Disturbing News

I guess I would be a little cautious about trusting the aunt's statement. For one, why does she suddenly want to tell you this after two years? I've read many of your other posts and my impression was that Nugget had a good relationship with his mother and genuinely looked forward to visits. Now, I understand that if he came from an environment where all he knew was screaming and cursing then that would be his "normal" and he wouldn't know any better. But he's been with you for two years and it should be pretty obvious to him that a "normal" family does not act like that. So if he was really being treated like crap at visits it seems that after having been with you for awhile he should've started reacting more negatively to the visits with his mom, knowing that there was a much better way to be treated. My STBAS was treated horribly by his mom when he still lived with her. Other than a brief 6-week stint visits were supervised for two years. Even then when visits were stopped he hasn't really expressed any desire to continue them again. He's asked a couple times if he'll ever see her again, but there is no immediacy to his request (i.e. hasn't asked "Can we go see her soon" or anything like that). The visits were more of a burden to him than a pleasure, and he was always getting upset about a visit interfering with something fun at daycare. So, I guess just from my own experience it seems a little odd that Nugget would keep wanting to see his mom if it was that unpleasant. I personally always thought I'd never want to do an open adoption. After seeing what my STBAS is going through I have completely changed my mind. My STBAS feels abandoned by his mom. If he knew he could see her every now and then I think it would make a world of difference. Unfortunately his mom is very unstable and I do not trust her around him, even in a closely supervised visit. She's 34 and at this point I've kind of given up hope on her ever changing. She also has other older kids and like clockwork she loses interest in them as soon as they go into school -- not cute enough anymore, too much responsibility, too many prying eyes on them. So I don't think she has any desire to see him anyway. I keep in touch with the dad of his half-sibs and it's been months since she's even bothered with a 5-minute phone call let alone a visit. It's sad. So ... I would still recommend trying to hang onto some form of contact with Nugget's mom. I'm sure that you had no intention of doing unsupervised visits anyway. And beforehand you'd want to lay the ground rules out so that she would know the visit would immediately stop if she became unpleasant at all. I know it would be "easier" to just cut contact but after what my STBAS has gone through I think it is a lot more important to the child's long-term mental health to try to maintain some form of contact if possible. one thing you do need to do is let Nugget's mom know that he needs time to process this and that she needs to back off with the contact for now. Ideally it would be nice if you could get on the same page with her and have some kind of "goodbye" or 'transition' visit where you both talk to Nugget and let him know that she is making the ultimate sacrifice for his future. She could've fought through a TPR trial, but she didn't. Could be she has her own selfish reasons for that, but ultimately, that does mean his life is in limbo for a lot less time because of that. If you decide right now that you don't want contact, I would still strongly encourage you not to burn your bridges with mom, and at least say something like you're thinking about it. I am not sure if Nugget knows what's going on but once he's fully absorbed it and he really starts reacting you might change your mind.