Welcome to our Visitation lesson
- In this section, you will learn
- What visitation is
- How children might feel and act before and during visits
- Why visits are important
- How you can help visits go well
What is visitation?
Visitation is when children spend time with a parent who can't live with them.
There are many reasons children and parents can’t live together. Click below to read about visits in these common situations.
- Sometimes child welfare agencies remove children from their parents and place them with relatives or in foster care.
- Visits might last an hour or up to a few days.
- Visits might be supervised by a child welfare worker, a family member, or a friend.
- Or, they might have unsupervised visits with just the parents and children.
- When parents don’t live together, they create a custody or visitation schedule.
- Children might spend a few days or weeks in a row with each parent.
- They might spend the same amount of time with each parent.
- Or, they might spend most of their time with one parent and have shorter visits with the other.
- When a parent is incarcerated, children can only see them during visit times.
- Visits can range from 15 minutes to two days.
- They might take place at the detention facility or over video.
Children’s Feelings Before Visits
All children are different and have different feelings about visits. Some feelings are common before visits. Click below to learn more about them.
Most children miss the parent(s) they can’t live with. This loss can be even worse if they no longer live with siblings either. Even if things were not perfect, they lost familiarity and the people who were closest to them.
Children might anticipate their visits with excitement and hope. They miss their parents and cannot wait to see them.
Children might worry about
- how their parents are doing.
- whether their parents blame them for not being able to live together.
- what the visit will be like.
Children might be confused about
- why they can’t live with their parent.
- whether their parent still loves them.
- whether they will hurt their parent if they are happy in their current home.
Children’s Feelings During Visits
Children (and parents) don’t get much help to prepare for visits. This time together is different from how things used to be. Supervised visits often happen in a strange space with a stranger watching. Children might have a lot of different feelings during visits. Click below to learn more about some common feelings.
Many children are happy to see their parent and spend time with them again.
Some visits are in strange spaces with someone watching. It might be that the last time children saw their parent, things didn’t go well. In these cases, children may be wary of what they should or shouldn’t do or say.
Children might want to please their parent but not know how. They might feel pressure to
- be perfect and have a perfect visit.
- say bad things about the people they live with.
- provide emotional support to their parent.
Some children might only focus on having to leave their parent again after the visit. They might feel sad the whole time.
Some children were hurt by their parent or watched their parent hurt someone else. They might be afraid that something bad will happen again during the visit.
Children’s Behaviors During Visits
With so many feelings all at once, children often have some challenging behaviors during visits. This is completely normal. It does not reflect on how much they love their parents. And, parents can help with PC-CARE skills. Some common difficult behaviors during visits are below.
Some children might sit by themselves. They might refuse to talk, play, or do what their parent wants to do.
Some children might cope with their confusion and hurt by not following directions. They might even say hurtful things, like “I don’t have to listen to you.”
When children are stressed or excited, it is harder for them to cope with feelings or frustrations. Even little things can become a big deal and end in tantrums.
Why are Visits Important?
Visits are important for children and parents. Click below to read more.
- Maintains and strengthens family relationships.
- Eases the pain of separation.
- Reassures children that their parent is ok.
- Helps the family deal with changing relationships.
- Supports a child’s adjustment to the new home or situation.
- For children in child welfare, results in less time in foster care.
- Maintains and strengthens family relationships.
- Lets the parent learn and try new skills.
- Lets the parent be active with the child’s development, education, medical needs, and community activities.
- Lets all parents assess how the child is doing and work together.
- Motivates parents by showing the importance of their relationship for the child’s well-being.
- In the case of child welfare or custody, helps with assessment and decision-making about visits and placement.
Reference: Casey.org/family-time/
A few tips for making visits better
- Have toys and games
- Expect difficult behaviors and stay calm when they happen
- Explain the rules of your home or the visit space to your child
- Make visits a time to bond and play with your child
- Keep going to visits, even if it is hard
- Help your child say goodbye calmly
- Take care of yourself before, during, and after the visit
Reference: https://www.risemagazine.org
A few tips for the parents or caregivers who live with the child
- Speak kindly or at least neutrally about the child’s parent at all times. This will reduce pressure to “choose” one family.
- Make sure you are calm before and after the visit. Your stress level will directly influence your child’s stress level and behaviors.
- Have a calendar with the visit dates so your child can see how long until the next visit.
- On the day of visits, describe the daily routine and what will happen before and after the visit.
- With younger children, have a goodbye ritual, like a special handshake.
- After the visit, do something the child thinks is fun, like stopping at a park or having playtime together.
- Don’t force the child to talk about visits but be available if they want to talk. You might say:
- I hope you had a good time with mom today. It’s ok if you want to keep your memories for yourself. But if you want to tell me about anything that happened, I would be happy to listen.
Additional Resources
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