Instability is a big problem, too. It seems as if, just when foster children get settled in somewhere, the birth mother gets off drugs for a while, and then a judge orders the kids back to her, until the next time she’s arrested.
“Instability is a big problem, too. It seems as if, just when foster children get settled in somewhere, the birth mother gets off drugs for a while, and then a judge orders the kids back to her, until the next time she’s arrested.”
Saw that very thing happen with a neighbor who got custody of the woman’s brother’s two children because he and his wife were into drugs and alcohol. The County Children’s “Welfare” people “gave the kids back once despite all the evidence that the “parents” were not “clean.” It was good for a few days until the neighbors found the older child, who was five, climbing out of a window to find someone to locate his mom and dad. The “father” left the mother, had at least three more children with two other women, then “went back” to his wife and had a third child. Then the wife killed herself in a drunken car wreck. So now after raising the first two children and losing her husband, the neighbor’s wife is having to “raise” the third child as well as take care of her “dying brother” who has succeeded in killing himself with drugs. And naturally, the State is shelling out Medicaid for him and support for the three illegitimate children.
Instability is everything; I think that if you get arrested for drugs, you should have your rights as a parent terminated for at least five years. It would give the kid a chance to grow without the chaos of a mentally fragile parent.
I’ve had those and frankly it does horrific damage. It’s like you are sick and tired of all the tension and tiptoeing and all the chaos when they lose it. It’s not sympathy I feel for my parents who were unstable, but exasperation.
Sick and tired of seeing messed up parents mess up their kids.