Visitations
By Lisa_WY
As much as we would all like to
stop visitations, they are necessary in most cases. It is very
normal for a child to return home from visits with their bio parents
tired, irritable, cranky, defiant, and maybe even a total pain
the butt. Visitation has to be implemented in order for you to
move on to the next phase. Instead of "fighting" about
the visitation you need to use it as a tool.
Visitation shows the commitment of the bios. How can they be full
time parents if they only show up part of the time or none of
the time? No contact with the child can lead to termination of
parental rights. If you try to keep the child away from the parents,
then the bio parent can use that against you in court.
Visitation shows how the child interacts with the bios. This also
can be used to your advantage. Document all contacts with between
the bios. In your documentation use non judgmental quotes and
put in the good as well as the bad. Be objective!
If the child never sees the bios then the bios become a fantasy
in the child's mind. The bios can become a knight in shinning
armor. That can be very hard to overcome. The kids need to see
the bios for what they really are. How can they if we try to keep
them away from them?
Visitation is hard on everyone especially the child but how you
react to it can hurt the child. When dealing with visitation,
yes you will worry, especially if it is non supervised but use
this time to get the things done you haven't had time to do with
a child underfoot. It will keep you from watching the clock. Keep
yourself busy during visitation and exspect the fall out from
the visit. How you handle it can either help the child or hurt
them further.
Never speak bad about the bios in the presence of the kids. You
are nurturing the child and the child shouldn't have to deal with
divided loyalties. Fact is, the bios are their parents until termination
of parental rights. In most cases it is the best interest of the
child to have a relationship with the bio parents. You need to
be professional in dealing with the bios. Bite your tongue, speak
kindly, and be calm especially about visitation. The kids can
pick up on your mood. The kids love their bios(as much as that
is hard to shallow) and they should be allowed to love them without
interference. Alienating them against the bios is not good in
the eyes of the court. There has been some cases where the grandparents
have lost custody because of the alienation. Just as foster parents,
we all walk a fine line.
There are some cases where visitation needs to be in a supervised
setting. In cases of abuse you need to insist that there is supervised
visits. You and the courts might not see eye to eye on this. You
have to give your best arguement on why and hope the judge or
DFS sees it your way.
If the courts decide that you need to supervise visitations then
it has been suggested to me by a counselor that you do it away
from the child's home. Go to a neutral setting like McDonalds,
a park, or a friends house. A child home is their safe haven and
should be a no bio zone. If you are in a public place with others
around you then you have witness' to what happened during visitations.
If your bio has a history of lying about what happens during visitaiton
this is a good reason to do it in an alternate place. Also get
a disinerested 3rd party to go with you.
Ask DFS or the GAL what is considered "missed" visitations.
In our case if bio was 15 minutes late than the visit was a no
show and not going to happen on that day. If bios need to cancel
a visit in advance and it fits in the child's schedule to reschedule
do. You need to act like you are trying to make visits happen.
Get the visitation plan clearly written. The one that is more
specific will help you in the long run. Ours said that bio gets
child on his days off from 3pm-noon the next day. We learned the
hard way that was not specific enough.
Phone calls: There is no law that says you have to answer your
phone unless there is a court order that states that the bio can
call at a certain time and the child be there for the phone call.
My suggestion has always been to get caller ID and voice mail.
That way your life isn't interupted for phone calls. My bio had
a habit of calling at 10pm after the child was in bed. I could
document this by having him leave a voice mail on the phone. My
voice mail time stamped the phone call. I could use the speaker
phone to put this recording on a cassette tape and it could be
legally used in court. You have to be careful about taping phone
conversations. Know the laws in your state. With answering machines
the bios know they are being recorded so it is perfectly legal.
Visitation is not pleasant but
it is necessary in order to move to the next step of your case.
