Weekly Visitation #4

The sw called me around 11am yesterday to let me know the visitation was being moved up to 3pm instead of 3:30 and would last until 4:30. I was off work for the day so the change in time was not a problem.

The sw also tells me that she had just come from a home visit with the parents and the mom wanted to know if she could meet the foster parents. Sw told her she would ask the foster parents and that decision would be made by the two different sets of foster parents that all four boys are placed with. Mom said she really wanted to meet the people who have her kids. I told the sw I would have to speak with my husband and would let her know. Sw said it did not have to be at the visit ----that we could wait until next week.

My husband works nights and was sleeping. He woke up for a few minutes and I talked to him about it. We both agreed since the parents were asking to meet us we would agree to meeting them. We thought we would see how it goes this time and we could either continue to have some contact at visitations or if it did not go well we could decide to have no more contact with them. Either way, the parents asked and we thought we would take this as a positive note and do the right thing for Lil Boy and Lil Man.

I called sw and left a voicemail that we would agree to meeting the parents and would like to do it at this visit instead of waiting until next week. Our reasoning for wanting to meet them today was that it was fresh on their minds since they had just asked today and would hopefully still be in the same frame of mind of wanting to meet us. Mostly though our reasoning was based on the fact that the permanacy conference is this Thursday morning and we will be in attendance with the parents in the conference. We hoped that their meeting us ahead of time and feeling a little sense of support from our meeting would help them to be receptive of any input we may give during this conference. In the end, it may now mean a hill of beans to the parents but you know what....we committed to doing the right thing for each foster child that is placed with us and being a voice for the foster children in our care.

I will post on meeing the parents in another post...

After the visit, Lil boy is crying pretty hard as he normally does after each visit. So, so sad. He continued to have a really hard evening and night. Off and on throughout the evening he would cry. Then at bedtime ----well it was a disaster. Finally went to sleep around 1am, I think. I don't know if it was the longer visitation or if it was that he was with all of us when we met the parents at the end or if it was maybe a combination of both. That's just it....you don't know.
Before we left his mom kept telling him not to cry. She told him nicely but none the less she told him not to. I noticed at home later he would be about to cry and he would tighten his face as hard as he coult. It dawned on me he was trying not to cry. I called him over to me, help him in my lap and told him it was okay to cry. He could cry if he felt like it and it was okay. He broke down, cried and cried. Poor Lil Boy.

Again Lil Man did not cry until we were home and about to take a bath. It seems to suddenly hit him like a ton of bricks. He cried off and on until bed time. When I rocked him to sleep again he cried. About 30 mins after I layed him down he was awake again. He finally went to sleep a little after 1am also. This was after a lot of off and on crying.

Since the visit they both seem to think they do not have to listen. It's like starting all over again very week after a visit. Then, just as soon as we get their behavior back together it is time to go for another visit.......