Thanks for involving us in the visitation plans

At the last court date in September, our foster son's attorney, the state and the biological parents' attorney agreed that the biological parents could come to our house to pick their son up for unsupervised visits.

The justification was that we were listed in the case file as "friends of the family," so clearly we would have no objection. I can easily see other overworked social workers trying to ease their workload by asking the foster parents and biological parents to take on some of the burden.

In our case, I called the caseworker and told them that we categorically did not approve of the arrangement and wanted it changed, only to be told there was nothing she could do before the two visits.

The first visit was stressful, but passed without incident. On the second one, the parents never showed up, and we ended up scuttling our plans for the day because Isaac had to take a nap. The mother finally called us around 3 p.m. -- the visit was supposed to start at 10 a.m. -- on an unrelated subject, and we discovered that she had decided to change the date of the visit. She never bothered to tell us or the caseworker.

That was around the point I lost my cool. The next day I called the caseworker and called my son's attorney and told them that they had to find a new way to do visits because the biological parents were not welcome at my house. I actually threatened to get a restraining order against them if I needed to.

If we ever take in another child, or if Isaac comes back to us, I'm going to lay down "no contact from birth parents -- ever" as one of my non-negotiable terms, no matter what else the state thinks it has in its files.