Love Is Not a Pie: More Thoughts on Open Adoption and Foster Care

When I met Erica, my daugher's original mother, the first thing I did was give her a hug. I didn't know then that she was in recovery. I didn't know yet know that she had made dramatic changes in her life and was in a very different place than she had been in when her parental rights were terminated. I only knew that she was my daughter's other mother and that my daughter loved her. That seemed like a good enough place to start.

I love the comment that socialwrkr_247 made the other day in response to my latest family preservation?post:

Too often foster parents assume that because a parent could not keep their child safe, it is unsafe to continue contact with that parent after adoption. In my 7+ years and nearly 100 children's cases, I have only known about 5 parents who would pose any physical threat to the foster family or child. I have known a few more where the child was too traumatized, or suffered from such a serious attachment disorder, to maintain in person contact with their biological parents. Some of those children could handle letter or phone contact, some couldn't. But in all but those most extreme 5 cases, I would highly encourage foster/adoptive parents to continue to maintain the relationship on the child's behalf until a time when the child wants and is capable of handling the interaction with their biological family again. A child will not be a child forever. A child will not always be at this point in their healing. Someday they may need that link to their past to move forward and grow to be a confident, self-aware adult.?

Yes, there are those rare cases in which openness is not optimal, but don't be to eager to assume that your adoption situation is one of them. If the adoptive parent starts from a position of emotional openness toward the first family, and of understanding the importance of maintaining a connection to the biological family in most?(though understandably not all) cases, the open adoption relationship is much more likely to succeed.

Source: http://rebecca-hawkes.blogspot.com/2012/02/more-thoughts-on-open-adoption-and.html

marzieh vafamehr marzieh vafamehr lady liberty lady liberty the rum diary addams family in time