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I ran away from home once.. my mother posted about it online on her myspace..I literally cried: LIES, OVERBLOWN dramatization of situation, and worst of all: made me look like the devil with a red sword to boot!
The other side of the story? The complete opposite.
Yeah, I understand. Sometimes children really do have good reason to run away from home. However, my child does not. Or at least the reason hasn't presented itself yet so that we can address it. She's still not showing up to the supervised visitations and refuses to speak to me or her mother. Even one or the other would be fine with us. We just want to know what she's going through. It's been over a month now. We see our youngest daughter weekly but can not ask her anything about her sister except how she's doing.
The counseling is getting better. They've backed off of my wife and I being the bad guys and seem to be more willing to help us find out what our daughter's problem really is. We're getting ready to move from individual counseling to group counseling and hope that it produces some results. We'll see, I guess.
I have learned the hard way that even though your kids are always your kids, you have no real control over who they become as they get older. I look back sometimes and wonder what if I had done this or that, but the truth is, they will be who they are regardless of what you do or don't do.
I think the worst trap as a parent is feeling like we have to figure out what went wrong and then try to explain this to all our friends and family in hopes of justifying the situation. Love them, help them out, but don't let them steal all your peace and joy and don't feel so guilty. There comes a time when you have to adjust your focus and enjoy what is left of your life. She'll either come around as she matures...or she won't. And you can't control it either way.
Have you ever read the book, "Toughlove," by Phyllis and David York? You've probably heard of it; it's not a new book. Get it and read it. It will make you feel better, and give you a lot of good info.
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It was just ordered a week ago. From what we've been told, our 16 year old has stated that she would rather live in Foster care than to ever return home.
Then let her live in foster care - it sounds like a reality check would do her a world of good.
I would do whatever I had to do, to get your ten-year-old back, hire a lawyer, go to counselling, whatever. Then I would probably reconsider where I was living, that the government can just come in a snatch one's child so easily. Good luck.
I just want to say thanks to everyone who responded to my posts during my time of need to reach out to someone. My wife and I finaly got both of our kids back. It's been a long and drawn out process to say the very least. In my own opinion, Colorado's system is set up for you to fail. If you are a male, Colorado has it out for you brother. You're automatically the cause of all the problems and need to be removed from the home and paying child support. You don't even want to know what I had to go through. It was soooo very bad and frustrating, that I cannot even describe it using words alone. You would actually have to plug yourself into my mind and download all the thoughts, feelings, and experiences that I had to go through to completely understand. It was the most humiliating experience that I ever had to endure.
Here is my advice to anyone that has to go through Colorado's system and you believe that you are innocent. Disclaimer for legal reasons. This is not intended to be legal advice. You should consult an Attorney and make your own decision based on your individual situation. These are only my own thoughts and opinions. That's all, nothing else. A lot of it is should of, could of, would of.
1. DO NOT PLEAD TO THE NO FAULT CLAUSE!!!! Unfortunately, this is what my Wife and I did. They will try to sell you the idea that all you will have to do is go through some therapy, jump through some hoops here and there and you will soon get your kids back, because their "Program's" goal is to reunite the family. WRONG!!! The only reason you were offered that clause in the first place is because they have nothing on you to begin with. They don't offer this clause to people they have solid evidence against and can easily remove their parental rights from them. If you are offered this clause, FIGHT THEM, plead NOT GUILTY and insist on a Jury Trial. This is the quickest way out of your unfortunate mess! If you think that you cannot afford to fight them because you don't have any money, all I can say is find the money to fight them! They are going to sue you for child support while your children are in foster care and take a majority of your income anyway. The number 1 cause of domestic violence is financial distress. If you're not guilty now, you may very well soon be when the stress and reality sets in that you can't pay your bills.
2. WHAT HAPPENS IF I PLEAD TO THE NO FAULT CLAUSE? Here is what happened to us. Plan to make visiting the Social Services building a full time job. If you have chosen this route like we did, I really do feel for you. All I can say is, that you're in hell and don't stop until you get out. The chances of you making it through their "program" is slim to none. The chances of you making it through as a complete "Family Unit", meaning, Father, Mother, and Child(ren) are even slimmer. If you were to ask me to come up with a statistic, my best educated guess is that 1 out of every 10 cases will make it as a complete family unit. 7 out of every 10 cases will make it as Mother and Child(ren) with Father removed by restraining order. 2 out of 10 cases will have Parental Rights removed from both Mother and Father. That's just my guess and I'm pretty sure that it's not far off.
Keep in mind that when you choose the No Fault Clause, you cannot change your mind later. Even if you could, it is no longer economically feasible due to the cost of Attorney Fees to undo what has already been done.
In my opinion, the whole Program is designed to collect evidence against you and no matter what happens, you will have to bring your A game as far as discipline is concerned. You can never loose your cool and any sign of anger needs to be in very short, mild controlled bursts, and serve a purpose. At any time you have lost control of your temper, just go ahead and consider yourself one of the unfortunate statistics. It's game over, next player please.
Whatever you do, don't try to buck the system. Your best chance to get through the situation you're in is complete and total compliance. Never miss an appointment with any of the Social Service Departments, no matter what! Don't be tempted to come up with elaborate excuses to get out of an appointment. Anything short of your own death better be the only excuse that you can think of to get out of an appointment. In my opinion, the system is derived of a bunch of self important social workers that thrive on drama and the misfortunes of others and has some how convinced themselves that they are making a positive difference. Now don't get me wrong, there are some really bad cases that these people are needed. However, there is not enough money for the system to sustain itself with just those offenders alone. They must expand on their criteria and make the most mild offense such as, Mommy and Daddy's nonviolent arguement got a little to loud and the neighbor called the Police is enough to process them through their system. The entire system is quite extensive and very costly. It consists of Judges, Attorneys, Clerks, Doctors, Therapists, and all sorts of different kinds of Social Workers. These people would otherwise be unemployed if they did not expand their criteria to where just about any working middle class citizen and below could become a canidate for them to process. That's enough about that. Let's focus more on getting you through the system.
Like I said before. I believe the Program is to collect evidence against you. Mostly, the Father. Consider every therapy session an interogation process that will last for months at a time. The Police don't even get that kind of opportunity in criminal cases. Not only are you as a Father going through it, but your Wife and Children are going through it on an individual basis as well. You may, or may not have contact with your Wife, but you will not have any contact with your children whatsoever for a few months unless it's supervised. In which case you will not be able to talk about anything except how their day went.
The Therapist(s) will come at you with all sorts of crazy questions and make it seem as though everyone in your world that you have ever cared about has turned their backs on you and is saying the worst derogatory things about you that you could ever imagine. There are no boundaries that they will not cross. Sex, violence, and yes, even molestation. They will imply that someone has accused you of such a thing. Whether or not anyone really did or not, apparently, it isn't any of their concern. They are only intrested to see how you respond. What you go through in your mind during those few months, God only knows. Hopefully your strong enough to endure the pain and isolation that you put yourself through. To make a long story short, you will have to endure a lot of humiliation like that for months on end and somehow keep your composure. If it pisses you off and you become angry and violent. Game over brother, next player please. They don't even care what you're going through.
The only chance you really have is enduring the whole process until what I call the Bean Counters come around. Sooner or later an audit on your case will occur and someone will start to wonder why so much money and resources are being spent and nobody's parental rights are being removed. These are the only people that will tell all of the social workers involved that it's time for them to pull out and move on. It takes a while, but it does happen. No, you will most likely never meet them.
Well, that's all I got time for now. Take care all, and the best to all of you.
When kids say things to the wrong people (In this case, the police.), they have no idea the bees nest they are poking. I think so many of them do it for outside attention. Not because they don't get enough at home, but because, for some reason they think having that power in the outside world will somehow make people feel sorry for them.
There's a need in those particular kids and parents can't fill it no matter what they do.
I am sorry you went through this. I worked in the social work field for 3 years, I saw a lot and it made me lose my faith in the system. I worked with people that should never be giving advice to anyone. I always try to keep government out of my life as much as possible. I do not sign up for free programs or anything. It does not surprise me the crap you went through and that you were a target. Fathers take a beating in our court system.
Do you think your daughter is bi-polar? My husband's niece was diagnosed around her 16th birthday after many issues. Somedays she was her normal self and the next it was like she was a completely different person. I hope family counseling helps.
Glad you were able to vent. Not sure why people seem bothered by this, it is a blog website for peets sake. I wish you and your family the best. If you need to vent some more, feel free because there are people here that understand.
They have a much different point of view on things now, that's for sure. None of us really talk about our individual experiences in the system. You can just tell we all have a different point of view in the way we treat each other. Kind of like it's last day we'll ever see each other kind of thing.
When kids say things to the wrong people (In this case, the police.), they have no idea the bees nest they are poking. I think so many of them do it for outside attention. Not because they don't get enough at home, but because, for some reason they think having that power in the outside world will somehow make people feel sorry for them.
There's a need in those particular kids and parents can't fill it no matter what they do.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I have always felt that there was a void that we could never fill with our oldest child as parents, no matter what we did.
I think for a while there, she was exercising the system to fill that void and at some point, she lost control. Things were just not adding up for the system in her favor and eventually they seperated her from her younger sister and put her in a teen group home. That was the milestone that things started to get a little easier and she actually started requesting to see us for visitation.
Let's hope she never plays with fire like that again.
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