Bonding issues with bio mom still around

How old is she and how often is she having contact with bm?

The child is 6 and sees birth mom 4 hours a week (2 times a week for 2 hours at a time). Also when she does have visits the worker that watches the visits says bio mom does not really play with her. She pretty much sits on the couch while child plays by herself. The child also has pretty much told me that she only likes going to visit to play with the "new" toys. I just think in her ind she already has a mom so why does she need another one.

I have adopted relatives and their birth mother has now moved far away. While she still lived here, we had about once a month visitation for 1-2 hours. I do not allow the visits to happen without me there. Some months, like with family birthdays or holidays there was more contact. When she first relinquished, we had a couple month period where there were no visits. It was good for us as a family and for her. She was grieving and couldn't handle a visit for a period of time. Good luck. Relative adoption is tough. With a child as old as yours, whether or not visits happen, it will be tough for her to bond. My advise is to keep contact but cut down the visits to help your daughter realize that you are her family.

Absolutely cut back or cut out visits for six months to a year.

Cut out visits for at least 6 months altogether so you can bond and the child realizes you are her forever family. I was lucky in that our daughters biomom was in prison when we adopted her, however her former FP's would not stop calling us so we had to make boundaries. She was young and very confused as to what was going on. Eventually it all worked out but I would setup boundaries now.

Wow, visits twice a week, and bm's rights are terminated? Yeah, you need to cut WAY down on the frequency of visitation.

NO easy answer.. That first 6 months to a year were painful at times (J was about your kiddos age and tightly bonded with her BM). There's no magic solution (we continued quarterly visits). It just takes time to bond. It'll happen hang in there

I'm in a different type of situation, but the root problem is bonding. I'm trying to help my aunt who is caring for her almost 13 year old granddaughter while the biomom is in prison. The 13 year old (my cousin) is just a nightmare and is being terrible to her grandmother. The grandmother is dealing with several illnesses, including a recent cancer diagnosis. It's one thing if she was lashing out and being hateful towards a stranger while in foster care, it's absolute other if it's family. She does have contact with her mom in prison through weekly phone calls and regular emails. There also have been monthly visits. Is that too much? SHe's very aware of what's happening with her mom, worries about what is happening to her and is very anxious when she doesn't get an email that something bad happened. There are no adoption plans. If her grandma wanted to adopt, she could but I doubt my cousin would be at all interested in it. I feel like the problem is that there's no bond with my cousin and her grandma. My aunt loves her granddaughter, but my cousin doesn't have any sort of bond with her and perhaps that would change her behavior. Is having so much communication in this situation a negative? Should we try to cut-off communication between my cousin and her mom?

This might be worthy of a different thread. based on what you've described, clearly there's some issues there and therapy is needed. Bonding when it comes to GPs parenting is a unique thing. The GPs, in theory have been there for the kid's entire life.. there theoretically is already a bond. The problem an be the the 13 year old had RAD, but my first instinct is more unresolved issues around the BP. J's brother lives with his GM- there's has been a lot of pain and anger, but it was mainly unresolved issues surrounding my cousin (J's brothers BF)... combined with some triangulation