Merry Christmas, if you’re into that sort of thing!

@Kevin

“… alarming visit from a copper and a social worker due to inappropriate contact from the drama teacher at his former high school”

The snarky part of me wonders whether Sandra/etc would call the cops and social workers abusive because they were alerting you to what was going on in your son’s FB (presumably) against his wishes. I’m sure they also violated his privacy elsewhere to boot.

Sorry, but the more I think about this, the more pissed off I get. I’m fine with people criticizing my parenting, as long as it’s nuanced along with the REALITIES of parenting, and not based on some stupid personal vendetta like whatever the fuck is going on with Sandra and Tashilicious.

vegan Jehovah’s Witness crossfit devotee

…

… ?????

@mrex

The snarky part of wonders…

That’s less wondering and more accusing. Also less snarky and more, well, you know how you can be. Let’s don’t

As a parent who discovered her pre-teen child’s serious mental issues, contact with abusive bio-parents including a convicted pedophile and abusive behavior toward others by “snooping” on his secret phone (I only allowed him to have a phone if I had the password and he kept changing it and pretending to forget it. When I got rid of his phone he somehow got the $ to buy his own.) I don’t blame parents for keeping tabs on their minor children online. Their wellbeing is our responsibility alone. Had my son been harassing or threatening your kids, I bet those who judge me for not respecting his privacy would have also blamed me for “allowing” it to happen.

I have not shared the nightmare 2016/2017 was here because I don’t like to spread my kid’s business, but it is my job to see that my kids aren’t being lured, abused or making threats themselves, harassing and assaulting. My preteen son was doing horrible things online without my knowledge. So, yeah I’m gonna be watching my kids activities on smart phones etc. just like I do their meatspace activities.

I once found out my young teen daughter was in an abusive relationship by checking her emails. I was glad to see she had stood up for herself, but I also discovered why she was seeming so depressed and withdrawn and was able to talk to her about what she’d been through and offer her help. She was angry and we made a deal that I’d never check up on her and she’d never keep things like that from me again.

Ultimately, it’s not my job to make my kids like me. If they do, that’s a bonus. It’s my job to see they are safe. This year I’ve realized it is also my job to see that they aren’t harming anyone else. If they want total anonymity, they’ll need to be adults living on their own.

If you’ve never dealt with Reactive Attachment Disorder in your kids, consider yourself lucky. It’s like watching them smothered by a disorder they can’t understand and the more they love you the more the disorder hurts them until finally they start hurting you anyway they can. I don’t regret finding the phone or going through his social media. He could have killed himself and I’d have never known why.

The only way I knew something was wrong was when the police came banging on my door and shining flashlights in my windows at 1 am because my son was telling people to call the police because he had been kidnapped. He was safe in his bed. He basically swatted us and once the police left I saw the tell-tale R.A.D. smirk for the first time. That was only the beginning. It got much, much worse. I wish I’d known earlier. We were told he was autistic. Turns out, he wasn’t. It was R.A.D. all along, but something kept it almost in a sort of torpor until my ex left. I’m lucky too. I got 7 years with him before the disorder set in proper. Most parents don’t get that. I got a miracle.

So, call me a bad parent. He’s alive and so am I. We might not be if I hadn’t found him out. Because he wasn’t just suicidal, he has said he wants to kill too. Specifically, he’d like to kill me. Every member of our family has been a victim of or threatened with violence. He sexually assaulted a neighbor girl on my front porch. He’gone AWOL from mental health facilities and run away from home. He makes false allegations. He’s punched nurses and tried to bite his therapist. He’s threatened to kill a baby. It’s hell and if I’d have known sooner maybe I could have stopped the progression before he was so far gone. He’s 14 now and no longer lives with me. He may never again. I feel like my boy died and it isn’t likely he’ll be resurrected.

So, yeah. Judge away. I couldn’t care less.

That Virgina State seat That the Repub won by 10 votes, went to the Dem by one vote on a recount, and then was declared a tie?

The coin toss came up Repub.

@Weird Eddie

It’s a variant on an old joke.

Edit:

@Lea – hug if you want it. Sounds like a horrible situation.

Thank you, Shadow. I do.

The assumptions of people I’ve turned to for support and isolation I’m dealing with combined with my ex’s alcoholism and the way my son punishes me for it and for his abandonment by his bio parents is a lot. Apparently me getting a job and going to school are also abandonment in my son’s mind. When Daddy drinks, he punishes Mommy. I’m in the process of finding an attorney because when I turned to DCBS for help, they decided I must be at fault somehow. Their way of “helping”him is to drug him to the gills. Since he hasn’t behaved violently since being heavily medicated they’ve concluded I’ve invented this problem even though there is documentation and plenty of witnesses to this behavior when I’m nowhere around him.

During this process my ex got access to our adopted son’s medical records and my younger son began talking about the abuse he remembered for the first time. We now know the neglect and abuse started when my oldest boy was 2 months old and continued until he was 6. At which time he was placed with us. TW: child abuse.
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He was regularly drugged and locked in a closet with the babies so his parents could leave and do meth or have parties in their home. There were awful beatings. There was starvation. He saved his brother’s life at least once. None of that was in the court documents we received upon adoption. We knew at 6 he couldn’t talk and had other delays. We had no idea how bad it really was. My son now denies his bio-parents ever harmed him and either says a dead grandfather who was in a wheel chair and on a respirator at the time did it or that I did. It’s unclear if he even understands that he’s lying. He is histrionic. He has delusions. He also enjoys hurting us, especially me. The smirk he gets when he knows he’s done damage is the coldest thing I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some serious shit in my time. Sometimes he seems genuinely confused. I hate this disorder. I hate the people who caused it. I love him. When things began getting weird he made accusations against other people and I made a fool of myself defending him. Once I stopped believing him, he turned on me.
My adult daughter lives with me and has been helping me fix up the house and care for the kids while I’m in school. The day he hit her and she fought back she told me if he came back she would leave because she didn’t feel safe here and felt dirty for getting rough with a kid I realized I was putting all my kids in danger by holding on to him. This year on my birthday we go back to court. DCBS wants him to go to his dad, but he goes on benders for weeks at a time and can no longer hold a job. I’m beginning to suspect RAD and the lack of support for it is a dirty secret they don’t want getting out. Because who would sign up for that?

Meanwhile, the police refused to press charges for the sexual assault because he was unable to complete a rape and he’s a minor. As they see it, no harm was done. (My neighbors no longer speak to me.) He is younger than the girl he attacked, but he’s very strong. (We’ve been neighbors for years and she is an abuse and incest survivor herself.) He’s taller than me and can do military push-ups. I’ve basically been told “boys will be boys”. When I told his therapist I was concerned because he’s been looking for rape and incest porn online, she seemed to think the problem was the sin of pornography rather than what the content indicated in a child his age. He’s almost certainly been a victim himself.

He is currently in theraputic care. I’m not to know where he is or how to contact him. (I do know because some people aren’t very good at hiding their online info, but I have to pretend I’m clueless.) Again, I’m not to know because DCBS has decided I’m the abuser, even to the point they think the other kids are lying for me. The police won’t even charge him with the assaults on us because he’s a minor with no priors and assault is a misdemeanor. I’ve lost all hope. At one point I even thought of letting him really wail on me so I’d have proof, but that would mean my other kids seeing it and I can’t do that. The last time he came at me I had to spark a taser to disuade him. I tell my doctors I don’t know how I injured my trick knee, but I know how it went from hurting sometimes to me walking with a cane or on crutches some days.

No, you don’t know until I share. The solution to that is for you not to prejudge, isn’t it?

Victims of abuse should never have to open a vein and bleed in order to be taken seriously.

Another reason I never shared here was that I knew it would be seized upon with delight by the trolls. I’m risking that now because I see so many people assuming children must always be protected from their parents. I got used to that mentality when I homeschooled.

One reason I homeschooled my kids was because my son began acting out in third grade. That stopped when I took him out of school and began again when I sent him back to public school where other boys called him a fa**ot and a re***d. That appears to be when he started wanting to prove he was tough.

My younger son was a hitter. He was a tiny ball of rage at school and his principal encouraged me to spank him to stop his behavior. Instead, I took over their education and started filling in the holes in their education. The youngest have ADD and show signs of dyslexia, a condition I’m very familiar with but state schools offer no programs for. The two youngest are thriving in school now? They’re on academic team and no longer show out at school, though my youngest son still has some issues at home, particularly when he felt I’d given his brother away, despite his own dread of him coming home. He’s doing alright now, but I expect to see these issues resurface in years to come. How could they not?

Still, the fact I homeschooled at all means people will make assumptions. I had one social worker tell me, “That’s how parents hide abuse”. The assumption being we must assume parents are abusive or have ill intent if there is no outside government official to monitor them.

Keep in mind my acceptance of LGBTQ kids in my home and my lack of religion that condemns it makes me even more suspect to my local officials. That’s bad parenting. So is refusing to spank. I’ve been told so numerous times. I don’t know where y’all live, but I’m on the shiny brass buckle of the Bible Belt.

I know parents can be shits. I’ve seen and experienced it. But the idea that children must be able to hide their activities front their parents for their own protection as a rule is false and based usually on people who have only known abuse from their own parents or have jobs that expose them daily to the worst sorts of people.

Basically, you can’t have it both ways. The law and public opinion cannot make my children’s behavior and safety my responsibility and people view me as suspect for monitoring that behavior.

Thank you, Laserqueen.

I had no idea it existed until I started doing my own research. (Foster parent on and off for over a decade. I know I saw it in kids and teens now, but had no name for it.)
When I told the head of local DCBS my suspicion, she laughed at me and said, “If that’s what you think he has, do you even want him back?”
I told her I did. She proceeded to tell me I’m why my son threatens suicide.

RAD is not to be mentioned ’round these parts.

Lea,

I don’t even know what I could say that would be of any use, but I wish you and your family all the best and many animal hugs offered.

http://cdn5.viralscape.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/animals-hugging-45.jpg

http://uploads.neatorama.com/images/posts/368/97/97368/1500383980-0.jpg

Lea:

I was also told to “shut my mouth and try harder to work with my ex husband for the sake of your children”.

What the…? Holy fuck, that makes me so angry! This from an agency which is supposed to help?

@Lea
I haven’t read all your postings yet, but I wanted to tell you how sorry I am that your situation has been so hard. I understand why you feel like once you’ve started telling your story, you can’t stop. My domestic violence counselor once spelled it out for me: People need to have their stories heard. People need to be understood. I would add that this is particularly true of traumatic stories.

The first time I ever heard of reactive attachment disorder was on This American Life. The episode was called “Love Is a Battlefield.” You’ve probably heard this episode, but I’ll include a link for those who want to read the transcript:

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/317/transcript

Stay strong. Talk to us when you want to. Best wishes for better days ahead.