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I recently read this letter in an advice column and was curious about what sort of advice an adult adoptee might give the mom in this situation.
Question: Our 14-year-old son, who was adopted by open adoption, now wants to go live with his birth-mother. She was completely out of the picture until a couple of years ago when she suddenly showed up, telling us that she'd completely changed her life and wanted to re-establish contact with "her" son. At first, it was just phone calls. Then she asked for daytime visits, then overnights. Then he wanted to go on vacation with her last summer. In the meantime, he's become more and more difficult to live with – moody and disrespectful, mostly, and his grades have taken a nose dive. He's told us he doesn't want to live with us anymore. I think he believes there will be no rules with her and he'll be able to eat ice cream all day long, figuratively speaking. What should we do?
(Read the original letter and response here:)
The assumption here is that there is a legally enforceable open adoption agreement in place. What are your thoughts?
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Professionally and Personally, to me it sounds like ' Son ' expects some type of cash or other arrangement from ' Birth Mom '.
For what she did previously??
I am also going to Professionally and as a ' Adoptive Mom ' say.
There is way too much Advocacy by our State Court Systems, for Kids over the age of 7 ( in California ) to make decisions regarding ' Open or Visitation Advocated Relationships ' !!
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It makes sense that the son would want to spend time with his birth mother. It sounds like classic teenage drama. I'm not sure that this isn't just normal teenager behavior. How much is actually tied to him spending more time with his birth mother? IF the birth mother has been in his life for awhile, I feel like the correlation might not be there as strongly as the adoptive parents may suspect...