The Saga of HB Continues (It's a LONG one)

I'm not even sure we're to begin on this one. On Sunday Mary was supposed to go visit with HB. This visit was set up prior to his move. Well, the adoptive family decided it would be best to cancel it because of issues HB was having. We didn't fully agree with this but obviously it's their decision to make. Mary was also upset since she was banking on this visit. I think it made his leaving much more bearable for her since she knew she'd see him the next week.

She asked the family to give him the choice to do the visit. Since he knew about the visit, she didn't want him to think that she was bailing on him. In return, they sent an email saying that he wanted to call and talk to everyone. After some discussion, we agreed that we would both talk to him but Cameron would not. We felt it would be confusing for Cameron and the kid's idea of a phone conversation is taking the phone and going "Hello Ba-Bye!" So Mary and I each talked to HB and I thought it went pretty well.

Well, apparently when he got off the phone, he kicked one of their cats "across the room". They were surprised. We had previously told him (or rather warned them) that he had tried to hurt our animals and that we would put them away after visits or during his fits. The tendency to hurt animals was a major issue for me but that's an entire different story.

Anywho, last night I talked to Mary about what the plan was for future visits. We both fully agree that there should be one or two visits with one of us (preferable Mary) before he has a visit with Cameron. When I mentioned this to the play therapist, she also agreed. We want to see HB's behaviors at the visit and then get feedback from the adoptive family on the after affects. I worry that if he's acting crazy after visits, the family will pull them. Which I can't blame them, HB does NOT react well after visits. However, I don't want to tease Cameron with him being able to see HB and then the family pull the visits.

Since HB's been asking to see Cameron the adoptive family just thinks that's the way it should be. Mary has tried to relay to them that he doesn't want to see Cameron because of some loving bond he has with him, he wants to see him because he's angry and jealous. He's pissed off that Cameron got to stay here and that he's not the one deciding where Cameron's going.

They also don't see our prospective of looking out for Cameron's best interest. Cameron has mentioned HB a handful of times to me. I just listen or respond with "HB is in his new home" if it's something related to him coming back. Mary has taken a different approach and has asked Cameron every time he's mentioned HB if he'd like to see him. 100% of the time Cameron has responded "No!" And again, Mary and I along with the therapist agree that since he's saying that, it's not a good idea to force a visit on him. The therapist also mentioned that she saw no reason to rush a visit and that she thought one should happen in a month or two.

They also mentioned that HB's mentioning his "daddy" a lot. Mary met his "daddy" and from the words of his mouth, he had only seen HB as an infant and just a few times. So we let them know that any stories about a "daddy" and "daddy's house" were totally false.

The problem is we're just not coming to an easy agreement with his adoptive family. They're overwhelmed and just want to give him whatever he's asking for. It's really tough to relay to these people that the kid is very manipulating and you really can't let him run the show. We're also in a place where we respect that they are his parents now but at the same time we feel after dealing with him for over a year that we kind of know certain things to do with him.

They said they don't want to prepare him for a visit. I gasped when Mary told me this. HB is someone who needs to be prepared to eat off a yellow plate instead of a blue plate. They said they didn't want him to have anxiety leading up to the visit. I agree that could happen so maybe don't let the kid know 5 days in advance but don't tell him when he's in the car en route. We did this with his mother's visits because of her unlikeliness to show up. We would tell the boys once we got a call that she was at the location. Well, this created major anxiety because HB would question us at random times to see if we were going to see her or if I got a phone call in the morning, he'd say, "oh, is mama there?". Unfortunately, for us, the issues were less than him knowing a visit was SUPPOSED to happen and her just not showing up. In this case, we're dependable people - if we plan a visit, we'll be there.

It's very difficult. I just hope both families can come to some sort of agreement. I also of course now have major worry that they're going to decide to ship him off.