Extended Family

Soooo. I'm not good at the whole birth family relationship thing. I was clear prior to relinquishment that I would be open to two visits a year with parents and 2 with the extended families and quarterly updates as long as boundaries were maintained and I didn't smell any alcohol---and there were no negative reactions. I also stated point blank that "open to" was not a promise and that if that was going to be the basis for relinquishment don't relinquish because I would *not* promise anything. I didn't want to be part of the whole relinquishment thing and a few more months for TPR wasn't going to make a different to me. We had the first visit. I didn't follow what I had planned and had parent and family visit at the same time due to time around the holidays. The visit was ok...except a couple of times one of the, well, former parents, tried to countermand my instructions to my child. For instance, I'd told the child while walking "wait" and one of the parents told the child, "no, we can go on". Its pretty much irrelevant because my son knows to listen to me and stopped. But also that same parent smelled of alcohol. Which is a trigger for the child who is diagnosed as "PTSD symptoms". At the end of the visit, the parents leaned into my car to put LG in the car...which caused him to literally physcially fight to keep them out of the car. The next day, I received a report from the school that my child had the worse day at school of the entire year and had physically injured a teacher-not an accident but full out agression. Needless to say, it took some time to get him settled back down. As a result I explained that I was not currently open to expanding visits with the parents, but will still keep to the 2 per year. My thinking being that it really doesn't affect LG one way or the other and we can ride out the bumps. The response from the extended family? That oh, what I smelled was just hand sanitizer and really LG just wanted to go home with the parents--that's why he got so upset and had the negative reaction to visit. So here's the thing. I'm not wealthy, LG's family is, which they make plain at every contact. They are also educated.....so I'll be honest, I don't have as much patience as I would if I were dealing with a cognitively impaired family member. As you can tell from the response I got, they treat me like the village idiot that's too stupid to find her way out of a paperbag. I can't stand that. Sometimes I want to breach my own privacy and say, Look I've got more advanced degrees than you and from better universities too! Soooo my motives are totally not pure and are all pretty selfish and prideful. But I just don't know how to proceed. LG's cognitive level is such that frankly, the "normal" arguments for open adoption don't apply, anymore than they would with a 16 month old. And unlike a 16 month old, that may not change dramatically. Plus we do have relationships with one of his siblings and so far, relationships with the other side of the family seem to be working. I can keep it to the 2 a year with updates---again, bumps in the road, no biggy.... But I'd hoped to be able to do more because I do understand what its like to not know how LG's doing and worry. So, any advice? Just let sleeping dogs do their thing, or do I need to be up front and firm? Cause I can't be open to more if my decisions as parent are going to be challenged all the time and if I'm going to have more sleepless nights evisioning a lifetime of this kind of interaction (again, not to 18 in LG's case, but a lifetime).