First Unsupervised Visit

Today was my foster sibling group's first unsupervised visit with their great grandparents. For the first time in over a year they were allowed to return to their great grandparents home to play with family and friends.

I have to tell you that we were very excited that the date had finally arrived. We truely believe the great grandparents have had the children's best interests at heart. Not to mention the fact that the kids were extremely excited about the chance to go on this visit. So at 9:00 am the kids left our care for an all day visit.

Fast forward to 8:30 pm. We have picked the kids up from their great grandparents visit. They are happy, exhausted, and very excited to see us and tell us all the fun things they did on their visit. Imagine our surprise when the middle child informed us that they got to talk to their mommy on the phone.

Now this is bad because mommy is in jail, and the judge has court ordered no contact between the children and the mother. So anyways the mommy calls the great grandparents and finds out her kids are visiting. She asks repeatedly to be allowed to talk to them. Great grandma tries to tell her no, but eventually gives in and hands the phone over to the oldest child.

No one cries while talking to their mommy and this makes the great grandparents feel like everything is going to be ok. But then they realized what they had just done and informed the oldest that if anyone found out they had talked to mommy that they might not be allowed to go back for visits.

So of course the oldest starts making up a lie and saying that they talked to their aunt and not their mommy. She somehow convinces the five and four year old to tell the same lie. But the five year old had slipped and now we knew they had had contact. But still the oldest tries to lie her way out of it and continued saying it was just the aunt they had talked too.

Grr... So being foster parents we are required to report this kind of thing. It's extremely hard when you know that the kids love the great grandparents and you don't want to get them in trouble, but at the same time we have to protect the kids at all costs.

The caseworker was not happy about this, but agrees with me that we need to give the great grandparents one more chance. So she is going to recommend that they continue to have unsupervised visits, but they are to be placed on probation. And they are to be told in no uncertain terms exactly who the kids are and are not allowed to be in contact with on these visits.

Needless to say we had some very emotional foster kids on our hands this evening. We had to reassure them that we loved them and that we'd fight to keep them having grandparent visits, but that grandparents just needed to realize the rules and follow them more closely.

We have two weeks until the next visit. Let's all pray that it goes smoothly and involves no lying.