Thursday, December 13, 2007

How Would You Respond?

If you were known to be explosive and a very angry person how would you react to your children accusing you of sexually abusing them? If you have just been told you will not have the opportunity to see them b/c you are considered dangerous, would you be upset or angry? If you had been known to threaten to kill people for canceling a visit with your child or for removing them from your home wouldn't you react with anger about this? My children's father has a reputation for his temper and when his SIL told him last night of the accusations and our decision to make the adoption semi open and only between the adults, he barely responded. He stated his father had been unfairly accused of raping his sisters (they proved it true with semen analysis) and served 12 years , this would not happen to him and he was disowning his kids.

We have asked to speak to the parents for the last month and they have refused to call us. We have no way to reach them without a current phone. We wanted to share these things with them ourselves but had to get the kid's aunt to help when they just flat out refused to deal with us. It's funny b/c they were screaming they wanted to see the kids for the holiday but wouldn't call. I told the Mother in our last conversation that there had been some things coming to light and we would have to hold off on face to face visits. I guess she knows what we could know and freaked out. They are still claiming they have done nothing wrong and going so far as to blame the kids for lying. I was surprised their Father was so calm, it proves to me that this is the right decision. He is guilty of something for sure, he has never been able to control his emotions before and this is the one thing I would freak if accused of. He barely denied it and refused to discuss it further even had fun afterward. The aunt thinks this is all such a relief for him, he is no longer financially responsible for them. Six kids are a huge financial burden and he can not hold a job so I am sure this was difficult for him. After spending a year away from them, his family thinks they have faded a bit in his mind b/c he has stopped asking about them.

Their Mother is a sobbing mess, she is suicidal again. She is desperate for the kids. If I could be sure she didn't hurt them I would let her see them. I can not and so she can not. She is having a very difficult time with her depression and I worry she will eventually make real attempts to hurt herself. I can't imagine trying to live without my kids and she gave birth to them. I wish I could help but they are not my priority, the children are. We will be sending pictures and letters regularly. When they are old enough to to handle things we will help them through a visit but we are talking years and years from now.

We have scheduled a visit from the aunt and uncle again on Dec 22. I am not sure when we will meet up with the Gparents but sometime over the holiday for sure. I hope that since i can not give them the relationship with their parents that they deserve I can at least give them their extended family. I know it is not ever going to make up for what they have lost, I just hope it helps a little.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tudu,

(((HUGS))) to you for doing all the right things!

You ROCK!!

Mongoose said...

Well... I would say your kids deserve safety above all, and a chance to develop normally while they can. Whether the family of origin is depressed or suicidal or whatever over it... I don't have much compassion for that. We all live with the consequences of our choices. Your kids have had and will have a much harder time dealing with the consequences of their parents' choices, than the parents themselves ever will. If the parents are having negative cognitions over that, well, I think they pretty well brought it on themselves, and they can do like your kids and spend hours and hours at therapy when they'd rather be doing something else.

You must be a much more compassionate person than me... I haven't an ounce of sympathy for His mother and if I could turn back the time and take him away from her when he was four, I sure would.

((HUGS))

Anonymous said...

I applaud your compassion AND your commitment to keeping the kids safe. I've noticed a pattern with foster care...the birth parents bad choices almost always started with birth GRAND parents bad choices. I'm not sayin this is true 100% of the time but it's certainly true MOST of the time in my experience. If these kids had not had DFCS intervention, they would have undoubtedly repeated the bad decisions taught to them by their birth parents. For this reason, I applaud you for your compassion. Compassion helps heal. Lack of it continues the cycle.