Some of my word documents were put into the shared area and then deleted by a soon to be put up for adoption child. Is there any way to get them back?

You could try a file recovery program. The files should still be there, just try not to use your computer too much until you run the program. There's some advice in this thread: DELETING FILES FROM LIMEWIRE LIBRARY-DON"T! - File recovery advice!

__________________
If it ain't broke, fix it till it is!