This was posted on Parenting Advice but then found this board and thought it might be a better fit.
My three-year-old daughter spent her first two years in foster care after being abused by her mother, who is now under criminal investigation for the suspected murder of her first two infant children as well as the abuse of my daughter, which we fortunately caught before it escalated. I was granted physical custody one year ago. During the first six months of my custody, her mother was allowed supervised visitation by the state. She cancelled or failed to show up to all visitations but three, and finally the department cut off her visitation all together.
When I was first granted custody, I reached out to my daughter’s maternal grandparents, who had only seen her a handful of times, to offer them visits in our home. They declined, and did not reach out to me again until one month ago. I was told by the department that it was entirely my decision whether or not to allow visitation to either the mother or her parents. I refused their request for visitation, as I did not want an inconstant presence in my daughter’s life. They’d had ample opportunity to see her throughout the year and chose not to.
When I refused, they sent me an angry message on social media threatening to take me to court, telling me that I was a monster for keeping my daughter away from her mother. The mother has lied to her parents all along, telling them that she in fact wanted a relationship with the child and I constantly prohibited it. I tried to reason with them several times over the years, but they refused to hear me out. After hearing the truth from the social worker this week, they’ve sent me another message apologizing and asking again for visitation.
Since regaining custody, my daughter has been living with me and my partner, who has stepped up to raise her as her own. My partner has no other children, but has contributed equally to the support and care of our daughter, even taking the summer off to be a stay-at-home mom so that I could return to work since we recently moved and were waitlisted for daycare. My daughter believes that my partner is her natural mother, and has rich relationships with my partner’s family. They have taken her in as their own, and I know that these relationships would continue even if things were to someday fail between my partner and me.
At this point, we are unsure about allowing the biological maternal grandparents visitation. They have never had a relationship with my daughter, and I am afraid of the questions that it might raise in my daughter. I feel that she is too young to learn about her biological mother and what happened with her. After two years in foster care, she is finally able to feel safe and settled in a stable, loving environment. I don’t think that it would be good for her to shake things up at this point with these new grandparents who never showed an interest in her before now. Obviously it is a difficult situation, and I am just looking for some input, advice and opinions.
