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What is best - stability or maintained parental contact?

hello,
my (now) 5 yr old grand-daughter came to live with us a year and a half ago, as her mother couldn't cope with the parental responsibility of being a singe parent and also with the behavioural problems her daughter was displaying (tantrums, wetting herself, violence, speech problems).
my grand-daughter is a lovely child, but structure was lacking from her early years and so consequently she did not know right from wrong.  As a result, she has had to take a lot in over the last 18 months.  she is doing really well, but she still really misses her mother and is very very troubled after her visits.  her behaviour reverts to some of the ways she used to act when she was living with her mother, and she is very disruptive at school the next day.
The school have suggested she has Sensory Processing Difficulty (SPD) and that we should contact a child psycologist to help her, and have also pointed out that she is only badly behaved after she has seen her mother.  When she returned to school after the Christmas break (she didn't see her mother as we went away for the holidays), her behaviour at school was completely normal and a marked improvement on the previous term, but two weeks into the term following a weekend with her mum - she reverted to disruptive behaviour in the class.
i am reluctant to appoint a psycologist as i believe my grand-daughter will simply use this as an excuse to be treated differently to the other children in class and i am also concerned that the ones we have spoken to have relabelled bad behaviour into so many different medical sounding conditions and illnesses, that my grand-daughter will end up being put on some drug or another for simply being a naughty child!
My partner strongly feels that we should simply stop my grand-daughter seeing his daughter/her mother and that this will solve the problem of disruptive behaviour at school; as he feels his daughter is no good and a terribly bad influence on our grand-daughter.  However, i am really concerned that if we stop parental contact for a significant part of my grand-daughter's childhood, we will do some long term damage to her emotionally and that she might have feelings of abandonment or low self worth when she is older.  it just seems intuitively so wrong to stop a child from seeing her mother, and yet my partner is right - she has a terrible and negative effect on my grand-daughter.
Is there any medical evidence to support either of these choices?  Is it better to provide my grand-daughter with a stable and consistent environment with rules and support and structure and a loving, caring home without her parents; or is it better to maintain parental contact and appoint a child psycologist to assist in addressing the disruptive behaviour that ensues after contact?
if anyone has any advice, or has any first hand experience of what is best to do in circumstances similar to this - please can you let me know.  We are desperate to do the best we can for our 5 yr old, but at the end of the day neither of us are medically qualified and we cannot find any literature to assist us in making a decision to improve matters.
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Avatar universal
Where do the mothers visits take place. Does she take her for the weekend, one day, a couple of hours.   The child is 5 she doesnt understand what is going on, some counseling might help maybe for you also, so you all get an understanding on how to deal with it when it happens, you dont have to see a psychiatrist, family and individual counselors don't prescribe meds they come up with other solutions and ways to deal with problems.   Possibly you could look into the mother coming over for a few hours each week and have her visits supervised to one: see if her behavior improves and two: if it does improve then it means something else is goin on when you arent around.

With that being said also keep in mind it could be nothing and just a normal reaction my son when he comes backs from visits with his dad he his very emotional, overly tired, acts out(kicking, screaming, hitting) all over not getting his way. His behavior comes from when at dads he gets all the candy, pop, junk food that he wants. Gets to do what he wants I think in the last 3 yrs of my sons life his dad has only punished him twice and it was very bad behavior but anything else he gets away with I know this because his dad told me and his grandmother.
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592969 tn?1248325405
Stability is best, but you don't want your grandchild to resent you from not seeing her mother either.  It should get better as she gets older.  We had the same situation over here with the other parents.  Our children would come back from the other parents house with an unbelievable attitude.  It was really hard, but now that they are older 9, 11, and 12 it has become easier for them to transition.  I think it is confusing for them and that is why the behavior happens.  Maybe her mother should take some parenting classes.  
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