Goodbye visits?

Huh? I don't agree. Lots of people who are perfectly safe for a 1 hour visit can't manage to parent all the time. I'm 100% comfortable with either of my son's bparents seeing him. (They don't, but that's because bmom has moved out of state and bdad has chosen not to visit). I wouldn't want my son living with them, but an hour at McDonald's Playland? Sure. No problem.

This is very much how I feel. I think they are safe for the occassional supervised visit, but not to parent them all the time. When we get full disclosure to their files, we'll be able to find out more about the parents...like are they violent? What were they in jail for? Why 10 years probabation? etc... Then I'll have more of an idea on what to do. I fully intend to have the kids in therapy, and utilize some of the wisdom that the therapist would offer as well. I DON'T think the kids need to see them for awhile. The longer apart the visits, the better they are behaving and bonding. My little army man told us the other night that if he gets to stay here forever, he wants us to go to Disney land, lol. He must think we have a lot of money, (hahahaha). But we might can make it happen if it makes hearing that "you're not going back to your first family" easier.

That's fine that you don't agree...but, you don't know my kid's story, and it's not something I would feel comfortable sharing here. That's what has formed the opinion you don't agree with, but it's just not my business to divulge the "dirty details". Suffice it to say, however, a closed adoption is completely in my children's best interests...not mine, not their former family...THEIRS.

I think there are lots of parents who probably feel the same way as you on this and I'm sure they are all right. My children have not experienced a lot of abuse, from what I understand on the caseplan and such. I'm so glad we have mama's that are willing to be "mama bears" when it comes to protecting our children. :Chewie:

I hope that happens for you all! What a lovely mental picture, your lil army man laughing, holding your hand, walking down Disney's Main Street USA, you celebrating the "birth" of your forever family with his adoption.

Thank you RobinKay. I get that warm-fuzzy feeling just picturing it:)

We had a goodbye visit when our daugther was almost two years old. Sounds strange, but I would say that I got the most out of it. My husband and I were there for the entire visit, which I gather is fairly unusual. I took pictures of birthmom and A, so she would always have a photo of birthmom and little brother (who stayed w/ birthmom). Birthmom brought a CD player and played a song about making mistakes that expressed her feelings. We all cried and cried. I realized how much love she had for A, and that she really did care for her, and now I can tell A that when we talk about her adoption. I have some understanding of the pain she felt, and the pull of drug addiction. When I think about A's life before foster care - and I'm still greiving the loss of her babyhood - I have a different outlook on it. Sure, I regret what happened to her, but I'm not as angry as I once was.We don't exactly have an open adoption, but we laid the groundwork for one should that ever be the best thing for A. At the moment, we exchange letters and photos a few times a yer through the private adoption agency we used for our first daughter's adoption.

Our son has been with us since he was 10 days old. He had 3 supervised visits a week with his mother. Tpr occured when babe was 15 months old and he had his 'goodbye' visit with his mother. CCAS was pretty adamant that our adoption should be closed, but we felt different. We smiled and nodded while they told us their many reasons why his mother should be denied contact. Most of the reasons sounded like 'parental punishment' to me. For the next 12 months we waited for our adoption to be finalised and D and our son had no contact. We were afraid our adoption would not get to be finalised if the SW heard that D was seeing our son. Our son is 4 now. Although he sees D quite often and knows who she is, he honestly couldn't care less. To him at this age, she is just another adult friend in his life.

I'm tearing up just thinking about this. I have no anger towards our children's Mom. I have cried many nights for her and her kids. It's so nice that you were able to forgive her. My kids birth mom was introduced to drugs as a child by her own mother. She said for as long as she can remember she saw her mother cooking meth. I feel like she never had a chance to NOT be a drug addict.

Our daughters goodbye visit was a visit with her biomom in the prison she was in for 2 hrs. They couldn't guarantee we'd get to have one (alot of paperwork with the prison!) but we worked with the prison to get it setup before we left from Idaho to fly back to florida. It helped our daughter because biomom was able to explain to her that she had made the wrong choices and that our daughter was going to come live with us to keep her safe. Since our daughter was 7 at the time it really helped alot with her transition and let our daughter know she'd be safe with us. It also made me realize the bond they had (ALOT of tears and hugs, kisses between them both) and how hard it was for our daughter to totally separate from biomom (even thru all the abuse and drug use)....that point made me realize contact was important at that stage (thru letters). It's amazing how kids can be abused and neglected and still deeply love their bioparents so much.

What an amazing story. That's got to be one of the most loving things she could have done for her daughter...and you could do for your daughter. I'm so amazed at everyone's capacity to love. Even a birthmom who's abusive and neglectful....from the children who love them, and the birth mom's who do the right thing when they need to....to the adoptive mom who makes that trip to a jail and witnesses the pain. I'm sure that was hard on you as well.

Hi Mom2blessings. We had our TPR in May and our goodbye visit in June. After the TPR, the social worker told us that bio-mom's attorney had not asked for the goodbye visit during the hearing. Apparently (at least in California) the attorney is supposed to request the goodbye visit during the TPR hearing. The social worker is still allowed to set one up, but won't necessarily do it without bio-parent's attorney asking for it. In our case, the attorney or bio-mom called the social worker the day after the hearing to request the goodbye visit. Our goodbye visit was pretty traumatic. Our daughters are ages 4 and 5, and probably the most traumatic part was that bio-mom hugged them and fell to the ground crying for 10 minutes as they said goodbye at the end. The girls were pretty confused and unemotional, but after she wailed, "Don't cry, don't cry, I won't be able to stand it if you cry" for 10 minutes--surprise surprise--the girls started crying too. Despite the trauma of the goodbye visit, we are glad that we had it. It gave bio-mom a chance to say what she needed to say to them. It gave the girls closure. And it gave me and my husband closure too. We do plan to have contact with bio-mom after a year of separation to let the girls fully adjust to us as parents. It will be hard, but there are so many reasons to have occasional visits. (I'm sure you've read some of the great resources out there, so I won't copy them here!) For us, short visits will occur 1-4 times per year.

You know I'd probably be falling apart on the floor too, but the "don't cry, don't cry" thing is over the top, IMO. I can only imagine the girls were crying! I probably would have been crying to. I cry whenever someone else cries like that (over emotional pain). Thank you for this information. I didn't realize this is how it worked. We JUST had our TPR Monday, 9/29, and we weren't allowed in the courtroom, so I don't know if they asked for that. I doubt it. Her lawyer didn't do much of anything to be honest.

Wow! To say the least I am jealous of hkolln's experience. That is what I wanted to happen at our daughters goodbye visit. Just once I wanted her Mom to apologize and to take some resposibility for the reason dd now lives with us. Instead it was just a regular old visit. Reading stories, etc. Nothing "real". Our dd was 4 at removal, six at tpr, seven at adoption. We worked hard with her Mom, supporting her, trying to help her face her demons, (meth) and get her kids back. In the end she made the choice to go back to her first love. (meth) Thank God for a wonderful therpapist that was so honest with our daughter. Our daughter is very bright and she understands her Mom's choice. There is no fantisizing about a fairy tale perfect Mom, but oh how it would have helped to have her Mom voice those truths as well as the mom of hkolln's dd did. I commend that lady! When we first discussed adoption we were all for open adoption and our sw was a little hesitant also. Our dd's Mom is not a bad person at all. She is a good person addicted to a bad drug. We felt we would be 100 percent OK with her seeing dd as long is she is clean and sober. What we didn't really think of because we had no experience with this is how that would affect our daughter. She is seven years old, right? She is not going to ever forget her Mom. We don't want her to, and we don't want her to quit loving her, We support that. In our experience, because of her age, our daughter has two Mom's, me and her first Mom. In her little heart, at this time I am Mommy, and her first Mom she refers to by her first name. Never once did we ask her to do that, and when we talk about her first Mom, we say "your Mom" and she knows to whom we are refering. DD has come so far in her attachment with us. At first her counselor thought she would never attach to anyone but after months (years) of hard work on our part and on dd part she is doing so well. Not perfect but darn near. Lol! Now to the point of my post. After tpr "mom" disappeared from the face of the earth. We maintain contact by phone and some face to face visits with an aunt and uncle and by phone (because of a great distance between us) with grandparents. According to them none of them even knew where "mom" was. Both Aunt and Uncle and Grandparents have our address and phone number but we have asked them not to pass it on to "mom' until we feel she is appropriate. (of course if she googled us she could get is so easily, right?) Anyway, last week in the mail a letter comes from Grandma, and included in it is one from "mom". It said, Dear ?, How are you? I am fine? What have you been doing? Lets write letters and send pictures to each other. It will be fun. I miss you. Love, Mommy Well, that upset me. We did not show her the letter. We feel that all the hard work she has done as far as facing the truth would go right out the window and she would have a wonderful, fun,imaginary, pen pal mommy. We would have shown her if there would have been an apology in there. What would be so hard about that? "I am so sorry for not taking care of you! I feel so bad about the way I treated you. Would you please forgive me?" That is what I want for my daughter and that is why her contact with her Mom will closely controlled by us. Overall her whole birth family is in denial as to what happened and they blame everything on social services. That is why we will be there when she has her visits. We love this child so much and we will do everything possible to ensure her a safe, normal upbringing. Oh yeah, she loves us too! It is a great pleasure being her "mommy". sorry so long!

Mom2blessings, congrats on having the TPR behind you. Big step! Your state may work differently from ours with goodbye visits (we're in California), so don't necessarily take my word for it!! :) Coachmur, it is so encouraging to hear that your daughter is attaching to you! This speaks to her resiliency and your hard work! Fantastic. It gives me hope for my kids. Your comments about the letter from bmom resonated with me. We have had a similar issue with inappropriate letters from bmom. In our case, she goes on and on in the letters about how miserable she is without the girls and how unfairly she was treated by Social Services. This is NOT what our daughters (ages 4 and 5) need to hear from her! They need to hear that she's sorry, that she is not just sitting in bed crying all day, and that she loves them. So anyway, I've created a binder for communication from her, which I'm saving up for the right time--maybe when they are teenagers. I'm tucking the original of each letter in the binder pocket and filing photocopies of the letters and pictures in the binder. This way, I can have the photocopy record to keep in one place at all times, even if at some point I give the girls one of the letters or pictures and it gets eaten by the abyss of their bedroom. :) At some point, they will want/need to see everything she has written. Thanks for listening. Getting involved on this openness forum is really helping me to see that everybody goes through the emotions that I have about my kids' birth family!