Children should have say about visits with mother

My wife and I adopted our grandsons, 10 and 12, because of our daughter’s long history of drug addiction.

She is again working and has set up house with another man. She wants to regain visits with the boys, but I am reluctant to get back into the cycle of visits.

She states that we’ve pushed her away from her family, but, less than three months ago, she got pulled over for speeding and tried to pass herself off as her sister. The arresting officer caught her real name and she just went to court for obstructing government operations. This is the fourth time she’s done this to her sister. She is still in drug court over possession of meth with intent to deliver.

Although I’m certian the boys have lived with us since they were 2 and 4.

I’m certain the boys love their mother and she loves her children, I can’t dismiss all the damage she has done, which includes setting up a meth lab in our home and using meth when she was carrying her firstborn. I see her now as the boys’ biological mother and not as my own daughter. The boys have different fathers, neither of whom has ever stepped up and contributed to his son’s well-being.

If I choose to let the boy’s mother back into their lives, there have to be boundaries. I just don’t want to continue to bear witness to a life less lived. Advice?

The recent arrest isn’t the only sign she’s not ready to own her actions; any criminalcourt regular who still blames others for “(pushing) her away from her family” has a few more dots to connect.

So you have great reasons not to want to bear further witness, or forget the past.

To be fair, your daughter has great reasons of her own to want to see her kids.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to choose who gets the last word: If your grandsons can’t afford the risk, emotionally speaking, of being exposed to their mother’s chaos, then you say no to your daughter and withstand the heat for it. If the kids would instead benefit from a carefully supervised reintroduction to their mother, then that’s what you undertake and withstand the heat for, because that’s what it means to be their parents.

— B.