Visiting birth fam with other adopted kids

Can you do a bit of both? Bring the kids along to meet and say hello and then have them go off with grandma or grandpa or someone else for the rest of the visit? Maybe that will be less intense?

That IS a good idea but our extended family (at least the ones that live by us) do not support our open adoption. They do not want to meet J's birth parents and they get upset when we go to visit them so we just don't tell them we are going. That is part of the delima as well. If we ask grandma and grandpa to watch the older two, we will have to tell them where we are going and hear their opinion about it once again!

What about friends? Another idea is for you to take 2 cars, introduce the kids, and then one of you take the kids and drop them off at a friends house or something.

I wish it was that simple, but for us it is not. This brings up a whole seperate issue, that we have NO support from friends and family. Even when my husband was in the hospital donating a kidney, I had no help with the kids. Sad, but I try not to take it personally. (I think a lot of them are scared off by the whole foster thing, I don't know?) The visit is also an hour from our house and the only family we have there are great grandparents that are too elderly to babysit. Our older 2 have grandparents but they are 2 hours from where we meet the other birthfamily. What we may have to do is take 2 cars, let the older two eat with us and then have my husband take them somewhere while the baby and I visit with her family. OR, I may just leave the older two home with my husband and hope that the birth family understands:confused: Thanks for your input. Do you all think that the visit will be hard on the kids or I am just overthinking again??

wow :) You have your hands full (PS have we talked about the kidney donor situation before ... I was supposed to be a donor, but was discovered to have cancer during the donation process, instead my friend donated her kidney to my cousin just 2 weeks ago) Well, Could you play it by ear? Take two cars, and have a back up plan if things go bad with your older two? I would spend alot of time talking about the different types of adoptions. That these parents never hurt the baby, and that they are safe. That they want to see the baby with her big brother and sister. Even at 13 and 14 my older two really are VERY resistant to having any contact with our babies' parents (from foster care). They are angry and hateful towards them (at times, and not in front of them but after visits) and alot of that is displaced anger towards their own brith parents who were abusive.

I have two I have adopted seperately from FC. At various times one or the other's bmoms have had visits. when they were timy it didn't matter. As they got older, it did begin to cause some questions and a few tears. Right now both bmoms are absent from our lives and it hurts the kids. If just one bmom showed up it would cause issues for the other one. But, I'm afraid that is just always going to be a part of their life. (They are 9 and 10 now) They understand that their bmoms can't parent them, but it still hurts. I just listen to what my kids say, I acknowledge their anger and grief, we write letters, draw pictures etc to give to their parents "at a later date." Loss is a part of our life. sincerely, Saj

I have two I have adopted seperately from FC. At various times one or the other's bmoms have had visits. when they were timy it didn't matter. As they got older, it did begin to cause some questions and a few tears. Right now both bmoms are absent from our lives and it hurts the kids. If just one bmom showed up it would cause issues for the other one. But, I'm afraid that is just always going to be a part of their life. (They are 9 and 10 now) They understand that their bmoms can't parent them, but it still hurts. I just listen to what my kids say, I acknowledge their anger and grief, we write letters, draw pictures etc to give to their parents "at a later date." Loss is a part of our life. sincerely, Saj

Hmm...well, since they are J's siblings, would her bfamily accept the older kids as part of the family somehow? My grandparents accepted my half sibs as their grandkids even though they were not theirs biologically (my half sibs had no grandparents, father and step mother's parents had both passed away before they were born, my grandparents were my mom's parents and half sibs were father's and stepmothers kids). I also have step family members that are aunts, uncles, cousins to me, even though they aren't biologically (when I really try to think about family relationships, I realize just how confusing my family is to explain in terms of bio relations, lol). While those situations are a LOT less complex emotionally, making DS and DD feel like everyone is family (even though they are visiting J's bio fam) might make things "better". I mean, I know the older kids will know that J's bfam isn't their bfam, but they also know you aren't their bparents. Just because they know the difference won't nessesarily mean they are angry about it. And the older ones might already be used to a little more fussing over J by people outside of immediate daily contact, because people naturally fuss over little ones ("aww, isn't she so cute", etc), so the bfam fussing over her more might not even phase them. Plus there's the chance that keeping DS and DD away from J's family might enforce the difference/divide (she has a bio fam that still lvoes her, they don't even want us to meet them). I'm not sure that's how they would feel, but I have to wonder what they would be thinking if you took J to her visit without them... A plan B might be a good idea too of course! I hope I made sense, my mind hasn't been overly focused lately!

Thank you all for your prospective on this situation. I have just been really confused about how to handle it. We only see J's birth parents once a year, so it's not going to be an ongoing problem. As far as the older two, maybe you are right that they need to go so that they don't feel excluded. That is really the kind of "vibe" I want our family to have. We are all family, so if we go visit J's birthparents we all go and if we visit C and B's grandparents we all go. The grandparents have definately treated J like a grandchild. We see them once a month so it kind of has to be that way. I have explained to C and B that J's parents chose us to be her mommy and daddy and that they just want to see how great she is doing. They can not take her back etc. They seem to understand (pretty bright kids) A lot of my anxiety is that C and B will act up because they are uncomfortable and J's birth parents will think that she is being raised in a nut house or something! They expressed their concerns about us fostering when they placed baby J with us and we told them that we probably wouldn't be doing foster care anymore (which is honestly how we felt at the time...we had just sent our FS home) So, I feel like they may be upset that we did take more FK's. They are really accepting people who have had struggles of their own, so I really think it will be ok. I just really want them to be happy with their decision. It's a lot of pressure being an adoptive parent sometimes!

My daughter has an open adoption with visits, my son has an open adoption, no visits and only third party contact. When he is old enough if he can understand, we will explain the difference between what Pixie's bio parents did so that they could not parent vs. what his did... the differences are HUGE and very easy to explain. And hopefully he will see why he can't visit his bioparents right now.