it was a lousy thing your mother did when you were 13.

And I am sure there were probably very many other "lousy things" which your mother did throughout your life.

And I understand your anger. I would be angry, too.

But there's another side of me which states that one shouldn't go down to the level of the oppressor. That one should transcend and rise above the oppressor by doing the proper, ethical thing.

You seem like you're a success right now, despite all that went on in your childhood. I would lord it over your mother if I were you.

I think it would have been better if you had asked about it, so you could begin a serious discussion about your issues. I would have liked to know what was in my records, the good along with the bad, for a balanced picture of my strengths and weaknesses. Too often, those in charge of "helping" me harped on my weaknesses and minimized my strengths, to the point where I began to believe my good points were essentially useless.

I was fortunate that I made good grades in school (after becoming proficient in English in first grade), but I could have used help with social skills. I may have been able to achieve important adult milestones beginning in my teens and 20s, instead of having to wait until my late 40s. My life, while not completely wasted, was slowed down considerably.

I hope everything goes well.

It is nice that you're learning some positives about yourself.

Parents have this stupid habit of forgetting about extolling your virtues, rather than emphasizing your shortcomings.