This is not so much a question as it is a statement of frustration. I consistently send updates/e-mails to both of my daughter’s biological parents….faithfully. One does not respond at all. He waits several months, and then send us a “demand” e-mail, with a list of things he and his mother wants from us. Recently, I sent him a note that I have a Christmas present that I wanted to send to him and asked for his address. No reply. I’m just so frustrated because I DO make an effort and that it is either not answered or the response is a negative one.
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I can totally relate to this experience! We have three (adopted) children, all have contact with some members of their bio family, but with our middle daughter’s things have been very difficult. For the first few years they overwhelmed us with demands for time and visits. After 4 years of attending Christmas eve at their home, we opted to spend time with our other family and offered to meet with the closest family members (and not the 20+ that were usually at the Christmas party) on say the 26th. That did not go over well. Now they simply do not contact us at Christmas or respond to our calls. Then last summer we took a vacation during the week of our daughter’s birthday (also the week husbands company shuts down and everyone takes their vacation) that made them very angry because they wanted to be with her ON her birthday. We felt like we were giving over our own family time by forgoing our family vacations and holiday gatherings in favor of their wishes. Finally we just let them know that while we wanted to spend time together, we also had obligations to our other children & their 1st families, and also to our own family. We asked to meet and discuss our differences, but they refused and have not spoken to us since. I feel like we tried, and the point of my message it that this is all you can be expected to do. If contact is not respectful and open for all members to talk about their feelings, then I don’t see it as benificial. In the end the unresolved hard feelings toward us from our daughter’s bio family were much harder for our daughter to cope with, than simply not seeing them. We would welcome discusion with them, but we have let them know, have made the offer, and now the ball is in their court. Perhaps you can express your feelings about the current tone of contact with your child’s bio family, and ask for discussion to resolve the issues?
I wish your family the best of luck!
What do you mean by ‘consistantly’ ?? Do you send update every week or every month or something like that??
I know personally, by the fact that I am a first mom, what not knowing when an update will come feels like.
Personally, I have had the frustration of emails, phone calls, and letters going completely unanswered, from my sons adoptive parents.
I have also recently had the frustration of my sons adoptive parents messaging me questions about basic info that I have provided to them before.
I have to say, because your little message has inspired me to vent this, my son’s first dad occasionally sents what you might call ‘demand’ emails to my son’s adoptive parents. In them he speaks for me, even though I never asked him to do that. I also have no personal contact with him unless we are planning to visit our sons adoptive family. Yet he still likes to go overboard and cc me in a huge email of complaints to my sons adoptive parents. Making it seem as though we are on the same page, we are not, mostly. I mean, I want to know more about my son and his life, I would LOVE to actually see him more an all. Even as a casual, backround observer at social functions like birthdays and such.
Personally, even if it does hurt to be excluded on purpose from my sons life, my love for my son overwhelms any negative emotions towards the adoptive parents. I cannot speak for the first dad of my son though, personally I think he has some ‘entitlement’ issues. I don’t, I love it when I know my son is getting more chances to bond closer to the parents I choose for him.
This ‘bio’ dad sounds like he has an attitude problem and somehow thinks that your world should revolve around him.
What exactly does he demand anyways??? Is it just him that does not respond to emails? or the first mom too?
It sounded like you were sort of lumping them together in your frustration, I would be careful about that….
I cannot imagine not being thankful for anything my son’s adoptive parents choose to reveal to me about my son, because it is so rare that they do.
I would give anything for an adoptive mom like you that actually sends update emails!!!
Although I have not kept my grief in the loss in parenting my son a secret from them, I hope that my son’s adoptive parents don’t take that as a slam against them!!
Just a general warning advice, just because someone is negative, does not mean its about you, its probably more about the person actually being negative
(if that makes any sense)
To clarify things a little…I have a great relationship with my daughter’s birthmother and her family…the problem is with the birthfather and HIS mother (birthgrandmother). What the birthmother and birthfather asked of us at the beginning of the adoption was to see her once a year and have periodic updates via e-mail throughout the year. We moved out of the state when my daughter was 8 months old…so once a year visit is all we can manage, but we have done it and will continue to make that visit to each one (it’s really 2 visits..one for the birthfather and another for the birthmother). As for “how consistent” am I with the updates….I send e-mails with pictures 4 to 5 times a year, in addition to the e-mails arranging for our annual visit. I have asked both the birthmother and birthfather if they were satisfied with the amount of contact, and they both had said that they were. As for the question about what is in the demand letter…it is always pertaining to the birthfather’s mother…from the beginning she wanted a separate “arrangement” that pertained to her and her husband alone (not the birthparents). She wanted an “open door” arrangement with us whereby she and her husband could just drop in every day to see our daughter, without having to call first. They wanted to spend every weekend and holiday with her. They wanted us to just leave her with them for a week or two. (Is anyone else thinking this was a bit much?) They didn’t care that we had another child and our own families that we wanted to spend time with, much less that we wanted time just the four of us to spend as a family…they just focused on their own feelings…to heck with us! When we objected to daily contact….they became more agressive in their approach and began threatening us. Fortunately, my husband was given a promotion and we moved to another state. But…they continue to “push” . We had previously asked them not to send so many presents (they were sending a ridiculous amount), and they refused. She had “from Grandma” monogrammed on most of the gifts she was sending to our daughter. We asked her not to because “Grandma” is what we call my husband’s mother. She got angry and has now asked to be called “Aunt”. It just goes on and on. I always keep all of my reponses to their “demand” letters or “angry letters” as positive as possible. I have tried to communicate that I want to have a positive relationship with them because that is what I want my daughter to witness between us. I also communicated that I want an equal amount of contact between both sets of birthfamilies because I don’t want my daughter to reach the wrong conclusion that one birthfamily loves her or thinks of her more than the other. After 3 1/2 years of this…I’m starting to sound like a broken record, and I’ve grown weary of trying to play nice. Like I said at the beginning of my first comment…this is a statement of frustration. I’m tired, I’m frustrated, I’m angry, and yes, I’m hurt, too.
It seems to me that this is more about the paternal first grandparents than anyone else.
You have my sympathy with that, those people sound pretty much impossible!!
I guess the open adoption I have with my son’s adoptive parents is easier because neither my mom(my dad died 9yrs ago) or my sons first dads parents have shown any kind of interest in knowing my son through open adoption(is that a bad thing??).
My mom visited the adoptive family with me once, but she never asked to go with me, I asked her, she just agreed.
I actually don’t know if my son’s first dads parents want to visit or not, they live a long long long way away from the city that the first father and I live in(although not together, he is married, not to me) so it’s really not something they *can* do.
I suppose if they were asked if they wanted to see my son and his adoptive family, they might say ok, but they would not act like what you describe. That’s just craziness!! Is your child their only bio-grandchild or something?? It just blows my mind that they are so obsessed with being in your daughters life!!
I would be at my wits end too if I were you.
I hope I don’t sound like a wet blanket, but here are my thoughts…
Did you know about the wishes/difficult personality of the birth-father’s-mother when you accepted the match/placement? I cannot help but have a teensy bit of empathy for this woman who likely feels that she has been cut off from her grandchild. Could she feel like you made an agreement, moved, and reneged? (I’m not saying you DID, I am trying to understand her feelings.)
That said, it sounds like she behaves like a pain in the neck, burdensome mother-in-law. Nonetheless, it also sounds to me as if she had a *voice* in the placement of this child into your home and may be one of those situations where she simply MUST compromise her ideals and you definitely shouldn’t be threatened.
:::sigh::: Like it or don’t, she will be a part of your child’s life for the rest of her life, and in my opinion, it is in your child’s best interest to do as you are doing: be positive. If it were me, I would have let her do the “Grandma” thing… she is a grandma, after all.
But she would have been “Grandma Carol,” since your mother is already Grandma. That’s how it worked in my house when I was a kid.
Happy Holidays!
You are right, accidental princess, his mother did not want the adoption. She wanted to raise my daughter herself. But the birthmother did not want her daughter to be raised by her….or to be anywhere near this woman because she (and her family) dislike her with great intensity. I tried to have an open mind when I met the birthfather and his parents and not let the birthmother’s opinion of his parents taint our judgment….but after the first couple of visits…everything the birthmother and her parents had “warned” us about were absolutely right and on target. They (his parents) are the type of people that do not know appropriate boundaries. She (his mother) has a very obvious anxiety disorder and cries hysterically at the drop of a hat …and/or when she doesn’t get her way. She and her husband are used to getting their way and when they don’t, they resort to threats and emotional blackmail.
His parents, however, were told up front what the agreement between us and the birthparents were. They were told by us, their son, and the counsellor at the adoption agency….and our attorney. They didn’t like it because they wanted daily/weekly visits and everything short of moving in with us. Even the counselor from the adoption agency that has been working with open adoptions for more than 20 years have never come across such crazy requests as what this couple was asking us to do. We held our ground because they were so overbearing and so threatening. But….we have kept our promises to the birthfather, despite all that his parents have said/done. And we have allowed them to attend the visits, despite our feelings about them.
We have been respectful, and as I said at the beginning of these posts…I have maintained a positive position from the start so we can move past all this “ugliness”. I’m still waiting.
You know what? i’m a lurker first mom, my son was raised by the most adorable, amazing, perfect set of parents i could have ever hoped to have picked out, had i had the chance, which i didn’t. (not important to what i am going to say, just wanted to say that.)
Mine was a closed adoption. Son tracked me down January of 2006. best day of my life.
but enough of me. about YOU!
i see and understand what you are doing w/the grandparent, and i admire you for it. However, for the sake of your sanity and child’s confusion level, stop. YOU are your child’s parents, she has 1st mom and dad. Your loyalties are to ensure the contract/agreement you set up with THEM is abided by.
Gramma has an agenda and child’s best interest doesn’t seem to be on it.
Compose some kind of thank you/good bye note for gramma and then stick to it. Explain to the 1st(s) that this is maddening and detrimental to the conditions they requested you raised child in and tell them you simply must make some hard and fast decisions to preserve the quality of life they would want child to have.
As a parent you can’t make everyone happy and i wouldn’t want to rock the boat if i were you either, but laying down your rights to parent the child appropriately negates the reason YOU were selected to do exactly that.
This is a really awkward first post and i suppose some will be really offended by it, but really, it’s not about grandma ME! it’s about the child. sometimes being a parent calls for making the unpopular decision.
The woman you are describing sounds exactly like how some members of my family would have been with my son’s parents. it’s just wrong.
sincerely,