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Dr. Art,
I was very interested in your response. I am a fost-adopt mom to a sibling group of 3. They are part of a larger group of 9 (or 10, but no word on what became of the last pregnancy). We have mandatory sibling visits with 3 of their 6 siblings, which take place at parks or, God help us, at McDonald's. We have had the older 3 over to our house twice since they were placed in November 2004, and have tried more frequent contact, but we don't always get a return call.
What are your recommendations post-adoption? The kids do like seeing their siblings. The visits with the 3 sibs who are also wards are, to me, depressing. They are clearly happy to see each other, but they are not as natural at play with one another as you would think.
The 11 year old is HUGELY parentified, and this parentification has been encouraged by their grandmother who is raising them and is in ill-health, and by the agency by keeping the 11 year old and the 3 year old in the grandma's house BECAUSE the 11 year old can take care of the 3 year old! She screams attachment issues to me--she tried to call ME Mom, of all people, and tries to triangulate like crazy.
Anyway, the workers at the agency were going to place my 3 with the grandma, but stopped that plan due to the grandmother allowing all kinds of unsupervised contact with mom, who has a serious crack addiction and an affinity for violent, gang-affiliated, prison-history men. The 2 year old and the 3 year old seem very verbally delayed to me. The 2 year old, who is in a non-relative placement--does not make a sound of any kind, not crying, not babbling, not a sound. The 3 year old says "mine's!" but that's all I hear from her.
My youngest 2 were diagnosed FAS, which is what I suspect with their siblings, but of course no one will get them assessed.
I feel uncomfortable about visits with the birth family because (1) there is a history with mom of serious drug use, domestic violence, possibly prostitution. I have no plans to organize a visit with her, because her life style is too criminal and too violent to risk exposing the kids to it. But (2) I am nervous about organizing visits with the other kids' caregivers, because they enable the birth mother like crazy, and give me the impression that they are hiding something. I don't know what, but it can't be good. I cannot be sure that any visit I planned wouldn't end with a "surprise" visit from the birth mother.
My solution is to try to organize a visit at the lakefront, on neutral territory, and see how it goes. I know my children grieve the loss of their siblings, and I know they love each other. I don't want to add to the long, long list of loss each bears.
And yet, I don't trust the other adults to protect the children's safety, nor do I trust them not to undermine my role as their mother. At the one sibling visit that the grandmother attended (why doesn't she do this more often, I don't know), she secretly told the children that their former foster mother called her and asked about them, and that she misses them and cries for them. Well, what she may or may not know is that this foster mother was severely abusive, physically and sexually, as well as committing medical neglect and keeping them in a house of utter filth. This did not boost my confidence in grandma.
What do you recommend I do? What should I consider? Any literature you can recommend? I want to do the right thing for the kids.
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