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Is there a silver lining?
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<blockquote data-quote="Shari" data-source="post: 216782" data-attributes="member: 1848"><p>FTN - I'm not going to get into whether or not your difficult child's bio dad is guilty or not, but I want to share this with you.</p><p>***</p><p>For what its worth.</p><p>***</p><p>I came into my difficult child 1's life when he was 2 years old as the girlfriend of his father. difficult child moved in with us when he was 3 1/2, and eventually, I became his step-mother.</p><p>***</p><p>Prior to this, tho, his bio mom maybe fed him one time a day. He was found locked in cars at random by passers-by, sometimes the police. He was exposed to drugs and alcohol and prositution. There was plenty of evidence to find her guilty.</p><p>***</p><p>The only thing the family court did was to give "us" supervised visits with his mom. I hated it. The woman was toxic; how could a court care about this child and allow that to continue?</p><p>***</p><p>But that's the way it was, so my job, then, became to make it have the least impact possible on difficult child. I took difficult child to his visits, I smiled and was pleasant, and I let her be the ugly one. She'd scream at me, use ugly names for his father and I, etc, and, like water off a duck's back, I let it slide in front of difficult child. ONE TIME in 17 years did I make a detrimental comment about his mother in his presence, and that was to say she was stamping license plates in jail. And I still feel bad for it because it wasn't his fault he had her for a mother.</p><p>***</p><p>In time, I beleive partly BECAUSE of my choice to not stoop to her level and engage in her pettiness, difficult child saw the situation for what it was and called the spade a spade. </p><p>***</p><p>When Christmas would roll around, and she'd yet again promised to come, I'd take him shopping to buy small gifts for her and his siblings. And when the promises weren't kept, he knew it was all her, and he knew he could come to me to cry. When his mom stopped showing up altogether, he knew it was all her, and he knew he could come to me and cry. When, after 6 years, she showed up out of the blue and invited him to her home, he wasn't afraid to ask me to go with him and stay with him while he was there. He TRUSTED me to not play her games. I hated being in those uncomfortable positions, but I did it for HIM. For years, it was a tenuous love/hate thing with him; she was his mom, so he was supposed to love her, yet he also knew she didn't treat him like mom's treat their kids. Eventually, he saw it for what it was.</p><p>***</p><p>I am long since divorced from his father. difficult child lived with me until he left for boot camp. Now, he's 19, a Marine, married, with MY grandbaby on the way. And nothing made my heart sing like talking to him those first few times after boot, when he'd yell at the other guys in the barracks to "shut up so I can hear my MOM". </p><p>***</p><p>I guess the point I'm trying to make is, I let difficult child make his own decision, and he made it. I tried to be a stable person in his otherwise unstable world. He's not out of the woods yet, but he's making it, and I'm proud of him.</p><p>***</p><p>And I firmly beleive the outcome would have been vastly different had I adopted an ugly attitude towards his mother.</p><p>***</p><p>If you want to do something for that little girl, be a person that she can cling to in her otherwise rocky world. Hate her dad if you want, but don't let her know it. Be an unbiased soul she can come to. "Kill them with kindness" often does work.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Shari, post: 216782, member: 1848"] FTN - I'm not going to get into whether or not your difficult child's bio dad is guilty or not, but I want to share this with you. *** For what its worth. *** I came into my difficult child 1's life when he was 2 years old as the girlfriend of his father. difficult child moved in with us when he was 3 1/2, and eventually, I became his step-mother. *** Prior to this, tho, his bio mom maybe fed him one time a day. He was found locked in cars at random by passers-by, sometimes the police. He was exposed to drugs and alcohol and prositution. There was plenty of evidence to find her guilty. *** The only thing the family court did was to give "us" supervised visits with his mom. I hated it. The woman was toxic; how could a court care about this child and allow that to continue? *** But that's the way it was, so my job, then, became to make it have the least impact possible on difficult child. I took difficult child to his visits, I smiled and was pleasant, and I let her be the ugly one. She'd scream at me, use ugly names for his father and I, etc, and, like water off a duck's back, I let it slide in front of difficult child. ONE TIME in 17 years did I make a detrimental comment about his mother in his presence, and that was to say she was stamping license plates in jail. And I still feel bad for it because it wasn't his fault he had her for a mother. *** In time, I beleive partly BECAUSE of my choice to not stoop to her level and engage in her pettiness, difficult child saw the situation for what it was and called the spade a spade. *** When Christmas would roll around, and she'd yet again promised to come, I'd take him shopping to buy small gifts for her and his siblings. And when the promises weren't kept, he knew it was all her, and he knew he could come to me to cry. When his mom stopped showing up altogether, he knew it was all her, and he knew he could come to me and cry. When, after 6 years, she showed up out of the blue and invited him to her home, he wasn't afraid to ask me to go with him and stay with him while he was there. He TRUSTED me to not play her games. I hated being in those uncomfortable positions, but I did it for HIM. For years, it was a tenuous love/hate thing with him; she was his mom, so he was supposed to love her, yet he also knew she didn't treat him like mom's treat their kids. Eventually, he saw it for what it was. *** I am long since divorced from his father. difficult child lived with me until he left for boot camp. Now, he's 19, a Marine, married, with MY grandbaby on the way. And nothing made my heart sing like talking to him those first few times after boot, when he'd yell at the other guys in the barracks to "shut up so I can hear my MOM". *** I guess the point I'm trying to make is, I let difficult child make his own decision, and he made it. I tried to be a stable person in his otherwise unstable world. He's not out of the woods yet, but he's making it, and I'm proud of him. *** And I firmly beleive the outcome would have been vastly different had I adopted an ugly attitude towards his mother. *** If you want to do something for that little girl, be a person that she can cling to in her otherwise rocky world. Hate her dad if you want, but don't let her know it. Be an unbiased soul she can come to. "Kill them with kindness" often does work. [/QUOTE]
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