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substance abuse in your family > parents in recovery > getting ready to move back in with your kids

GETTING READY TO MOVE BACK IN WITH YOUR KIDS?

If your goal is to parent one or more of your children full-time, there is a lot to do to get ready. While you and your children have been separated, you have all come to lead different lives with different rules, routines, and roles than before. Making the change to a different way of living is not easy. Whether you lived with your children in the past when you were using drugs or alcohol or you never lived with your children, the old rules, routines, and roles need to change for everyone in the family.

This is not an easy process, and many parents are so focused on getting their children back that they are not prepared for what happens afterward. We strongly recommend that you work with a family counselor throughout this process. You don’t have to do this alone!!

Parents’ common feelings

If you are like most parents preparing to live together again or for the first time with your children, you are probably full of mixed feelings about your plans. You miss your children and you are excited about living with them again. You are proud of the work you have done in recovery and you are determined to relate with your children differently than before, when you were using. But you are also unsure—unsure if you will be able to handle one or more of your children full-time. Or unsure you want all the responsibility. And unsure if taking your children back might be stressful enough to lead you to relapse. These are normal feelings and you should not feel ashamed to admit having them.

For some parents, living together full-time is not the plan that is in their own best interests, or in their child’s best interests. But if you can be honest with yourself about your feelings and limits, you can work toward an arrangement that gives your children the security and care they need, and also allows you and your children the maximum level of contact that you can all handle.

For many parents, living together full-time is a reasonable and desirable plan, given adequate preparation and support.

If you also grew up with an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent, then parenting may be especially challenging for you. Again, we suggest that you get help from a support group and/or family counselor to help see you through this process. COAF also publishes many wonderful resources for parents who grew up with an addicted parent.

Your children’s feelings

Your children probably have mixed feelings as well, whether they admit them to you or not, and even if they can’t put them to words at all. They are probably happy, excited, worried, and angry. Happy and excited because they love and miss you, and want to be cared for by Mom or Dad. Worried about whether things will be like they were before at home, when you were drinking or using and life was unpredictable and sometimes unhappy. Angry about the pain and disruption your addiction caused, and maybe angry about the disruption and change that will happen again in their lives when you start to live together again.

Your child may also be worried about the loss of their connection with their current caregiver. Reassure your child of your plans to help them maintain contact with the current caregiver—even if you do not like the caregiver, and even if the caregiver has not always been supportive of your relationship with your children along the way. Your children need you to honor the bond they have with the caregiver. Some parents worry that this will undermine their attempts to establish or re-establish themselves as the authority and attachment figure in their children’s lives—but most find that honoring their children’s attachment to their current caregivers actually helps the child accept your new role in their life more easily. Remember, the other caregiver may be the only “sure thing” your child has known. Honoring your child’s bond with the caregiver helps them feel more secure in the transition to your home.

It’s important to recognize and honor your child’s feelings about the plan to live together again. Your children need reassurance about your recovery efforts, and recognition of the pain that your drug and alcohol use caused in order to move forward. Many parents in recovery are not prepared to face their children’s raw feelings about these things, but the best way to prepare for living together is to face them head-on, and with a lot of support from family, sober friends, and professional helpers like a family counselor who knows about substance abuse.

The changing of the guard

Preparing for reunification is like a complicated dance between two “home bases”—your children’s current caregiving situation, and your home. It is best to take this process slowly and gradually. Ideally, your visits should be getting longer and there should be less supervision (within legal mandates), and you should have more opportunities to act as the child’s parent in everyday life. You should be attending your child’s school meetings and doctor’s appointments, shopping for your child’s clothes and other necessities, and participating in your child’s life in other ways that gradually increase your level of contact and responsibility.

Overnight visits should be introduced long before you plan your full-time move-in date. Overnight visits give both you and your child the opportunity to practice new roles, routines, and rules and also to learn how to handle unexpected situations without the pressure of full-time living together. A family counselor or support group can help you process what happened during visits afterward, and this can give you and your child valuable chances to get in touch with your feelings and concerns about the planned move-in and to communicate about these before the next visit.

As much as everyone wants things to be different than they were before once you are all living together, change is a scary thing for most people. During visits your children may revert back to old ways of behaving, or try to get you to revert back. If they used to whine or act out until they got what they wanted, they will likely do it again during visits, especially as the visits get longer and they are more comfortable with you, and especially if the visits happen on everybody’s old “home turf”. This is just human nature but it’s important for you to show your child that things aren’t going to work the way they used to. When a child acts out, you can say something like, “I know that’s how we used to act with each other, but that way didn’t work very well in the past, and we’re going to change it now”. Books, videos, and classes on parenting techniques are often helpful to parents preparing to live with their children. Click <here> for a list of some useful parenting resources for people in recovery.

Relating with caregivers during the “dance”

While preparing to live together with your children it is extremely important to keep the lines of communication open with the child’s caregiver. On other pages of this website we have advised you to honor the caregiver’s rules and routines during and between visits. Listen to the caregiver’s concerns about your child, and be open to learning from the caregiver—as the person who has been providing care day in and day out, they know your child best right now. This is a hard thing for many parents to admit, but it is usually true. As you take on more and more responsibility for your child, it will be necessary to renegotiate the rules, routines, roles, and lines of authority with the caregiver.

Ideally, as you move toward assuming more and more responsibility for your children, the caregiver should begin deferring more to your rules, routines, and roles. Again, this is where a family counselor can often be extremely helpful.