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We adopted our kids from foster care. It's almost unheard of to have an OA with parents whose kids were removed for abuse/neglect. We have had a successful OA for seven years with our younger kids' bmom and her family. Several years ago we closed the OA with our older kids' bmom bc of the issues she was causing our kids. They were teens and it was THEIR choice to no longer see her.
There are a lot of misunderstandings about what OA is. People think that we co-parent with our kids' bios. That is SO far from the reality. We have visits twice a year with bmom and her parents. People think the kids will be confused over what her role is. They're not. They know that WE are their parents. Their bmom and her parents are very supportive of us as the parents and full decision makers of our family. Our arrangement would fail if we didn't have this support from them.
I'm not sure if our situation is a win-win-win. Bios get to know their biokids are ok. But they also see how much they've lost. The kids get to see how their bios are. They get to see that their situation hasn't really changed and that they still wouldn't be able to parent. They can see that their bios love them. I guess they can be considered winners in a way. I get to be reminded that I am NOT the bio mom of my kids, that there is another woman that my kids call mom, that there is another woman my kids love as mom. I would rather keep my head in the sand and not be reminded of this until my kids are 18, thank you very much. Visits are very stressful for me. I wish they weren't. I honestly really like their bios, it's not that I don't. It's just that it's hard to take them to "santa" twice a year and then hear about it for weeks after. I'm selfish. I wanna be their one and only.
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