Open Adoption and Healthy Boundaries - Weekend Wisdom

Question: We adopted our son at birth, and he is about to turn one already. I deeply care about his birth parents and have tried very hard to maintain a relationship with them. Even during many months of no contact, I think about them every day. Our only post-placement visit with them was at 2 1/2 months. They have no-showed for all the other visits they asked for, and have gone several months at a time without responding to contact. They missed a visit 2 weeks ago and have finally reached back out asking to plan another. Visits require 6 hours of driving and coordinating time off from work. They do not drive and would not have any means of travelling to us. Our plan was to do visits 2-4 times a year. We offered to plan another visit the week of his birthday. I also offered to send weekly text updates. I work in healthcare and need to be very present in my job and prefer not to be on my phone when I am home with my family, so I do not text anyone much during the week. I am now being asked to provide daily updates and to do visits monthly. I don't even respond to my best friend more than once or twice a week because it is hard for me to keep up with messages. I am also not convinced that increasing the frequency of visits will help them follow through on attending them due to the pattern that has occurred so far. I am feeling overwhelmed and unsure how to move forward in a way that is loving and respectful, but also sustainable for our family and best for our son.

Resources:

• 5 Tips for Navigating Sticky Situations with Birth Parents
• Creating Relationship with Birth Parents in Adoption (Even When It's Hard!)
• Mama on Earth: A Guest Article on Co-Parenting
• Open Adoption Can Be Messy
• Our #1 Secret Tip for Navigating Open Adoption

Transcript

Please excuse any errors, this is an automated transcript.

online community and we dig through our expert -based content to find an answer that
we think might strengthen your family based on the question you send us. So if you
have a question about adoption, foster care or kinship care, please send it to info
at creatingafamily .org and we'll consider it for a future episode. Today we're
helping a listener from New Jersey who thinks that Issues of open adoption, including
contact, visits, and healthy boundaries are becoming a bit of an issue for their
family. Here's the question. We adopted our son at birth, and he is about to turn
one. I deeply care about his birth parents and have tried very hard to maintain a
relationship with them. Even during many months of no contact, I think about them
every day. Our only post -placement visit with them was at two and a half months.
They have no -showed for all the other visits they have asked for and have gone
several months at a time with no response to contact. They missed a visit two weeks
ago and have finally reached back out asking to plan another. Visits require six
hours of driving and coordinating time off of work. They do not drive and would not
have any means of traveling to us. Our plan was to do two to four visits a year
and we offered to plan another visit the week of his birthday. I also
I'm also not convinced that increasing the frequency of visits will help them follow
through on attending them due to the pattern that has occurred so far. I'm feeling
pretty overwhelmed by all of this and unsure how to move forward in a way that is
loving and respectful, but also sustainable for my family and best for our son.
Well, New Jersey, thanks for writing. I want to start by honoring your heart here
in this situation. You are clearly putting a ton of thought and effort into how to
maintain this relationship. You've already made the long drive, you've already taken
time off work, and you're trying to hold space for connection with this birth
family, and that's very honorable. Even when the visits haven't happened, you're still
holding your son's family in your heart daily. It sounds to me that you've chosen
to be deeply respectful of them and not just honor them, but also honor their place
in your son's life and the story of where he came from. It's important to name
that because you're already doing a ton of loving, hard work in this context of
open adoption. However, I can hear your overwhelm in the question. It sounds like
being asked to do daily updates or to make monthly visits, especially when previous
it's weren't followed through on, feels like too much for you. And right now, it
probably is. It's not sustainable for your family or for your work or for your own
mental well -being. Open adoption is not supposed to be this, I have to say yes to
everything they ask for, kind of contact or interaction. And it's certainly not
supposed to be at the risk of the other crucial responsibilities and needs in your
immediate family's life. Instead, open adoption is supposed to create opportunities for
ongoing contact that are good for the child, for his birth parents, and for you and
your newly formed family. It's not meant to expand your life in ways that you can't
sustain. It's meant to expand your life and your hearts to encompass all of your
son's story because now it's your story too. However, you have to find a way to do
it in ways that are respectful to his birth parents, but also respectful and
honoring to the needs and responsibilities of raising him on the daily experience.
I have a few suggestions that I think might help, and then I'll list some
additional resources in the show notes for you. The first tip is to consider a
perspective shift. You cannot expect your son's birth family to change.
You also cannot control whether they show up, whether they text back, or whether
they follow through on things that they've agreed to do. What you can do is to
decide for yourself what you are able to offer, what you can do with love and
honor and respect, without burning yourself out or compromising your family's
stability. When you come to peace about what you can and cannot do, you can also
then be clear with them about what you're going to do and how you're going to do
it. You can state what is sustainable for you and your family in this stage of
life, keeping in mind that your stages of life can change, and you can still leave
the door open to maintain a relationship in ways that are manageable for you and
your family and manageable for them. At this point, you might be asking me a follow
-up question, okay, so how do I do that? And I get that. That's the nuts and bolts
of why you're here. So first, you want to start with being honest, honest with
yourself and honest with them, but also be very gentle in how you communicate that
honesty. You might try something like, hey, we really want to keep building this
relationship. Here's what we can realistically do, and then outline it very clearly.
For example, you could say, we can manage weekly texts every Friday instead of
daily, and we can visit two to three, maybe four times a year, but we are not
going to be able to do it monthly. By framing it first in a term of what you can
do, you're giving the opportunity to frame the conversations from a place of
positivity, almost as if you're extending an invitation to them to collaborate with
you on what works. It will sound much less like you're laying down the law or
giving them rules and conditions that they have to follow, which could be very
infantilizing for them. You don't want to come across condescending or anything like
that. So that matters because even though you hold the legal authority of parenting
this child, there's still a relationship that you're trying to create with another
set of adults. Relationships between adults, even complicated relationships between
adults, work best when both parties feel respected. So another piece of navigating
these healthy boundaries in this open adoption is to figure out where you can
compromise and where you just can't give. So maybe you don't do daily text messages.
Again, maybe you say, hey, I can do weekly text messages. But then you be willing
to send photos or quick texts for significant milestones or significant events that
happen kind of off the weekly cycle. Things like he scored a goal at soccer on
Tuesday, but you're not necessarily due to send a text until Friday. Maybe you can't
set up weekly video calls, but you are willing to send kind of a big text on
Friday that summarizes the whole week. Maybe you can't manage monthly in -person
visits, but you are willing to sneak in a birthday dinner and meet halfway or take
a long weekend around the holidays and go and spend three days there visiting and
connecting. The point is to hold on to what matters to you and what you know will
help your family stay healthy and stable, but then be willing to work together with
them on the things that might matter less to you. You don't want to feel pressured
to give in to every request. And I know that at the beginning of a relationship,
that's hard to navigate. But you have to start listening and observing to find a
rhythm that feels respectful and realistic for your family and for their interest.
Through all of this, remember that the most important thing is to do what's best
for your child. Your child's safety always comes first. Your child's mental,
emotional, and physical safety is included in that. And so if this level of contact
that they're asking for is destabilizing you or your family, it's okay to back off
a little bit and say, right now, I can't do all that. A relationship with his
birth family can absolutely be part of what's best for him, but certainly, again,
not at his expense or yours. If you're stretched too thin, if you're stressed or
resentful or just plain exhausted, that won't serve him well. And in the end,
it won't serve the ongoing relationship between you well either. Setting up some
boundaries is not a selfish thing. It's actually part of parenting well.
It might also help you to consider holding on to the idea that I mentioned a
little bit earlier. Open adoption right now won't look like it does when he's three
or when he's five or when he's 13. It changes in every season,
sometimes for more contact, sometimes for less. Right now, these weekly updates and
two or three visits a year might be the right balance. And in the future, as life
shifts, that rhythm may change. If the relationship grows and flourishes, contact
could look very different. And their circumstances might change. So you need to be
willing and nimble to respond to that as well. Your child's ages and stages across
his life, as well as his desires for contact or no contact may also impact your
decisions. So it's kind of a hold it loosely for now and be willing and open to
adjust it as you and he and they grow and change. Holding them all lightly and
loosely will help you manage your expectations along the way as well. Kind of the
hallmark of open adoption can be this flexibility of mind and flexibility of spirit
to maintain an open -heartedness, even if the physical in -person visits or face -to
-face phone calls can't happen. You're learning how to find what works for right now
and be open -hearted and open -minded for what might work later. And the reality is
that even in the healthiest of relationships between adoptive parents and birth
parents, Open adoption can be messy. It just is. Relationships between adults can be
messy. So keep in mind that it rarely goes exactly as you planned it, but at its
heart, it's about collaborating together for what's best again for your child.
This has to include some sort of healthy boundaries for them,
for you, and for your child. You can be open -hearted in an open adoption without
compromising your needs, and you can be clear about your limits without shutting the
door. Most importantly, you can hold on to what is best for your child while still
creating space for his birth parents to be part of his story. That balance or
seeking that balance or that intentionality towards that balance will be what carries
you forward, word, not perfection, not consistent, perfect contact as they've laid out
or as you've laid out, but a steady commitment to the relationship that's rooted in
love and respect and openness. So New Jersey, I hope this helped. I know it's hard
and you're still very early in the relationship. Focusing more on an openheartedness
and an open willingness to adjust and flex will probably help you go a long way
towards that collaborative schedule of contact that works for everyone. And listeners,
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