Grandparents Raising Children Support Group
This community is dedicated to grandparents who are the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. In cases where the parents are not willing or able to provide adequate care for their children, grandparents may take on the role of primary caregivers. Join the support group to find support, share your experience, and get advice from other members.
Hello. I have been raising My Granddaughter since day 5 of her life ( she is now 10 mOnths old) I have full guardianship. The parents were not ready to take on the responsability as all.They tried for 5 days and in the end gave up. They both were having anger issues and the mother suffers from mental issue.The babies father has been to visit her 3 times in the last 10 months and The mother ( my daughter ) has been here maybe a dozen times. She has slept over a few nights.
When the mother has stayed here to be close to her child and get to know her ect.. She slept in and i took care of the baby during the night,sat around on her phone and when she interacted with the child it was like all fun and games then was bored with it again and back to her phone. It was actualy more work to have her here then not. She sure can take a selfie with the child and make it look like she is involved.
Now that ive asked for some state assistant for the child to help me feed her and my teenagers still living at home the friend of the court has started making both parents pay child support. i declined it at first but am now thankful for it. My daughter asks me weekly if I recieed the support from the father and how much did I get. She seems so concerned that I am recieveing this support and she isnt. She has also asked me to use the support from the father to pay her support dues.
The mother does Not work,lives with a new boyfriend in his parents home and sits around there all day smoking marijuana and finding ways to blame me and everyone for her problems. She has been calling me alot lately and asking to take the child to her new house with the new bf. When i tell her no she expresses its her child and she makes the decesions. she is also threating to take me to court so she can regain custody and recieve the support from the father.
I just dont know what to do? I am trying to keep the peace between myself and my daughter. But I also know I need to keep this child safe and in a loving stable enviroment. There is a bit more to the story but I will just start with this much..
Any advice or opinions is much appreciated please!!
much love,
GrandmaB123
So we went to the court and filed for an arrangement involving supervised visitation through the county Visitation Center. Now I had professionals with their eyes on the situation and I was no longer the parent police. My step-daughter was required to pay 1/2 of the visitation fees and the fees were based on her income, so they were reasonable. The Center had lots of child/infant friendly areas. The staff intervened for any inappropriate interaction and taught my step-daughter some parenting concepts.
Now she is doing some unsupervised visitation, but through the process we have still not opened our home up as a place to "hang." She can stop by to drop something off or say "hi" but all visitation is defined by us, time limited, and is done with NO expectation of moving towards her gaining custody. Sometimes we will all go to brunch, or she will go to the Mall for a couple of hours now that her daughter is older. But she knows that we would not hesitate to go back to supervised visitation if she causes us any concerns.
And BTW - the visitation did not allow phones, selfies, etc.
Just a thought or two -- hope all goes well with you! Hope you can regain your "turf"!