I'm sure the judge has seen this type of parent more than we have and will most likely say keep it the way it is and see me in six months. If the judge doesn't compliment your DD for getting a job and place, then ask the judge for the six months.

Carly, first of all, welcome!!!!!!

Second, I hate to tell you, but you may have your grandson for the duration. I don't believe I've seen even one instance where the bios got their children back for more than a few months. In our case, Pinky has never had her kids since she left her boyfriend to go partying eight years ago. And before she was trying to raise them herself, she was living on and off with us, with one or more kids.

The reality is that once the bios see that they can have their freedom they don't tend to give it up easily :-(

I have to be honest and I'm sure most can agree, the BIOS suck the life outta you. You learn to be strong over time, but the BIOS, whether it be your son or daughter, will always be a part of your life, AND our gc life.....no matter what. They love and miss their parents. It's very difficult for both us as the grandparents and our gc which is why we turn to this group for advice and support. It's so hard to teach our gc to live without a parent and equally hard for us as parents to live without our bio. It's very difficult because you want the best for your gc but you don't always know how to achieve it.

Some things can make it easier, like terminating parental rights & adopting, because then you can call the shots about what happens. Emotionally, I think most of us will have regular cycles of anxiety & stress along the way, especially as long as the bios are even visiting.

My dh and I are pretty convinced that this is our life for the long haul. I worry so much about the what ifs. What happens if she does get him back. What that is going to do to him emotionally. The attachment we have built, all the work we done to build trust, that we are there to meet his needs, that he can count on us. Before becoming a stay at home grandma I was in school working on my degree in Children's mental health and behaviour strategies. What I know scares me for him. He has many struggles that I don't think bio mom is remotely prepared to deal with in any meaningful way. How will she handle him repeating the same phrase for 6 hours straight.

The bio in this case is not mine but my husbands. We only found out about her 4 years ago when she was 14, and the only relationship there has been has been a difficult one at best. She grew up in foster care and has many struggles that at the time were completely foreign to us.

Our little one has only seen his mom once since he was 13 months old as she lives on the other side of the country. His dad who is now incarcerated was primarily more the caregiver than her, she was there but didn't really do the nurturing or engaging part. It was not a great reunion, he didn't go running to her, or hug her. He is very fearful of people, she was no exception. We tried to help guide her to make the experience a bit easier, but she wasn't having any of that, and grabbed him out of my arms to hug him. It took 3 months to undo the what a 20 minute visit accomplished. Could no longer tolerate any distance between us, even if he could still see me. He was attached to my hip which is no easy feat with a 40lb toddler for nearly a month. For 6 weeks he woke up crying and calling for me every 30 minutes. The next 6 weeks it was down to 5 times a night but no longer crying. We are finally down to 2x a night. I am hoping that soon we will be back to sleeping threw the night.

Depending on the day and who may or may not ask, or what her MO is at a particluar moment, she maybe pregnant again. I always said when happens again, we would CPS deal with it next time around. Though I know I don't have the heart to say no if the ask again.

Dh and I informed our lawyer that we want to terminate her rights and adopt. It's taken so much out of our family, and living our life on hold 4-6 months at a time is difficult to plan for the future and we need some much needed stablity. We have a 18 yr old son at home as well as 14 year old son whom this is effecting as well, the younger one mostly. they were use to our calm environment, when our biggest issue was getting to practise on time, or getting homework completed, and mom being there anytime they needed. Life became meetings with SWers(only until we became legal guardians) lawyers, court dates, doctors, psychologists, speech pathologists, while trying to finish school, which I did manage to complete, and implement multiple interventions to help little one. They love him like a brother and understand why it is necessary, doesnt make it any less difficult. it would just be nice to have one less stress, the whole court stress to be over with. I worry is a year and a half long enough time to have passed to make such request. I hope so. Though we haven't got to the phase of requesting a home study, or parenting assessment, or psych eval. So it's still a long road yet I imagine.

Have you let your bio know how much effort your GC requires? I let my DD know that GD needed multiple therapies, etc. and she didn't want anything to do with having to deal with that. DD just wanted some playtime and show off time with GD. I'm in the middle of adoption which will be final Sept. 15th. I've gotten custody gradually from DD having GD 3 days a week, to supervised visits, and now adoption. DD and the bio dad finally agreed to the adoption after I told them I needed child support because of all her needs. DD thinks she will get unsupervised visitation after it is final. HaHaHa...in her dreams. GD is so much more relaxed and happy now that she knows I'm her forever home.

Carly, I would think that all of the professionals you mentioned would be willing to testify in court that this child's interests are best met & served in the stable home he has been in for a year & a half with you & your family. My divorce attorney asked our family counselor to testify on my behalf regarding keeping our daughter away from him & my ex was not happy at all about that!! The judge stopped his visits that day? Ask your attorney about getting professionals opinions for court.

I don't know what state you live in. But the fact that she's visitedhim once in 1.5 years will go against her and I believe that after 6 months of no visits you can file termination of rights based on abondoment. You should look into this right away.

I know exactly how you feel. I'm a step grandmother raising my kids since both, they're 6 and 4. My step daughter does the same thing all the time. She always finds programs, jobs and assistance and usually it doesn't last for more the sux months. I k ow its hard not to worry, but if you have guardianship your in a very good position. Document every call, be supportive, positive and always focus on what is in the best interest of your grandchild.

Both the social worker and psychologist have offered to testify if required so that has helped ease some of our concerns.

We are in Canada. Back when we still had a social worker, we were instructed to seek termination of her rights because she left the province with no concrete time when she might return, so he was technically abandoned. The first year of courtdates accomplished little. we got temp guardianship right away, but as for listing what needs to be done on her part, only just happened this april. Not that she didnt know because it was in the court documents. We were then asked to take that off the table for the time being to give her a chance. It's not little ones fault she didn't have a lawyer, then when she got a lawyer was only just assigned the case that morning, then the courts wanted to figure out if the dad was consider a parent and give him the opportunity to get involved, only to be followed by now giving her a chance. When we go back she will not have fulfilled anything to show stability, which is likely to give us another 6 months at which point he will have been with us for two years. We were asked if we would take him to see her, and my dh she we were willing. But after looking into the cost for my entire family to travel there to see her it was 10,000 my family could not afford with our mounting legal fees, and me not working, and paying for our oldest son university, on top of little ones therapies. I'm hoping that we can go ahead this time around.

I will be interested to hear more about your battle to take away parental rights. In the U.S. it is next to impossible as the courts are in favor of reuniting the children w/bio parents, always giving parents the opportunity to try again at parenting. The best interest of the child laws take second place to the parental rights. I believe in Spain and Great Britain it is also difficult to remove parental rights. Clearly, this is not a problem unique to any one country and grandparents taking in their grandchildren is occurring at epidemic proportions. In Canada, do you need to pay a lawyer privately to fight for custody or does the government supply one? Thanks for coming to share.

It's is much the same way here Daisy. Children's rights come second to parental rights. What's good for the parent isn't always what's good for the children. It makes me furious because children are the ones most greatly affected. Then we wonder why the cycle continues. Yes we do have to pay for a lawyer privately. Though she does not because she has no income. We could have gone the CPS route and let them do it and essentially become a kinship foster placement, but then they would have been his guardian and any thing we wanted to do etc would have to go threw them.

I totally understand your reasoning for adoption. We had to wait for sil to give up on custody before we could adopt. Both our lawyer and the GAL told us we would have little chance of taking parental rights away from bio father. I have recently been appointed to the advisory council for our State Department on Aging and hope to represent the needs of both grandparents and grandchildren. Every day we hear of another shooting and more and more are done by teens who had little or no family life and turned to gangs for their family. The pubic just does not appreciate the job we are doing in raising our grandchildren and keeping them off of the streets.

My daughter "sold" her children to me for $500. I knew the money was going for drugs, not car insurance and fixing the damages to her car from hitting a telephone pole as she stated it was. So, for $500 she signed the paperwork to let me adopt. How sad, selling your kids and so cheap! I thought she would want more than that. :) My lawyer and another lawyer I saw for a 2nd opionion both said no way will judge allow it because bio dads wouldn't sign even though the one bio was going to prison for raping a minor. Well I won and judge didn't even consider waiver signed by daughter, he based it upon all bio's lack of interest in their kids!

After winning custody, we were in fear of bio dad and crazy stepmom would continue to pull at gs. However, in less than a year after we were awarded custody, bio dad had his lawyer send a letter to our lawyer stating that he was not going to visit and we could adopt gs if we wanted to. He wanted nothing to do with his son, as long as we asked for no money. He put a price tag on the head of his own son! Since he had never contributed to his son's needs, we went for adoption. We just told gs about adoption and he was ecstatic! After he turned 18, we had a talk about his bio dad and we shared the contents of the letter with him. We could never share that with him when he was 8 years old. How do you tell a child that their father threw them out, did not want to be bothered with his own child?