Tough Love is Tough

by silentlyheardonce

Mother: A task we the human species take on willing and sometime not so.

Some species eat their young at birth or pop them out and leave them to fend for themselves. They call us the intelligent species. Motherhood a job we will do until we are buried in the grave.

Babies don’t come with a manual. At best, if you’re lucky you get a plastic diaper baby bag with a few diapers, formula and some coupons. They thrust that child in your arms and hurl your ass out the hospital. Eventually you figure out what each cry means and learn to satisfy their needs. You start to think, after this baby learns to sleep all night, walk, talk and go off to school it will be easier.

So Eve wanted to bite that apple. The punishment is extended way past labor. Hell that was the easy part. A mother will suffer the pains of childbirth to until her dying day. Unless you are blessed to develop Alzheimer’s.

Back to that sweet baby who develops his/her own personality. They start to pull away from and you push them. They become strangers you don’t recognize. But continue to love them even as they fight you. Sometimes that love makes you blind. You end up smothering them, making mistake after mistake. Allowing them to wrap you around their fingers.

If the success of your children determines your success as a mother, I failed. Yes I wallowing in self-pity today. My oldest had to take the long route to get to where I tried to get him to go twenty-five years ago. My second oldest works hard, has a job she loves but has no respect for me or my opinions. It seems she only wants me around to be a grandmother to her children. I need to really shut up and mind my business.

My youngest continues remind me that I’m a failure as a mother. When she was asked what she wanted to be when she grows up. Her response was, “a psycho manic”. Which is what she became. Metaphorically not literally I pray. She is struggling through life and trying to use her son to pay for her ticket to easy street.

I tried to help by taking her son in and giving him the attention, the stability and love he needs.
His mother sees me as the enemy for trying to get the therapy her son so desperately needs.

My g-son will tell you in a minute that he doesn’t know how to control his anger. He told me, just as his mother use to tell me, he wants to be a psycho. Is that a normal aspiration for a child? I don’t think he needs medication, I think he needs to get control of his feelings. I think he needs to have his self-esteem built up.

I took my daughter to court. I’ve endured her threats of taking him far away. She even told her son to disrespect me and not to listen. She told her son he was going to go to foster care and that it is my fault.

My daughter has wished me dead. Why because I want to help raise her son. If I have custody of her son, she can’t use him to get housing and financial assistance. If that is not a failure as a mother I don’t know what is.

On Saturday my grandson’s father picked him and his clothes up and took g-son to his house. Later that day G-son’s dad texts that my daughter told him that she and I worked this out.

Yesterday we went to court and my daughter is trying to manipulated the Agency for Children Services (ACS). She told me that her son said I was touching him inappropriately. She’s telling the court that I wouldn’t let her see her son or let him call her.

When the reality is she hardly ever called him back when she promised to. She told her son she rather him go in foster care then to be with me. She told him he is going into foster care.

I don’t want to hurt my grandson anymore then he is. I don’t want him to go the next few years without therapy I don’t want him to be the next troubled child to end his life in a blaze of tragedy leading the way.
I’m losing the fight. I’m afraid and feel lost today.

As I was typing this the ACS investigator called. She said that she will continue to monitor my grandson. She says she’s aware that my daughter is manipulative. However her job is to investigate not to make recommendations. There is more to the case that I’m not going to share.

I’m happy that my g-son is getting to spend time with his dad. It would be idea. I would love for him to have both his parents in his life raising him with love and putting his interest first.

But as it stands, g-son’s dad won’t fart unless g-son’s mom says it okay. Dad is still whipped. Mom is happy as long as she has someone to watch her son and she gets to collect the benefits. She is stressed because I’m interrupting her program.

We exercise tough love when our family is strung out on drugs. But what about family that continues to take advantage of family and causes pain, suffering and damage to their children. My prayer is that my youngest child is scared straight to become educated and secure employment. She is almost thirty years old. It’s not about her it’s about g-son who needs to feel safe and secure. I hope that I can be that safe island in the rough ocean for him. I love him so very much. I also love his mother very much.