<p>I’ve been asked for advice … and I wonder what the good people of the Parent Cafe would advise.</p>
<p>The mother of this kindergarten age child is in prison, I believe for drug related offenses but I am not sure. She will be there for 2-3 years. The child lives with his father and the father’s girlfriend. The parents of the child were never married. They are in their mid-20s. Father hates the mother, wants nothing to do with her. Father is currently sober, as is girlfriend. Both are in AA or NA. I am not sure how much the mother has ever been in the child’s life – but dad has had full custody for quite a while.</p>
<p>Father wants nothing to do with the mother, and does not want to take the child to visit her in prison. He says the prison visit experience would be too traumatic for the child. The prison is a 90 minute drive. There are fun things to do in the area if they were to do a day trip with one activity being visiting the mother.</p>
<p>My gut feeling is that dad should enlist one of the grandparents and make a day trip once or twice a year at a minimum. My additional advice is to consult with social services or guidance at the elementary school where the child is enrolled and get their take.</p>
<p>I think the answer would depend greatly on how much contact this child has had with her mother. If very little, then I can’t imagine how this would be good for the child. I think talking to the school counselor or a social worker would be very helpful.</p>
<p>This is something that needs to be resolved by court order in the state where the father lives. The procedure is different from one state to another, but there should be a custody plan in place that specifies the respective rights and obligations of each parent.</p>
<p>As the father now has physical custody, it is possible that such a plan or court order is already in place; if not, he will have to talk to a lawyer about how to go about establishing one.</p>
<p>Going forward, the father’s obligations will to obey the court ordered plan, whatever it is. </p>
<p>Until then, you can’t give any advice. It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks is best or right for the child. That either already is or should be determined by court order, either through the family court or through the social services department.</p>
<p>I do not have advice, but I once saw a little girl, about 8, both parents in and out of her life, but she was very connected to them, at least on some level. One day, while in her dads custody, she heard her mother was being released from a program, and she climbed out of her bedroom window in the middle of the night to go find her. The police brought her back.</p>
<p>If the child has a relationship with the mother, the child should see the mom. </p>
<p>I used to live quite close to my former state’s main prison for women. It was of course a somber place, however, the program they had for kids to visit with their moms was really good-- cheerful spaces, an awesome playground, good parenting programs and social workers helping mothers maintain relationships through a few or many years’ incarceration. The vast majority of these women had made bad choices in men rather than were hardened criminals-- most were there for drug charges, accessory charges, bad checks. Very few for hard crimes like murder, though that would also be where those prisoners were. Not your most upstanding citizens, of course, but not all could be considered horrible mothers by any means. Visits don’t have to be traumatic or awful.</p>
<p>Is the mom going to be able to see the child when she gets out of prison? If so, then I think the child should see her if mom wants.</p>
<p>I know someone in a somewhat similar situation. After years of no contact with mom, mom suddenly wanted to see the child. Stepmom voluntarily complied with request. Takes child once a month.</p>
<p>Child had all sorts of problems when the visitation started. After a couple of years of visitation, things have quieted down. </p>
<p>Yes, it’s been tough. But in another year or two, mom will be out of prison. She will almost certainly have much greater visitation rights. Introducing the child to his mom gradually and allowing them to build a relationship over time is probably a better idea than telling him a year or two from now that he is expected to spend a lot of time with a person he doesn’t know. </p>
<p>No matter what the dad and girlfriend do, the prisoner is the child’s mom. At some point, the child is going to want to get to know her. If mom has issues, it may be better for child to learn how to deal with mom by short exposures. Mom herself may recognize that she’s not capable of re-entering society and dealing with a child full time at the same time, if that is in fact the case. With no contact at all, mom may imagine this idyllic scene where her child returns to live with her and they all live happily ever after. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the law says, but I doubt that dad will be able to keep the child away from mom when mom is released. No matter what she did, she’s still the child’s mother.</p>
<p>@calmom I have no doubt you are correct about the legalities of custody. However, I have the sense that there is no legal agreement between the parents at this point. </p>
<p>(I am really just an innocent bystander here that was asked for advice by one of the involved parties. After thinking about who wants what and why, I came up with the suggestion of involving the guidance/social worker and that actually had not been considered by anyone up to this point. So I thought I would ask the CC parent community because there’s so much knowledge in this group.)</p>
<p>Thanks everyone. I appreciate all the responses.</p>
<p>I am saying that there ought to be a legal agreement. If they don’t have one yet, they need to create one. You have 2 parents, never married, the mother incarcerated, and the father living with a different woman. This potentially is a huge mess. What happens when the mom gets out of prison? Does she just show up one day and ask for her kid back? You said that the dad doesn’t want the kid to see the mom – maybe he has good reason, or maybe not. She may or may not have the legal right to have access to her own child. (I say, “may not” because with the history of substance abuse & mom’s incarceration, child protective services may already have been involved.) </p>
<p>Any “advice” you give is potentially the wrong advice, depending on the legalities. Whether or not the father accommodates the mom’s desire to see the child could have a long term legal impact on whether he retains custody after the mom is released, and because the laws are different from one state to the next, there’s no right answer (at least not one that will come from strangers on the internet). </p>
<p>I realize that situations like this are handled informally all the time, but I really think that when you have unmarried parents who are no longer in a relationship, there really needs to be formal custody & visitation plan set up through the courts or appropriate social service agencies, for the protection of the child. </p>
<p>There are often low cost or free family law services available via the courts or social service agencies if the father is not in a financial position to pay for legal advice.</p>
<p>“After thinking about who wants what and why, I came up with the suggestion of involving the guidance/social worker and that actually had not been considered by anyone up to this point”</p>
<p>It strikes me as odd that no one actually thought about consulting a social worker, much less a child psychiatrist or therapist, until you (the kind stranger, so to speak) brought it up. Isn’t that the FIRST thing one would think of?</p>
<p>I would suggest encouraging them to follow calmom’s advice: consult the social worker/courts and then work out a legal arrangement. Be specific about what role mom has played in the child’s life, and then go forward. It makes sense for the child to have some contact with mom, perhaps visits once a quarter, in part to avoid the situation jonri describes.</p>
<p>pizzagirl, my thoughts exactly, and I am a clinical social worker. the child needs an advocate assessing what is in his best interest. If mother has had no relationship with this child it’s going to be hard for that bonding to occur now, but possible…if father hates mother the trip to see her could create terrible conflict and angst for this little boy, so might be better for another family member to take him. That said, unless mother has been abusive, I would be hard pressed to say he shouldn’t see his mother at all while she’s in prison, she’s still his mother and he could be very resentful in the future if not afforded the opportunity to see his mother.</p>
<p>I think the research shows it is a good thing for mothers to develop a bond with their children. This is an interesting program that could benefit both:</p>
<p>I agree with many posters on here and will sum it up to say that there is not an easy one size fits all answer. </p>
<p>Is child close to mom?
Is there a court order?
Is there a program at the prison to make these visits less traumatic?
Is this a child that would be negatively impacted by a visit because of her own personality type? Or negatively impacted by not having a visit?
Is the extened family willing to work to lessen a possible negative impact on the child?</p>
<p>So many things to consider. </p>
<p>Bottom line is that mom is in prison. A visit to the prison could be a good or a bad thing.</p>
<p>calmom, I coordinated a program years ago for families in this situation through a non-profit. Most of the families didn’t have legal orders and agreements in place, didn’t want them and wouldn’t make those arrangements. Unfortunately, the practical outcome of that was that the kids ended up moving around a lot between parents, other relatives and foster care. Very sad.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl and others: No. No one thought of guidance or social worker. That’s outside their experience. I don’t think there is any sort of custody agreement – since none of them have any money and are all scraping by to pay the rent each month. There was no marriage, so there was no divorce and hence no custody agreement. No one would be paying child support because there is no money. The child has just this month entered the public school system.</p>
<p>If she previously had some relationship with her mom, I hope she gets to go see her, and on a regular basis. (Especially if the facility has some program for moms/kids.) Nobody has mentioned the benefits of the child seeing that she is not the only one with a mother in prison. I’ve read great things about the Girl Scout program.</p>
<p>I think CASA advocates facilitate visits in situations like this.</p>
<p>The school can get involved to refer the child’s “family” to a public LCSW that would lobby on behalf of the child because it is impacting her development.</p>
<p>Can you contact the prison directly to see what sort of programs they offer children of their residents? If the child lives in a city where most of the prison population comes from, there is likely a weekend shuttle bus.</p>