Adopting niece -visitation

Since your niece is only 2-1/2 I would tell your sister that it is going to be extremely important that she refer to you as mommy. If your sister can't abide by that request, then you will have to consider (very strongly) not letting there be any contact at all for at least 6 months post finalization. This will allow your niece to fully bond with you. After six months you can revisit the possibility of allowing minimal contact, but only if your sister has respected your rules.

This is my on-going dilemma. Fostering and adopting family members is extremely difficult for both the children and adults involved. My husband and I fostered our two nephews for 2.5 years and adopted them this past November. Fostering was a nightmare (to say the VERY least). Both parents came and went whenever they felt necessary and my husband and I took the blame for everything that went wrong in their lives. Now that we have adopted them, most of the craziness has died down, but Dad still believes (in his own little world) that we're co-parenting. Luckily, now that the adoption has finalized, we get to call the shots and make the rules as we see fit. Dad calls every other week and sees the boys once every two months. Mom moved to another state and pops up about once a year and calls every few months. My nephews are older (8,7) so they're capable of understanding the situation better than younger children. It's very difficult to make everyone happy, while keeping everyone safe/sane. My advice would be to set clear boundaries that you're comfortable with and enforce consequences if necessary. - this is something that we struggled with at first. It can be hard to set clear boundaries with family members who are mentally ill and abuse drugs (nothing is ever clear to them). Just stick to your guns and eventually they will get the picture.

I don't have any experience-based advice (yet), but I anticipate that I'll be in a similar situation. I am trying to adopt my sister's biological son, who is currently in foster care. (We live in different countries, so I can't foster him since we would need adoption proceedings to be underway before I can get him a visa to enter the US.)I've been giving a lot of thought to how best help my nephew (who I hope will soon be my son) have a constructive and healthy relationship with his biological mother. I think the most important - perhaps the only - concern should be the well-being of the child. In theory, I'm 100% supportive of open adoptions and the child having access to his/her birth parents. However, in certain cases, that's not the best thing for the child, especially if the biological parents are going to make him feel less secure instead of more loved.My plan is to involve a child therapist in my nephew's life as soon as I have custody, and take his/her advice on how to structure communication with his biological parents. I would be okay with communication up to once a week, but I think it needs to be made very clear that YOU are the parent and the one who will determine how much and what sort of interaction is helpful to the child. Perhaps you could get a social worker or even a local school counselors' insights into how to structure communication and how to get bio-mom to understand the impacts of her decisions. Of course, the most challenging part of the whole thing is that, if she were able to put the child's needs first with any consistency, she would probably still have parental rights.Best of luck to you! Keep us posted!

Every 2 weeks is NOT maintainable, imo sounds like she's still in denial and seeing you as the baby sitter You need to make a written OA agreement. Not only should it say frequency (we were told our quarterly visits were unusually high.. looking back , i tend to agree) include the where, who instigates visits, how often, who pays the cost, how long. But more importantly, state your requirements for ongoing visitation... what behaviors will cause visit to terminate.. what will put future visits at risk. This includes bringing people not previously approved by you, coming impaired saying something inappropriate (call those things out) She can kick, scream, whine and complain, but she has NO power. She lost that right. Either she accepts it or she loses contact. I would strongly recommend you NOT skype. I had no idea how intrusive this would be to our daily life. I will say, after some initial boundary testing, our relationship got MUCH better once we set clear ground rules

You and your foster daughter's caseworker need to work together on a plan for dealing with your sister, now and once you adopt. Your sister needs to understand that she WILL NOT be the parent, co-parent, or whatever. She cannot call herself Mama or Mommy in the presence of your child. You will be the parent, and can make whatever rules you deem appropriate for the protection of your child. It may be easier for your sister to hear these things from the social worker, rather than from you. Certainly, you want your daughter to know her birthmother, IF POSSIBLE. But your sister needs to understand, and again, the social worker should be the one reinforcing the notion, that YOU will be setting the terms, based on your child's best interest. A formal contact plan is a good idea. And especially in the early years, when you are evaluating how well your sister is managing to stay off drugs and out of jail, and how well she respects your parental rights, contact needs to be limited pretty strictly. Quarterly supervised visits of two hours -- probably OK. Dropping in every two weeks or so -- absolutely not. Phone calls on your child's birthday, Christmas, or whatever -- certainly, if the rules are followed. Random Skype calls -- no way. With regard to the in-person visits, it may be wise to have the first few monitored by the social worker, so she can evaluate your sister's sobriety and her willingness to accept the ground rules. IF your sister truly changes her ways and accepts you as her birthchild's parent, you can renegotiate the agreement after a year or two. More visits and calls. Maybe an hour alone with your child in a public place like a restaurant or a park every so often. And while you are making up ground rules, be sure that both she and you understand that she may NOT just "show up" at your daughter's preschool or swim team meet, unless you invite her. Let day care providers, if any, know that the birthmother does NOT have the right to take her out of the facility, or to be in contact without your permission. Again, if your sister turns into a model citizen and a person who acts like a nice auntie to your daughter, you can always modify the agreement to give her more contact. But if your sister shows up high, tries to contact your daughter without permission, undermines your parental authority, etc., she runs the very real risk of being shut out of her birthdaughter's life completely. Your relationship with your daughter -- AND your relationship with your sister -- will go much more smoothly if you set some reasonable ground rules. Sharon