Cgfg just text me
- Thread starter Shari
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AnnieO
Shooting from the Hip
...Uhhhh... Do WHAT, exactly???
DammitJanet
Well-Known Member
Im sorry, sometimes when I type too much my word problems do come through on here. That was evidence of it. Normally I try to proof read what I write but if it doesnt underline it in red to tell me its spelled wrong, then I sometimes miss it.
I meant that when Lindsay gets those papers she is gonna go nuts and have a fit so loud that Shari will hear it. Shari is only about an hour away from Lindsay.
I am shipping out my Halloween treats for Keyana and her other two boys today. Yes, I am still a good grandmother to them. I have always treated her two other kids as my own. Did for them as I do for Keyana. Thats how bad we are. Ha! (Cory even paid tons for Cameron when he was with her...sigh.) Then she will get served the papers next week because he is filing on Monday. I finished filling them out today completely and he is getting them notarized today. We have lined up our witnesses should we need them. My therapist who has known both Cory and Lindsay....(they went to her son's wedding!)...since Keyana was born. She made home visits to my home over the last 6 years.
I meant that when Lindsay gets those papers she is gonna go nuts and have a fit so loud that Shari will hear it. Shari is only about an hour away from Lindsay.
I am shipping out my Halloween treats for Keyana and her other two boys today. Yes, I am still a good grandmother to them. I have always treated her two other kids as my own. Did for them as I do for Keyana. Thats how bad we are. Ha! (Cory even paid tons for Cameron when he was with her...sigh.) Then she will get served the papers next week because he is filing on Monday. I finished filling them out today completely and he is getting them notarized today. We have lined up our witnesses should we need them. My therapist who has known both Cory and Lindsay....(they went to her son's wedding!)...since Keyana was born. She made home visits to my home over the last 6 years.
Shari
IsItFridayYet?
The guy she thought I was dating was the best. I had easy child 1 rebuild a bunch of gates around the farm for me, and this guy had helped me dig holes to replace the gate posts and then rehang the gates, so over the course of a couple/three weekends, we'd been together several times. To thank him, I bought supper each of those nights. (and in small town USA, that's means you're dating). He's still a friend. He called me up after she called him and said "Like, WTH? Why would I care?" lol
Bio is a miserable, unhappy person. Once upon a time before she and husband split, I gave her that Dr Phil book "Self matters" or something like that. Personally, I thought it was a pretty good book. Premise of the book is that if you change the way you act and react, it changes the way people treat you, by changing how THEY react to you. She took it, said she'd read it, and when I handed it to her, asked what part to start with to change husband fastest. She still doesn't get that you can't make someone else change, and to my knowledge, still expects someone else to make her happy (thus, she is miserable, and has been for a long, long time. ExMIL knew her in high school - she said she hasn't changed a lick.)
Haven't felt any tremors yet... too cloudy to see that far.
That wouldn't surprise me... she's caught in the middle, and doesn't want things to get worse before they get better... it breaks my heart that kids get stuck like this.
Even if this doesn't go they way you expect... you won't know the impact/outcome really for another 10 or 20 years.
Hang in there!
Shari
IsItFridayYet?
We likely will never know the true impact, anyway. She's been taught to manipulate to get what you want (by example) her entire life. And since her mom and husband split, she's been shown outright lying to achieve the same.
Her core personality, though, is one that doesn't like to rock the boat, and that is the one key I am personally clinging to in moving foward with this. husband still lives in lala land where his baby girl does no wrong. Heck, he doesn't even realize she listens to something other than country music and gets frustrated with me for killing the internet if we aren't home and she is. I'm not disillusioned about this, I hope.
Its not going to be easy to go through this, particularly for her, but if we get what we're going for? Its not going to be any easier then, either. She deals with Wee the way her mom has dealt with her - yelling and controling - and if that doesn't work, she'll get physical with Wee (which is an epic fail - he's stronger than she is). That doesn't work well. She wants help with school, but its going to require work that she's going to get tired of doing. I expect there will be more triangulating. Money doesn't flow freely here, either - and while living at mom's, where no one spends diddly on her to do anything, I'm sure it looks like we are an unlimited supply of Disney days...as I've said before, we do play hard, but I work hard to play hard, and she misses out on that piece too often.
But all of that is if we even get there. She, herself, killed her tutoring I had finally set up by telling us she was going and telling mom she had no work, or didn't need the help, or the work was done, or what was missing was from sick days - triangulating, based largely on knowing mom doesn't check into jack squat or even know if the kid's missed school. Heck, she's already told mom this year that she had all A's and B's (in her defense, she wasn't FAILING anything when she said that, but she didn't have all A's and B's, either - she was teetering on the edge of C/D when she said that - the next day, it fell over the edge). That is one of the basis now we are using to try to get her here more, and she may have to admit to someone that she did that. If she doesn't, we may be bust. And its a ****-shoot whether she will or not, in my mind, anyway.
Yes, she wants to be here more. Yes, she wants to do better. Does she want those things bad enough to go against mama's years of preaching how daddy was unfair to mama and this is how he had to pay to someone of authority? I don't know. Does she want those things bad enough to admit she manipulated her parents to get out of doing her stuff? I don't know. 'Cause "I wanna hang with dad cause he does stuff" ain't gonna cut it alone. She's going to have to tell them mom called her a *itch and an ***hole because she asked to see her dad. She's going to have to tell them she isn't allowed to go to dad's when mom's not available. Etc. I just pray the person she ends up talking to knows teenagers, and basically, at this point, I'm just praying. Whatever the outcome ends up being, we'll just deal. At least we will have tried.
We gave her a brief overview of what is on the document that will be served last night. Shouldn't have to, she should be kept out of it, but we are 100% certain her mother will grill her when it shows up, and figured it would be better that she at least know what it is going to say and understand why it says what it says. Wasn't a long discussion, kept it brief and tried to keep it light, but also told her if this is what she wants, she's going to have to stand her ground when the poo hits the fan. Hopefully, that will be the end of our discussions with her on it.
Of course, as mom brings things up and she has questions, we'll answer. Shouldn't be that way, but "should" really shouldn't be a word here, 'cause it ain't gonna be that way. Ever tried to explain child support to an 8 year old? Ever tried to explain why mom thinks that what dad didn't pay for but should have when cgfg was 4 is reason enough to not allow her to participate in an activity that she loves with him on his holiday weekend because mom wants that weekend this year? Yeah...that's her.
And FWIW, it has been VERY hard to not just stoop to their level and encourage her lying, sneaking, and swiping behavior right back at them. When she was 8 and wanted to go to her mom's and get her skates so she could go skating at the park with my mom and Wee, but her mom wouldn't let her take the skates "with those people" because "dad didn't buy you that stuff, mom did". At the time, she could easily slip things into her school bag and bring them 'cause mom never checked the bag, and believe me, I thought about it. Especially when mom wouldn't let her bring a coat because she didn't want her being outside, or would only send really crappy clothes, and we ended up just having to buy stuff for her ourselves. Or the night her mom met us with the horse trailer heading home from the arena from riding (which we had been doing for several weeks) and she sent us a nasty gram to bathe her better because she smelled like horse sh*t when she got home the next evening. (funny, she didn't smell her the other times, when she didn't know what we did those nights...) Yeah, lie, sneak, and swipe were right there on the top of my list of tactics to deal with her mother, but we managed to not encourage it, and now, I think (*think*) that maybe there's a payoff because every once in a while, I see her choose the high road...but man, its for sure been the hard road.
Ok, sorry, I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
(editted to add a few things we've allowed or would allow her to take to her mother's to use there because she doesn't have them...the horse and trailer (her horse she rode when she was little), the rifle that she deer hunts with (a $700+ rifle - and they have taken that once, but she didn't get to go hunting, anyway), her bicycle, because she doesn't have one there (they wouldn't come get it, so she stayed with grandma while her mom, step-dad, and step-siblings went bike riding), various dresses (a couple times they let her get them, most times, they didn't - one Christmas she wanted to wear a new dress from here and they refused to come get it or let her call me to bring it, and made her wear something they dug out of the attic. She was about 9-10 and she sat by herself and cried through the whole Christmas program because she "looked ugly")...
Her mother so graciously gave cgfg her old saddle, but she's not allowed to bring it here, either. Uh....ok. How's that gonna work? Cause mama doesn't go to any of her horse stuff...
Her core personality, though, is one that doesn't like to rock the boat, and that is the one key I am personally clinging to in moving foward with this. husband still lives in lala land where his baby girl does no wrong. Heck, he doesn't even realize she listens to something other than country music and gets frustrated with me for killing the internet if we aren't home and she is. I'm not disillusioned about this, I hope.
Its not going to be easy to go through this, particularly for her, but if we get what we're going for? Its not going to be any easier then, either. She deals with Wee the way her mom has dealt with her - yelling and controling - and if that doesn't work, she'll get physical with Wee (which is an epic fail - he's stronger than she is). That doesn't work well. She wants help with school, but its going to require work that she's going to get tired of doing. I expect there will be more triangulating. Money doesn't flow freely here, either - and while living at mom's, where no one spends diddly on her to do anything, I'm sure it looks like we are an unlimited supply of Disney days...as I've said before, we do play hard, but I work hard to play hard, and she misses out on that piece too often.
But all of that is if we even get there. She, herself, killed her tutoring I had finally set up by telling us she was going and telling mom she had no work, or didn't need the help, or the work was done, or what was missing was from sick days - triangulating, based largely on knowing mom doesn't check into jack squat or even know if the kid's missed school. Heck, she's already told mom this year that she had all A's and B's (in her defense, she wasn't FAILING anything when she said that, but she didn't have all A's and B's, either - she was teetering on the edge of C/D when she said that - the next day, it fell over the edge). That is one of the basis now we are using to try to get her here more, and she may have to admit to someone that she did that. If she doesn't, we may be bust. And its a ****-shoot whether she will or not, in my mind, anyway.
Yes, she wants to be here more. Yes, she wants to do better. Does she want those things bad enough to go against mama's years of preaching how daddy was unfair to mama and this is how he had to pay to someone of authority? I don't know. Does she want those things bad enough to admit she manipulated her parents to get out of doing her stuff? I don't know. 'Cause "I wanna hang with dad cause he does stuff" ain't gonna cut it alone. She's going to have to tell them mom called her a *itch and an ***hole because she asked to see her dad. She's going to have to tell them she isn't allowed to go to dad's when mom's not available. Etc. I just pray the person she ends up talking to knows teenagers, and basically, at this point, I'm just praying. Whatever the outcome ends up being, we'll just deal. At least we will have tried.
We gave her a brief overview of what is on the document that will be served last night. Shouldn't have to, she should be kept out of it, but we are 100% certain her mother will grill her when it shows up, and figured it would be better that she at least know what it is going to say and understand why it says what it says. Wasn't a long discussion, kept it brief and tried to keep it light, but also told her if this is what she wants, she's going to have to stand her ground when the poo hits the fan. Hopefully, that will be the end of our discussions with her on it.
Of course, as mom brings things up and she has questions, we'll answer. Shouldn't be that way, but "should" really shouldn't be a word here, 'cause it ain't gonna be that way. Ever tried to explain child support to an 8 year old? Ever tried to explain why mom thinks that what dad didn't pay for but should have when cgfg was 4 is reason enough to not allow her to participate in an activity that she loves with him on his holiday weekend because mom wants that weekend this year? Yeah...that's her.
And FWIW, it has been VERY hard to not just stoop to their level and encourage her lying, sneaking, and swiping behavior right back at them. When she was 8 and wanted to go to her mom's and get her skates so she could go skating at the park with my mom and Wee, but her mom wouldn't let her take the skates "with those people" because "dad didn't buy you that stuff, mom did". At the time, she could easily slip things into her school bag and bring them 'cause mom never checked the bag, and believe me, I thought about it. Especially when mom wouldn't let her bring a coat because she didn't want her being outside, or would only send really crappy clothes, and we ended up just having to buy stuff for her ourselves. Or the night her mom met us with the horse trailer heading home from the arena from riding (which we had been doing for several weeks) and she sent us a nasty gram to bathe her better because she smelled like horse sh*t when she got home the next evening. (funny, she didn't smell her the other times, when she didn't know what we did those nights...) Yeah, lie, sneak, and swipe were right there on the top of my list of tactics to deal with her mother, but we managed to not encourage it, and now, I think (*think*) that maybe there's a payoff because every once in a while, I see her choose the high road...but man, its for sure been the hard road.
Ok, sorry, I'm rambling. I'll shut up now.
(editted to add a few things we've allowed or would allow her to take to her mother's to use there because she doesn't have them...the horse and trailer (her horse she rode when she was little), the rifle that she deer hunts with (a $700+ rifle - and they have taken that once, but she didn't get to go hunting, anyway), her bicycle, because she doesn't have one there (they wouldn't come get it, so she stayed with grandma while her mom, step-dad, and step-siblings went bike riding), various dresses (a couple times they let her get them, most times, they didn't - one Christmas she wanted to wear a new dress from here and they refused to come get it or let her call me to bring it, and made her wear something they dug out of the attic. She was about 9-10 and she sat by herself and cried through the whole Christmas program because she "looked ugly")...
Her mother so graciously gave cgfg her old saddle, but she's not allowed to bring it here, either. Uh....ok. How's that gonna work? Cause mama doesn't go to any of her horse stuff...
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L
Liahona
Guest
Vent away. Those of us with kids in bad situations understand 100%. I hope cgfg can see through the stuff bio-mom does and stick to her story even when the going gets really tough.
Shari
IsItFridayYet?
This is why I decided against teaching. Well, dealing with similar "stuff" with difficult child 1 and his mom when he was little. I knew I could not walk away from kids in this sort of position day in and day out. It would kill me.
The factor with difficult child 1 that made things easier was his mom had a record, was on DFS' list, anyway, and didn't have money or a family with money to fight much. It was a no-brainer to get and keep him, and once we got him, she all but went away by her own choice.
Cgfg's grandma has money, and they are the wild card I worry about. They've cut the strings with her mama some, but I don't know how they will respond to this. They may open the purse back up.
The factor with difficult child 1 that made things easier was his mom had a record, was on DFS' list, anyway, and didn't have money or a family with money to fight much. It was a no-brainer to get and keep him, and once we got him, she all but went away by her own choice.
Cgfg's grandma has money, and they are the wild card I worry about. They've cut the strings with her mama some, but I don't know how they will respond to this. They may open the purse back up.
L
Liahona
Guest
I was thinking. I don't know how abusive bio-mom is. X is very abusive. In order to get away from him you have to agree with him. If bio-mom is anything like X cgfg might have to agree with her to her face and then tell the truth to everyone else. This is what difficult child 1 is having to do right now. (Doesn't go well with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) but he is having to learn.) Its hard to teach a kid; its o.k. to lie to survive a situation, but then tell the truth to everyone else.
Shari
IsItFridayYet?
Mom isn't physical that we know of. She's mean, tho. But the lawyer pounded it into her head, if she hits you, you call ME. We told her last night, whatever threats she makes, etc, just go with the flow. If she takes the phone, let her. If she says you cant come here anymore, its ok...its temporary. Be willing to tell those who need to hear what you want, but just deal with her best you can and remember, whatever price she makes us all pay (mostly her) is temporary.
Shari
IsItFridayYet?
Mean - example - she yelled at cgfg from roughly 7pm until well after midnight on a school night because she wanted Cgfg on memorial weekend this past year. It was our year to have her that holiday weekend, and cgfg wanted to leave it that way so she could go to a shoot. We had told cgfg that she could do what she wanted - and we were even willing to pick her up for the shoot and take her back to mom's...whatever to make it work and keep the peace. And, of course, we'd take the heavy if we needed to. Her mom wanted cgfg - period - and nothing else was acceptable. At one point, cgfg said she made her get up and threatened to throw her out and never see her again if she didn't change and go with her mom. Cgfg stuck it out and was with us that weekend, but things have been even more touchy with her mom since.
