How might you handle this?
By ycswid
@ycswid (279)
Canada
March 5, 2007 8:59am CST
My husband has 2 children from his previous marriage. They are with their mother and the youngest (M17) told us about his stepfather and him coming to blows last week. Enough so that the eldest (F21) called 911. When the police showed up the parents lied and said there were no blows. There are 2 young children from this new marriage in the house and they are also witnessing their father being violent. This is not new.
We have spoken (or at least tried to speak)to the mother to say that something needs to be done or we will remove the boy from this violent atmosphere. We suggested anger management or some type of counselling but it doesn't seem that they have any interest in seeking help. She is more interested in having her son dealt with than admitting that there are any issues with the "adults" of the house. The daughter wants to leave also (this is all unknown to the mother) but is staying right now to keep tabs on her brother.
We are now in the process of seeing if the son wants to leave and come to stay with us. Although this is not something that is desired we don't want to leave him in a bad environment. The ex is only interested in screaming and telling us and the son how much $ he owes them.
It is unbelievable to me that a mother can treat her child this way. Can you imagine being in our situation? What would you do? Can you imagine being in the mother's situation? What would you do?
I'd certainly appreciate any responses.
4 people like this
4 responses
@Joey322 (272)
• United States
5 Mar 07
well, one thing that i've learned in life is that there is always 2 sides to every story.
i'm not saying that the mom and step dad are in the right, but here is a scenario i was faced with from an ex bf.
he was living with his mom. he had been with mom since birth and dad left when he was 2. mom remarried when he was becoming a teen and there was suddenly a new parent to deal with and he wasn't used to this. he would still talk to his mom the way he always had, but step dad didn't approve and made him show his mom respect. not that he was really DISrespecting her, but step dad felt he was.
mom took step dad's side b/c she felt they needed to show a united front to all the kids.
bf didn't like that and moved out to his dad's.
all i ever heard about was the bad stuff they did to him, then i met mom and step dad and they set the record straight. luckily, it was never as bad as what your situation sounds!
why can't he come live with you guys?? also, if he was being violent, why did they just take the parent's point of view and not a 21 year old's into account??
there sounds like there may be more to this than meets the eye....
take care
2 people like this
@ycswid (279)
• Canada
5 Mar 07
I agree there is always at least 2 sides to every story. In this case there appears to about 4.
He definitely can come and live with us. We just want to be sure this is what he really wants to do and not just a nice, easy out for the time being. We don't want him to come here and then in a month or so say he wants to go back.
The police did listen to the 17 and 21 year olds account of the incident but decided the "adults" were who they were going to base any action on.
This family loves drama... they have fights (and usually call us in tears). We try to help smooth things over (usually suggesting they seek some outside counselling) and then everything is forgotten (with nothing changed) until the next time (usually within weeks) and the cycle begins again. In reality we would like nothing better than for the son to come live with us and the daughter to move out like she plans and then have nothing to do with the mother.
I guess I was just looking for some "outside looking in" points of view as we're just caught in the middle.
Thanks for responding.
1 person likes this
@seamonkey (1976)
• Ireland
22 Mar 07
I think the first thing to do would be get the stepson out of the environment and then take the situation from there. It isn't ideal, but once you have him with you it will be easier to see what the reality is. Maybe he just needs to get out of there. Sounds like he's nearly ready to leave the nest, anyway.
@justtoomuch2007 (12)
• United States
23 Mar 07
Personally, Id take it into my own hands by getting the child a lawyer and fighting for custody and also call children services and ask them to do a home inspection and tell them the situation.
