Consequences of Closing an Open Adoption

I gave my son up for adoption and I want him back. His parents don't want him to stay in contact with me. Do I have the right to be in his life when he wants me to? (Question first answered by me on Quora)

When you give up a child for adoption, the adoptive parents become his legal parents forever. They get to choose who he is in contact with, who he phones and writes to, who he lives with, who he visits with, until he’s 18. At that point the child is an adult and can choose for himself who to have in his life.

That being said, it is almost always in the child’s best interest to have their birth family in their lives to some degree. My older child was adopted at birth in an open adoption. We had planned to have his birth family involved in his life regularly for all of his years. Sadly, it didn’t work out that way.

His birth mother was struggling with mental health issues and not taking meds. She was making wild accusations against me which was seriously messing with my self-esteem. I was having a hard enough time as it was trying to parent a child who never slept, constantly screamed, and kept getting expelled from preschools.

In my state of chronic sleep deprivation and absolute frustration combined with defensiveness from being constantly attacked, I made a decision that permanently, negatively, effected our lives. I told his birth mother that she had to start going to therapy and get back on her meds before she had contact with our child again.

She reacted by getting even more crazy with her accusations. I can see now how devastating it must have been for her to be told she was too unwell to be allowed contact with the child she’d entrusted to my care. I should have found a better way to handle the situation. I have no clue what it is I should have done, but locking her out of our lives was most definitely the wrong answer. I didn’t see that, though, until he was completely gone from my life.

When he was 15, my son ran away from home, got on a bus and headed out of state to be with her, his birth mom. It did not go well for them. She did not have the skills to handle such a seriously psychiatrically unstable young man. Of course, it must be said, neither did I.

Looking back, I wish I’d been more accepting of his birth mother. Maybe, together, we could have found a way to better parent this very difficult child. I messed up big time in throwing her to the curb, and it’s something I can never take back. I can only hope that someday they can both forgive me for this awful mistake.

Psalm 31

I took a class tonight, learning about Psalm 31. It was not at all what I expected. As I listened to the words, and the translations, and the teaching and the explanations, I felt a little bit of the heaviness in my heart start to lift away. I made a commitment tonight to try to love and forgive myself. I did everything I could possibly do and I did it all with every bit of love and caring that I had inside of me. I deserve love and forgiveness. I deserve to stop beating myself up for not being good enough.

"I seek refuge in You, Shekhinah; may I never be disappointed; as You are righteous, rescue me. Incline Your ear to me; be quick to save me; be a rock, a stronghold for me, a citadel, for my deliverance. For You are my rock and my fortress; You lead me and guide me as befits Your name. You free me from the net laid for me, for You are my stronghold. Into Your hand I entrust my spirit; You redeem me, Shekhinah...

"...I trust in Shekhinah. Let me exult and rejoice in Your faithfulness when You notice my affliction, are mindful of my deep distress, and do not hand me over to my enemy, but grant me relief. Have mercy on me, O Shekhinah, for I am in distress; my eyes are wasted by vexation, my substance and body too. My life is spent in sorrow, my years in groaning; my strength fails because of my iniquity, my limbs waste away.

"Show favor to Your servant; as You are faithful, deliver me. O LORD, let me not be disappointed when I call You; ... How abundant is the good that You have in store ... for those who take refuge in You. You grant them the protection of Your presence... You shelter them in Your pavilion... Blessed is Shekhinah, for you have been wondrously faithful to me, a veritable bastion. Alarmed, I had thought, “I am thrust out of Your sight”; yet You listened to my plea for mercy when I cried out to You. So love Shekhinah, all you faithful; Shekhinah guards the loyal, and more than requites him who acts arrogantly. Be strong and of good courage, all you who wait for Shekhinah."'

July 12, 2014 Sarah to Michael

On Saturday, July 12, 2014 9:47 PM, Sarah wrote:

Dear Michael,

I have already made it clear to you that I am sorry I was not as good a mother as I should have been. And I cannot apologize to you for things I have not done. Sadly, sweetheart, you were the one who has been delusional, not me, hon. You have been diagnosed by many many psychiatrists and psychologists as having various psychotic disorders. They have almost all said that there was hope for you to get better, but only if you made the choice to get the help offered. I tried over and over to get you that help. You promised me over and over that you would accept that help, but you continue to run away from it.

Joey was taken from me for a few weeks this summer because I did not protect him from his father and from you. The judge gave him back to me as soon as he heard the case. I promised to get help to be able to be more protective of my children, and I have gotten that help. I have been in an intensive therapy program that has taught me to be more protective of Joey and of myself. It has also taught me to understand you and the dynamics between the two of us a lot better.

You needed help from a very young age that I was not yet able to give you. I tried everything I could think of but it wasn't enough. I understand that you cannot see what went on between us objectively. If you want to try to talk it through, I would be happy to do so, so long as you can stay calm and respectful. One of the many promises you have made to me but not yet kept, was that we could be in family therapy. I am still willing to do this.

I have had to make a lot of difficult decisions about my responsibilities towards you. One of the most difficult of these decisions was the choice to allow you to stay with your birth mother, in her home, and not in an inpatient facility back here. I made this choice because I'm hoping as an almost-adult you'll make the choice to get yourself the help you need. I cannot control your choices, your feelings, or your behaviors. I can only control my reactions to them.

I will always love you, Michael. I hope you can hear this letter with the love and caring that are meant to be its intent.

Love always,

Mom

April 19, 2024 Update, 15 years later

My Rachel goes by Michael now. The gender story is for another day. Michael made it out of the facility he was living in when last I wrote and made it up to Boston to live with his birthmother. She tried. She really did. He wanted money so he shot up a store, got one guy in the back. He went to jail, then longterm in an adult psychiatric lockdown, then halfway house after halfway house, getting kicked out of one after another. Then hotel after hotel, getting kicked out of one after another. He's still refusing to take meds. I don't have any idea how to help him. At this point I just have to try to keep myself safe.

The system doesn't work

My Rachel tried to stab someone to death last night. The shift coordinator called to let me know. No big deal because no one was actually physically harmed, right? They still want to discharge her and don't understand why I won't bring her home.

We had a big, very loud meeting on Wednesday. They say she's made so much progress. And she definitely has. She no loinger tries to strangle people when they try to brush her hair. She's more likely to calmly state when she's thinking and feeling, even though those thoughts and feelings are her conviction that she can create false documents to enable her to run away to Japan and start a new life on her own, or that she'd be happy to come back home as long as I follow her rules, and allow her to run her and our lives as she sees fit, because she knows better than we do.

The therapists, administration, and insurance company all agree that if I won't bring her home, she is ready to be moved into a therapeutic foster home- a family trained to care for kids with behavioral problems. I fought with them until they started screaming at me that I wasn't in this for Natalie's best interests but because of my own issues, that I was obviously not in my right mind nad needed more intensive therapy than what I was getting. At that point I left the meeting, because I ust couldn't take it any more.

My Rachel tried to kill somebody tonight. She was angry at him, so she grabbed a pair of scissors and tried to stab him to death. But our mental health system insists she's ready for a step-down in care. It all comes down to money, doesn't it? They don't want to pay the exhorbitant price of the care this child needs. So they're going to let her loose on society, my homicidal delusional 12 year old. And while I hope with all my heart that I'm wrong, someday, I truly believe, she'll be a killer or she'll be dead.

Sarah

Support for Caregivers - Me; and Return to RTF

Dear SB and Cousin R,
I cannot tell you wht it means to me to have you in my corner. It means everything to me.

When a parent has a child like this, their friends drift away. When someone asks me how I am, I tell them, and who wants to hear about such things such as what Rachel and the mental health system are putting us through?

I NEED SUPPORT. Hearing your words lets me know SOMEONE is out there listening to me, boosting me, supporting me, and I need that more than anything.

I don't think most people understand that caregivers of these children need a shoulder to cry on, an ear to just LISTEN to. If you have no solutions or words of wisdom, it's okay, just reflect back our (my) feelings, and let us (me) know you're there, holding us (me) up.

I think that's one of the most difficult parts of this is feeling abandoned by so much of my community.

The two of you, in your comments, gave me so much strength, I've been able to stand up for myself and Rachel even more, and to spend more quality time with Joey, and demand more quality time with my husband Sam.

Joey has been doing well enough emotionally, that we're being downgraded from Mobile Therapy to Outpatient therapy, which worries me. I mean, I'm thrilled that Joey's doing so well, but his Mobile Therapist, who comes to our home for 2-3 hours per week, and supports Joey, and me for Joey, will no longer be there for us, the state is not allowing it. Now we'll have to go into a cold office and start all over with some new for one hour per week.

But how do we fight the system? I filed an appeal, but the system is set up so that the evaluating psychiatrist, who had never even met Joey, was the same psychiatrist to review the appeal! How is that objective??

So even less support available to us.

We are very blessed to have a congregation that does everything they can for us, but even a lot of the folks there have pulled away from us as Rachel has gotten less well.

Anyway, the less restrictive hospital agreed after much arguing to meet our demands, and they are slowly trying to wrap their heads around the fact that even though they don't agree ith what we, the parents, want, they have to at least try to comply with it. They're not complying fully, but at least we've got a start. There'a an outside social worker conference calling with our family therapy sessions, to guide them onn how to act more appropriately with us. I.e., we're no longer being blamed for having caused these problems in our child. Instead we're focusing on how to make our relationship better with her now, which has not yet been done in over two years.

Also, the in depth testing is being done, finally, which should show them once and for all that they are dealing with a child who has a deep seated mental illness, and not simply behavioral issues from bad parenting. Why is the Mother always blamed for everything???? The testers have already said off the record that see signs of psyhotic tendencies and fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Hey, Mommy knows what she's talking about! Imagine that.

I'm feeling so much more at peace now. Like finally someone's listening to me. I don't know if my child will ever return home, but at least a step os being taken to determine wht we're dealing with, so they can adjust the treatment goals and medications accordingly.

Sarah

Family Meeting, yeah right

Me, my ex, one therapist from her regular psych hospital, her case manager, a social worker from the lock down facilty, and Rachel all met last night for a family meeting. Gads, was it a disaster.

It started out with Rachel refusing to acknowlege my existence, and then reaching out for the emergency button to call a code, and laughing maniacally. The lock down social worker didn't see her do it, so I had to tell her so she could call it off. Then Rachel took off from the conference room and went running through the hallways, laughing hysterically, with the staff trying to chase her down.

We talked for a while without her while tried to calm her. The lock down said they didn't see any reason she had to stay there any longer, because she hadn't shown any aggressive or self-abusive tendencies. She refused to shower, brush her hair, change her clothes, or particopate in anything they asked her to do, and she continued to eata foods she was allergic to, and making herself throw up, but that was no big deal....

So they wanted to discharge her tomorrow... which is now today. I was furious. The regular hospital said they were fine with that, and I said I was not. I had been asking the regular hospital to do a full-scale psychiatric evaluation on Rachel since she had been admitted there and it STILL had not been done, and I was not going to okay her release to the regular hospital until I had it in writing that they had arranged such an eval for her.

The lock down social worker said to me if I was not prepared to allow them to release her to the psych hospital, was I prepared to take her home, and I went balistic.

These places terrorize parents, lie to them about their rights and the laws, and I let them have it. The fourth time she was in lock down, they told me if I didn't take her home with me they'd call children's services and file charges against me for child abandonment and then I could lose Joey as well. I took her home. The fifth time she was in lock down, was because she had attempted to burn the house down with me in it because she "wanted a new mother" and if I was dead she could get one. And she had outlined to me calmly, in detail, her plans to murder Joey and my husband during the night. I was NOT taking her home, and I had called children's services, and they told me if I DID take her home that would be putting Joey in jeopardy, and they could take him, so when they made the threat again, I told them tough s$%^. She stayed there for two months until they found a permanenent placement.

So when this lady started in on me again with the same garbage, I told her she should go perform a physiologically impossible act of reproduction on herself, and that she was going to keep Rachel until my demands for her appropriate care at her permanent institution were met. They were all a little taken aback, but there wasn't exactly anything they could do when faced by a parent who actually knew her legal rights, which they did not often encounter.

I also started venting about how the permanent place refused to acknowledge that Rachel could possibly have an organic mental illness, that this wasn't just psychological and behavioral, that she needed stronger medication, and intervention for mental illness, not just intervention for an emotional disturbance. The first hos[ital she had been in, for the first year, had medicated her heavily and left her in front of a videogames screen 24/7. I moved her vecause I wanted her getting therapy too. I had no idea that therapy would be all they would be giving her.

I told them that while they were probably an excellent program for children with merelty behavioral and emotional needs, that was NOT Rachel's only set of issues. She was bprn to severely mentally ill drug and alcohol using teenagers, with the cord around her neck and meconium on her face, had suffered lead poisoning from eating paint, and head injuries from pounding her head against walls. She had absolutely no remorse, and never had.

I told them they may be licensed psychologists, but they were totally ignorant of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, prenatal drug exposure, early onset schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and sociopathy, and they had no right to tell me my child did NOT have any of these problems when they were not knowlegable enough to even know what these issues looked like let alone diagnose or treat them. My ex backed me up on this too, which really surprised me.

Rachel was eventually coaxed back into the room, and she ranted that she was not returning to her permanent placement because they always believed the adults before the children, and never let her do what she wanted. She wanted to go back to her first placement, where she would be left alone. Her rant lasted as long as mine.

It ended with our outside-agency case manager telling me she was going to try to find a place that could do a full-scale psychiatric eval on Rachel. Fortunately my husband had taken off of work, and he and Joey had driven me so I could hide in a novel during the whole ride back home.

Sarah