Am I Right in Not Letting My Grandchild's Mom Visit? - Weekend Wisdom

Question: I have been fostering our grandchild since March. It is now almost September. Both biological parents had drug addiction. Bio mom was on a trial home visit, but used this as the reason our grandchild is with us. After the trial home visit ended, bio mom was still getting supervised visits 2x a week. After every visit, the little one was dysregulated and started biting and hitting the daycare kiddos and the provider, and would also act out towards us. She is only 15 months old. 

Both parents terminated their rights in May, and that is when I put a stop to the visits. We know bio mom was still using while having her supervised visits. I give weekly updates and photos to bio mom. But she keeps pushing for (in-person) visits, and I can't do visits, as I don't know if bio mom is clean or still using. She has had 13 years of using and has found loopholes in the system to keep seeing her other kids, when she doesn't have custody of them. 

Since we stopped visiting, my grandchild has become more stable and regulated and has stopped biting and hitting. Our caseworker has filed the adoption papers, and we will soon finalize the adoption. Bio mom is still using, and she tells me she is an alienated parent, and that I am keeping her from her child. Am I doing the right thing by not letting her see the child?

Resources:

• How Do You Manage Relationships with Birth Parents with Substance Use Disorders?
• Open Adoption With Addicted Birth Parents
• 5 Tips for Navigating Sticky Situations with Birth Parents
• Practical Help for Shared Parenting in Kinship Caregiving

Transcript

Please pardon any errors, this is an automated transcript.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Wisdom. My name is Tracy Whitney. I'm the content
director for creating a family .org and I am the new host of both podcasts for the
organization. I love Weekend Wisdom because it's an opportunity to bring you specific
answers to specific questions that you share with us and it gives us an opportunity
to give you practical tools to strengthen your family. This week's question is pretty
layered, and so I'm going to jump right into the question and then sharing my
thoughts based on the archives and expert advice that we've gleaned over the years.
So Stacey writes to us and says, I have been fostering our grandchild since March.
It is now almost September. Both biopparents have drug addiction. mom was on a trial
home visit, but she used, and this was the reason our grandchild is now with us.
After the trial home visits ended, Biomomom was still getting supervised visits two
times a week, and after every visit, our little one was dysregulated and started
biting and hitting at the daycare and with the providers there at daycare. She would
also act out towards us, and she's only 15 months old. Both parents have terminated
their rights in May, and that is when I put a stop to the visits. We know that
Biomomom is still using while having supervised visits, and so I gave weekly updates
and photos to Biomom, but she keeps pushing for in -person visits, and I just can't
do those, as I don't know if she's using or not. She has had 13 years of using
and has found polls in the system to keep her other kids with her or keep seeing
her other kids that she doesn't have custody of. Since we stopped the visits, my
grandchild has become more stable and regulated and has stopped biting and hitting.
Our caseworker has filed adoption papers and we will soon finalize the adoption.
Biomom is still using and she tells me she is an alienated parent that I am
holding her child back from her. Am I doing the right thing and not letting her
see this child?
not this child's bio -mom is your adult child or if the child's bio -dad is your
adult child. But regardless, it's important to take a moment and sit with the
disappointment and pain that you feel over biomom's choices and over her substance
use disorder and around her challenging behaviors that make this dynamic so difficult
for all of you to navigate. It's really hard to separate ourselves from our kids'
choices, even when they're adults. So I want you to give yourself permission to feel
all the feelings that go with how you've landed where you are today. Give yourself
some grace for navigating this imperfectly thus far. And I also hear some self -doubt
in some of the choices that you've made thus far. And I want to remind you of
just a few things because it really has only been seven, eight months since you've
had this child. So first thing I want to remind you of is that you did not plan
for this to happen. You are responding to a new situation. You are navigating big
unknowns for the very first time. So give yourself, again, that grace and some time
to get your feet underneath you and to figure out what is right for right now.
And second,
solution for the situation that may happen tomorrow or next week or next month.
You do have to just keep showing up and being present for this child and being
present for whatever the situation demands of you in the moment. Do what you think
is best right now and you'll notice that I keep saying right now.
And that's something I'll get to in a couple minutes, but I just want to give you
that grace and that permission to just respond to what you need to respond to right
now. And the third thing I want to remind you of is that you are not alone.
Did you know that over two million children in America are living
them as a valuable resource to the experiences that you're having right now. It's
becoming much more common in communities across America that there are kids living in
kinship or relative caregiving situations like what you're experiencing. If you are
looking for some connection with some of those other two million families or
caregivers of those two million kids, you can check out the Creating a Family
Facebook group. We are running support kinship groups for families like yours,
and you can reach out to info at creatingafamily .org to ask about our kinship
groups. They meet once a month, and I'm the facilitator of the group that meets on
Thursday nights. If you are interested in the Facebook group and you prefer to do
things by written and text and things like that, you can check out Facebook .com
slash groups slash creating a family. So let's move on to the questions that you
are posing within this big question. You asked, is it right for you to prohibit
visits for your grandchild with their bio mom? And there's a few tips that we think
you should think through about when and how to hold safe meetings and allow
conditions under which you should not allow a visit. And so we're going to start
with tip number one, which is to recognize the value of this child's relationship
with their birth parents. This child deserves to love and respect and honor her
mother and or her father. She deserves to be supported for loving and respecting and
honoring them. And I realize that at 15 months old, she's very young and she
doesn't necessarily know them. But they're still her parents and she still deserves
to know that she is loved by them and that she has freedom to love them as well.
It may be a challenge for you to love and respect them right now. And I get that.
But no matter what, remember that this child is their child, and they are still a
part of this child's story, whether they've terminated rights or not. And so you're
in a situation where their rights have been terminated. You're moving towards
adoption, but they are still her biological parents, and she has that as part of
her story forever. The second is to recognize your own issues with this relationship
and with your adult child or adult children. I already talked about that a little
bit at the opening when I encouraged you to pause and think about how hard this is
for you. To be raising a child again after launching your own children into
adulthood, to be parenting instead of embracing grandparenting, which are two very
different things, and to face the reality of your adult children's choices and
struggles that are now impacting this child. They're all really tough issues to work
through, but you have to be willing to do it for the sake of the child's mental
and emotional wellness and to lead that child to healing from the losses that they
are experiencing right now. So the third tip would be then to create a plan where
safety is the priority. How can you allow and encourage contact of some kind and
still keep the child mentally, emotionally, and physically safe. So not only do you
think about the issues of physical safety, you know, when they show up if they are
high or intoxicated, are they a threat to the child in any way?
Can they handle visiting with this child in a safe way? Of course, because the
child is only 15 months old at this point, there's the issue of holding them,
carrying them, things like that. You want to be able to answer those questions about
the child's physical safety. But again, you should also be considering their mental
and emotional safety when it comes to contact with their parent. Is she capable of
getting to and from visits safely? If she is not, is there a way that you can
facilitate that or help that to encourage a relationship? Split the cost of an Uber
with her or meet her somewhere that she can walk to, those kinds of physical safety
considerations. And then when you're thinking about the emotional and mental safety,
is she able to be present and appropriate with this child when she is using?
Sometimes when people who struggle with substance abuse issues are using,
they are more capable of interacting than when they're withdrawing or when they're
trying to get clean. And so you have to think about some of those issues. Can you
be present for those visits and facilitate emotionally and mentally safe connection
between the child and their parent? There are no easy or right or wrong answers to
any of these questions. Each family has very unique and different challenges and
unique in different circumstances that bring them to this table of conversation. And
so you want to figure out what you can do to facilitate some type of contact,
even if it's not in person right now, and then be willing and able to revisit that
conversation. So tip number four would be establishing the boundaries around what is
safe and appropriate right now, and again, being willing to revisit those boundaries
and those parameters. It's helpful to kind of consider yourself maybe like a screen
door between this child and their parent for now. Your job is to allow in the
things that you think are safe and beneficial, but then to screen out the things
that don't serve your grandchild well right now. You can protect this child with
safeguards for contact, like designated times for phone calls, neutral territory for
visits, safe public spaces for visits, how long each visit may last.
Those are some of the safeguards that you can kind of screen for this grandchild.
You can also hold consistent expectations for how this birth mother shows up for the
visits, including how recently she may have used or what she's using and how that
impacts her time with this child. If you decide on phone or video calls only for
right now, then consider listening into the conversations. Of course, because the
child is only 15 months old, you'll kind of have to be holding the phone and
facilitating that way. So figure out how you can help the conversations stay positive
and helpful to the child, helping the child recognize her mom's face.
And as the child grows, these kinds of contacts and visits and interpersonal
interactions will have to change to accommodate the child's development. But you'll
want to make sure that as that growth and change happens, you're making sure that
the child is protected from any unrealistic promises or things like that that would
create future difficulties for relationship or for connection. Unrealistic promises can
be super challenging for our kids who have limited contact with their parents.
Tip number five is to keep the communication open and demonstrate a willingness on
your part to adjust to the changes, whether that's birth mom successfully staying
clean for you know, three to six months and you interacting differently because of
that, those kinds of things. It's helpful if you could proceed with the assumption
that she wants to succeed in her recovery and that she wants to succeed in her
relationship with this child. It would be pretty rare that she doesn't feel some
deep sense of love for this child, but also a significant amount of shame for the
circumstances that have brought her to this point. And so treading gently and
carefully and keeping communication open with a willingness to adapt to the changing
circumstances can be a really significant help in this situation. So that means
approaching these interactions with kind of a balance of hope and realistic
expectations. That's hard. I understand that. You can hope that she can change and
heal, but you can have realistic expectations that right now she's struggling also.
You'll note that I keep saying for now and right now because it's crucial to
remember that her situation can change and so and yours. And that's why it's so
urgent that you decide now to assume the best, to remain open to ongoing
conversations, and be willing to adapt as things change. Through it all, she deserves
to know how her actions impact her child for good and for difficult.
And until she proves that she's unsafe for this child, your grandchild deserves to
know that you have been all along willing to support and improve the relationship
between them. And number six, consider some backup plans because one of the realistic
expectations that you've already experienced is that plans fall through. Birth parents
don't make it to visits. They forget phone calls. They might disappear for weeks.
Those are really hard things to accept, but when you are realistic about it,
then you can have a backup plan and hold the backup plan loosely too.
If the child knows in advance as they're older that there is an opportunity for
contact, they might also know about the risks for disappointment. And so you have to
be willing to talk with the child about that. Be prepared by creating kind of a
alternate plan that you can fall back on if that disappointment does occur. For
example, set a park visit at maybe a local park or a park between where you live
and where your grandchild's birth mother lives, play there for a little while so
that even if mom doesn't show up, you can have an ice cream date on the way home
or you can enjoy the time in the park and then it opens up opportunities to talk
about how it felt when mom didn't show up. At this young age, because she is only
15 months old right now, she likely doesn't know about the chance that mom could
show up or not show up. And so you could just have some alternate plans on the
books for yourself. And through it all, try really hard to speak kindly about mom
and about what mom's going through. Remember that this child does deserve to love
and honor their mother, but they also deserve to feel sad and frustrated when things
fall through. And so do you. So you can be this child's anchor and safe space and
then make sure you give yourself time and space to process disappointment or
frustration as well. This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to learning
how to navigate these kinds of sticky situations with birth parents. And I feel like
it's a lot to take in and it's a lot to process. The layers of your previous
history with this birth mother, her previous history of substance use and her
struggles with the consequences of that use can definitely feel weighty and heavy.
And you can also just turn them around to use them to inform your next steps and
how you go about creating.
rolling with it, with an eye towards protecting and supporting this child who should
be really at the center of your and the birth mom's plans for how to manage this
relationship. Listeners, if this was helpful to you, as well as to Stacey,
I encourage you to tell a friend about the Creating a Family Weekend Wisdom podcast.
We'd also love it if you would send us a question, something that stumps you or
something that you need to know to help support and strengthen your family. You can
send questions to info at creatingafamily .org and we'll put them into queue and see
what we can come up with based on expert opinions that we've learned from previous
guests on previous podcasts or from the lived experience of people in our community
with whom we interact every day. And we think that it would Thank you.
Oh, man.