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kyburgOne of the up close and personal bits I mentioned yesterday.
Jim's not being very eloquent. I'm the writer - he's the idea man. Let me see if I can untangle this in 25 words or less.
Jim's parents divorced in fission-fashion as he was entering high school. Shared custody was not invented back then; his father got full custody. And he soon remarried another divorcee with three children of her own. Jim has an older brother and a younger one.
While nobody has reported abuse before the divorce, it's rare that I hear of any dispute with their father that settled without someone being punched in the face.
Jim petitioned for a change in custody less than two years after the divorce, based on abuse - and got it.
He took his younger brother with him, who was about 10 or eleven at the time. Jim was 16. His older brother Chris, had left home long before that - we learned only a couple of years ago that Chris had confronted his father over how he was treating them - and Chris said he was punched in the face and that was why he left.
Jim has a huge temper; so do I - it's something we have in common. We have the raging tempers of children who were abused or neglected. Both of us have had lots of retraining and it shows. Jim still has work to do.
Chris never acknowledged that anything was out of the ordinary. Dealing with him is just like dealing with his father - if I can convince you of it, that's the truth. If you don't agree with me, you don't know what you're talking about.
I had heard what he had planned for his daughter's adolescent years. No dating. Period. No unescorted social contacts. None. The family also attends a fundie church that believes the world is only about 6,000 years old - about the only common ground I can talk about religion with them is to go over how strange those Mormons are! (No shit.)
So, yeah.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
trcabbage, it's everything you've been in court over - and the worst part is it's true in this case. Undeniably true. The worst part is that Chris is changing his story - NOT a good sign. I'm sure this will be a good learning experience for him - but it will be some liberal's fault, or some such.
It is theirs to muddle through. They're in Chicago; we're in Los Angeles. Nobody called us to tell us they were in deep sauce. We're going to talk to younger brother tomorrow and see if he knows anything yet. That brother is of the mind he was taken from his father for no cause whatsoever - and that father can be very persuasive, no doubt about it.
Maybe this will convince him that I found an abused child at the bottom of a lotta rage when I got Jim into therapy three years ago.
And in truth, I only care about us. How does this impact Jim and I? I am even firmer in my resolve that Jim learn other ways to deal with frustration and anger - because all he knows is what he got at the hands of an abusive father. You don't express the fact that this makes you VERY angry by becoming violent, as opposed to not so angry doesn't warrant it.
You never get violent. Ever. You may never strike anyone. And I am quickly adding striking inanimate objects to that list. I've done it - he can do it.
You have to keep thinking, thinking, thinking - I sometimes feel my mind never shuts off.
What you learned was wrong. Don't do it.
But what do I substitute in its place?
We'll need a lot of early-child development, I think - if we were to have children. But I do know one thing - education works.
I was hoping Chris was not going to be just like his father. He's a lot like his father - just now, more than I'd like.
And I am so proud of that girl - I hope I get to tell her so.
BTW.
THIS FUCKING SUCKS.
*ahem* Thanks for listening.
Jim's not being very eloquent. I'm the writer - he's the idea man. Let me see if I can untangle this in 25 words or less.
Jim's parents divorced in fission-fashion as he was entering high school. Shared custody was not invented back then; his father got full custody. And he soon remarried another divorcee with three children of her own. Jim has an older brother and a younger one.
While nobody has reported abuse before the divorce, it's rare that I hear of any dispute with their father that settled without someone being punched in the face.
Jim petitioned for a change in custody less than two years after the divorce, based on abuse - and got it.
He took his younger brother with him, who was about 10 or eleven at the time. Jim was 16. His older brother Chris, had left home long before that - we learned only a couple of years ago that Chris had confronted his father over how he was treating them - and Chris said he was punched in the face and that was why he left.
Jim has a huge temper; so do I - it's something we have in common. We have the raging tempers of children who were abused or neglected. Both of us have had lots of retraining and it shows. Jim still has work to do.
Chris never acknowledged that anything was out of the ordinary. Dealing with him is just like dealing with his father - if I can convince you of it, that's the truth. If you don't agree with me, you don't know what you're talking about.
I had heard what he had planned for his daughter's adolescent years. No dating. Period. No unescorted social contacts. None. The family also attends a fundie church that believes the world is only about 6,000 years old - about the only common ground I can talk about religion with them is to go over how strange those Mormons are! (No shit.)
So, yeah.
trcabbage, it's everything you've been in court over - and the worst part is it's true in this case. Undeniably true. The worst part is that Chris is changing his story - NOT a good sign. I'm sure this will be a good learning experience for him - but it will be some liberal's fault, or some such.It is theirs to muddle through. They're in Chicago; we're in Los Angeles. Nobody called us to tell us they were in deep sauce. We're going to talk to younger brother tomorrow and see if he knows anything yet. That brother is of the mind he was taken from his father for no cause whatsoever - and that father can be very persuasive, no doubt about it.
Maybe this will convince him that I found an abused child at the bottom of a lotta rage when I got Jim into therapy three years ago.
And in truth, I only care about us. How does this impact Jim and I? I am even firmer in my resolve that Jim learn other ways to deal with frustration and anger - because all he knows is what he got at the hands of an abusive father. You don't express the fact that this makes you VERY angry by becoming violent, as opposed to not so angry doesn't warrant it.
You never get violent. Ever. You may never strike anyone. And I am quickly adding striking inanimate objects to that list. I've done it - he can do it.
You have to keep thinking, thinking, thinking - I sometimes feel my mind never shuts off.
What you learned was wrong. Don't do it.
But what do I substitute in its place?
We'll need a lot of early-child development, I think - if we were to have children. But I do know one thing - education works.
I was hoping Chris was not going to be just like his father. He's a lot like his father - just now, more than I'd like.
And I am so proud of that girl - I hope I get to tell her so.
BTW.
THIS FUCKING SUCKS.
*ahem* Thanks for listening.
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no subject
Date: 2003-10-09 10:46 pm (UTC)This didn't have to happen. And we can't do much except open the doors if the kids want to come stay with us.
And I would be in deep water if they did. What a challenge that would be -
How old are they all?
Date: 2003-10-10 07:23 am (UTC)But primarily, your role now should be to support these kids morally. When an abused child comes forward and tells his or her story, more often than not he or she will feel deeply divided about it: on one hand, the hurt is stopping, on the other hand the action destroys any semblance of family unity.
Given that, anyone in their corner, anyone that can honestly tell a kid "I am so proud of you, talking about your pain takes a lot of courage I'm not sure I would have in your shoes" makes the greatest difference.
I hope everything works out, somehow.
no subject
Date: 2003-10-10 07:47 am (UTC)From there, if they would allow it in Chicago, we can put our two cents in on who should take the kids should they decide to put them into foster care.
About the only family allowed contact with them right now is their grandmother - and we've asked that the kids have our number to contact us collect.
She's 15, he's almost 13 - and it doesn't help that their father didn't have custody of them for the first part of their lives. Their biological mother was teaching her daughter how to do blowjobs at 11; her son was of no use to her so he was left to his own devices. He's been in special ed since with psychotic episodes, and a ton of anti-psychotic medication. Oh, that's right - he was the one treated for an overdose of prozac and inderal. Prescribed over the phone.
Ya gotta love the Midwest.
Chris got custody of them in 1999, shortly after I met Jim - neither of them socialized and failing every subject in school. Neither of them able to read. In four years, the turnaround has been substantial - he's being mainstreamed into public school, she's an honor student. Which makes this all the more upsetting. When confronted with a teenager instead of a dependent child, he blew it.
I say taking them would be a challenge. Hoo boy. I'm not kidding.
Also, I say I got the good one out of that batch. THAT, I'm certain of.
:(
Date: 2003-10-10 08:52 am (UTC)It doesn't work that way with kids, that's for sure. Neglet or abuse a kid in any way during their formative years, and any gain they make thereafter is gonna have to be fought by tooth and nail. Because even slight physical abuse messes up the psyche, which in turn makes it so much harder to reach out to people for help: if it's so easy for people to hurt me, a child can reason, then why the hell would I want to reach out to anyone?
The thing that makes me sad, I guess, is that there are so many well intentioned parents out there that have themselves been psychologically undernourished as children, and so they truly believe they are trying to do better by their kids, but horribly fail because they're not aware of their own damage they carry along.
I feel bad for your brother in law as well as his kids: he probably believes he was providing the discipline and stability they needed after such neglect, but he erred because he doesn't know how to parent. How could he, with an abusive father and a mother who was probably the first target of said father? Rule by the fist is probably all he's ever known, so he thought it could work when everything else failed.
Whatever comes out of this, I hope the courts find time to set him on his way to healing too: he could really benefit from court mandated counseling to unravel his own baggage.