Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
It might help both you and the granddaughter ksm, if you can learn more about the genetics on bio-father's side. Even if the heritage predicts trouble, both you and your grandchild may be able to steer a safer course if granddaughter knows she has a genetic proclivity to depression or addiction or emotional illness.
There is a thread in Watercooler ksm on anti-inflammatory diet. There is another thread there about a book: Infectious Madness. The book is a kind of review of research on whether things like depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), schizophrenia even, could be caused by imbalances in gut microflora related to antibiotic use, especially in children. No firm conclusions were reached, but when someone we love is suffering, it is best to think about these kinds of things, too. Following a strict diet may help your grand, and may give her a sense of hope and control.
Our daughter is diagnosed with "a serious and pervasive mental illness". I hate that this is happening to her, and to all of us. We don't know what to do, and neither does daughter. It is heartbreaking, for us.
I am very sorry this is happening to you both.
I am happy for you that younger grand is doing well. That she is doing well may speak to the genetic aspects of older grands problems.
How are you handling this with the grands, ksm?
The father of one of my grands is like that. He has no problem lying to children. He has no problem contacting them when he needs to see himself as someone's father. There is a sense of decency in being someone's mother or someone's father. Irresponsible parents seem always ready to manipulate both their own children and their caretakers to make themselves look like the injured party, grieving for their abandoned children.
They use this against the children, and we are powerless, because the children wish for the love of the parent wholeheartedly. It is very bitter, when the children are repeatedly hurt and betrayed.
I try to have compassion, but it is difficult.
We did not take our grands. In some ways it was the right thing, not to take them...but in so many ways, I wish we had.
You were very brave to take them and raise them and love them, ksm.
How are you and granddaughter working through this, ksm?
You have raised the little girl since she was seven, is that right? It would be very, very hard for me to see the child's feckless, irresponsible mother in the grand's features and mannerisms.
So hard.
There are times when the only thing we do know is that we did the right thing, for the right reasons. It is hard to accept without bitterness, when our people we love are so troubled.
Thank God you were there for her. Wherever she goes from here, the love you put into her, the things that you taught her, are in there. It is hard to hold faith, but there is nothing else to do.
Is the grand planning for college?
There is something called "complex PTSD". This is the kind of PTSD that happens when we are repeatedly traumatized over time. Soon, anything remotely connected to one traumatic event keys all the other traumatic event responses. That gets to be chronic, that mindset. Here on FOO Chronicles, we believe (well, I do, anyway) that current day traumas having to do with helplessness where our troubled or G F G children are concerned key into traumatic events from our own childhoods.
We are hit with a double whammy.
I get it now why you posted here on FOO Chronicles, ksm.
My apologies.
Would it be of value do you think, to respond to granddaughter as though you were taking her seriously? I mean, to begin say, looking up farms for sale on Zillow and calculating mortgage payments and discussing how to actually buy a farm? Or, discussing maybe becoming a veterinarian, if her interest is animals?
Or have you already done that.
What I'm saying is that if I could focus on my purpose, which would be to steer the child in the direction best for her, that would help me know how to guide myself in this situation, which seems really rotten, ksm. So, the mother is allying with the grand against you. This is all so unfair. Is the grand planning for her future, for the day she will move into her own apartment or home?
This must be very hard.
That is what parents like the biomom seem to do. They don't want to be responsible to their children, but they want to appear to be loving parents to the very children they've abandoned. They do this, not for the sake of the child, but to glorify themselves. In this sense, they are using their own children, and doing it to the detriment of the child. You already know how that works, I am sure. It helps though sometimes, to know you are not the only one, and that the situation that exists is not something personal to you. The mother would be setting up this same dynamic with anyone kind enough to have taken her children in.
Very difficult, for you.
If you would find it helpful, would you like to post about how you keep yourself centered around this stuff? I would feel hurt and resentful. I think I would not be able to stay centered. If it were me, I would internalize the anger and internalizing all of it would leave me depressed.
It would help me to figure out what was happening to each of the people I loved. Then, maybe, I could know how to find that center space where I would be able to understand that what they do is just what they do.
That would help me let go of the anger. I would be able to tell myself I had made the right choice for my grands and myself, and that this was just another, not unexpected, difficulty implicit to the situation with the mother.
How kind of you to have taken both children, ksm.
We would be very willing to explore these feelings with you. The site is anonymous, and that is helpful for us.
Have you told granddaughter these things? That you had hoped for more for her in her life? If she does move out, there may not be another time to teach her in the way you may be able to teach her, now. Even if she doesn't seem to be listening, she does hear you.
Would you like to explore how you might present your hope for and belief in her in a way that your grandchild can hear?
You will receive excellent feedback here, and on P.E. too.
Coping.... I think coping has to do with understanding that the best we can do is what we have to do. Maya Angelou writes that when we know better, we do better. Regret is not part of this. Real boats do rock; real life is where our best intentions go awry, and those we love are hurt, or we are. So, it isn't about what the mother or the grandchild do so much as it is being certain you are doing all that you feel is correct. If talking to the child everyday about where she could take her life feels right, then that is what you must do. If turning away feels right, then that is what you must do. There is no right way to do any of this, or none of us would be here on the site trying to figure things out. For me, and for my D H, the guideline we use when we literally don't know what is the right thing is whether we will be able to meet our own eyes in the mirror if the consequences of acting (or not acting) in the child's behalf are hard consequences.
There are very hard consequences any way we go, when people we love are so troubled. It is impossible, over time, not to slip into the ugliness of enabling. There is nothing easy about any of this. I can tell you this much. When I was able to say to my children (or my grands, which tore my heart out), no more money, no you cannot move home, no I will not buy any more cars or pay fines or reinstate licenses or pay tuition, I was also honest with them about why I was saying no. Basically the gist of that one was that they needed to know they could depend on themselves, and not continue to know that if the story were bad enough, someone would rescue them from themselves. I tell my kids and grands all the time, every chance I get, that I love them, and that I know they can do this. That they are bright, attractive people with incredible potential, and that they will take their lives in the direction they choose. That if they find themselves in a place they do not want to be, they can choose to go another direction any time that they want to.
So, that was a very different way of talking than the way I used to talk to them. I used to rail at the world with them. I used to pay and believe and pay, some more. But none of that worked, somehow. So, I had to change. The kids were not changing. They were behaving as I had taught them to behave. They too believed the world was treating them unfairly.
So, I had to change.
They could not change until I did.
That is how I learned to stand up.
It was amazingly hard. I always think my kids are perfect, but just in trouble, again.
For heaven's sake.
And that is all I know to tell you this morning, ksm. Please know that if you ask me something specific, I will try to respond as honestly as I can. We are all parents here, trying so hard to bring our kids and grands safely through it. Detachment theory ~ not the turning away part, but the part about the kids needing to believe, not in me, but in themselves, was very helpful for our family.
Again, I am very glad you posted to us, and apologize again for not hearing you correctly in your first post.
Cedar
