So, are you all encouraging visits with small adopted children and their birth moms/dads? What if birth parents are addicts, not stable. Isnt this a lot for a child to have to deal with. Isnt it asking a lot of the adoptive parents to help their child shuffle their affections back and forth? It seems that when the courts determine birth parents loose their parental rights and the child is adopted, nobody should have to continously deal with all of this emotional baggage. I guess I am feeling a little vulnerable and angry right now, but, I really would like to know why people think this is the right thing to do?
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I suppose I have a different take on it. There already was an existing connection between my kids and their birth parents–why should that be artificially cut off once their legal relationship is ended? I’ve never felt like the kids are shuffling their affections during visits; their affection for their birth parents doesn’t cancel out their feelings toward me. It’s true that open adoption can be a lot for them to deal with, but I think it’s more that *adoption* is a lot for someone to deal with. Part of my job as an adoptive parent is to help my children with their ongoing processing of their adoption, and that would be true whether or not the adoptions were open. Openness gives me one more tool to help with that processing.
Our family’s experience with birth parents who have personal challenges like addiction is that contact can still sometimes be possible, but more care needs to be paid to boundaries and communication needs to be really frank. It’s not always easy, and there are times when contact isn’t the best idea, but we try to start with contact (in some form) as our default position and work backwards from it as needed, instead of the reverse. I’ve been in places of hurt and vulnerability before in our open adoptions, and I’m sure I will be again. It’s hard, I know. But I try to work through my baggage so that I’m not putting it on to my kids. They deserve the chance to draw their own conclusions about their first parents and shape those relationships as they grow. We’re just trying to create a foundation for that to happen.
I have the same issues..bmother has had addiction issues in the past,,thus the tpr and our adoption. I allow her to see him as long as shes clean and not a threat. the way i see it is under any other circumstance i would not let brother,,sister,,aunt ,,uncle etc be around my child if the addiction is current, so the same would go for the bparent also.
It’s a hard call.
I met with an online-turned-real life friend today who happens to be an adoptive mom in an open adoption. Her daughter’s birth mom is emotionally and mentally behind what an adult should be. She functions on the level of a young child. She is pregnant again and continuing to use drugs. I could tell my friend was struggling with how to handle things but also acknowledged the point that continuing contact, though with boundaries, was important.
That, of course, is the point. Boundaries.
I’m not letting drug users around my children. My husband has an old, very close friend who happens to use drugs regularly. He has not met our children. If we were related, I’d struggle more with how to handle it but it would be with huge, huge boundaries. Making rules, sticking to them and having consequences would be how I would handle the situation. However, contact can STILL be had even if it isn’t face to face and that is an important thing to remember.
When you parents(your child adoptive grandparents) visit, do you think its ‘hard’ on your child to be shown affection for them?
Personally, I am not and will not ever be an addict of any sort. I feel great pity for those who struggling with addictions though.
I am a first mom who is probably what you would consider ‘normal’ and stable in many ways.
Open adoption is about respecting your child and the connections they have.
After all, if one of your family members was an addict, would you really write them off completely??
I think you should do whatever is the best for your child, emotional and otherwise.
I really hope it’s about your child emotions though, and not yours.
It just worries me that you are so angry and stuff.
I just think that in the future, if your child learns about all the negative emotions you have towards birthparents, your child might personalize those emotions because birthparents will always be a part of your child. No matter what the courts say.
Two of my children’s first parents are recovering addicts. For the first three years we had him their addiction was active. They saw him rarely because their lives were so crazy, I didn’t have to set down rules, they didn’t ask.
The few times they did see him, I made the rule that they had to be clean and sober for that visit. And they were. I didn’t put lengths of time (like 30 days sober), because there wasn’t an excessive amount of visitation.
Things that I always tried to remember for myself and point out to my child, the good things that were in his first parent. The humor, the love of fish, how good they were at astronomy, I wanted him to know the whole picture, not just the negative stuff. I truly believe they are in him and I wanted him to know that they gave him good things and he should feel good about himself.
Now his first parents have been sober for over 3 years, he visits often, unsupervised. I fully trust them. One of the reasons I can is because I didn’t shut them down while their addictions were going. I didn’t offer ultimatums. I took it day by day and figured out what was best for my child at that moment. Now his first parents view me as someone they trust and don’t try to manipulate me just to see our child. They know I truly care about what is best for him, and I will let them into his life whenever it is feasible.
I don’t think there are blanket rules, I think you have to keep your eyes and heart open at the same time and take it day by day.
I can truly empathize with how you are feeling. I’m really struggling with how I feel about our birthparents right now. And I hate that I feel this way. Our birth aunt said something very wise to me last week. We have a good relationship with her and she sympathizes with our situation.
This came up in a conversation as we’re planning our first visit with the birthparents in May (we’ve seen the aunt twice and grandma once since placement). She said that it was absolutely necessary that we set boundaries and look after our needs and our son’s best interestes if we were going to be able to say nice things about our birthparents to our son and actually mean them. The visits are legally necessary- we agreed to annual visits in our contract. However, it has helped us to remember that, while we have to allow the visits, we have the power to determine the structure of the visits based on what we feel is best for our son. I really want to believe that open adoption will benefit our son in the long run, even though the thought of him trying to build a relationship with 2 mentally ill people, one who is suicidal, scares me to death. We’re setting up the visit so that the 2 birthfamily members that we trust are both present. Also, our son’s godparents (friends of ours) will be there, too. The visit is going to take place in a public area (at the beach). We’ve let them know that, if our son becomes upset during the visit, we’ll end it right away. Our obligation to allow the visit will be fulfilled for this year, either way.
Hang in there. We have a legal obligation to the visits, if they’re in our contracts. And a moral obligation to them if we agreed to them. And, again, I want to believe this will be what’s best for our son in the long run.