# Granddaughter removed from mother - needs emotional support



## Bellavista (May 29, 2012)

On Good Friday this year, my 8 year old granddaughter had to be removed from the care of her mother. The child was very neglected, rarely went to school and was roaming around the town where they lived filthy dirty and usually hungry. Her mother had taken on a new boyfriend who was an alcoholic drug abuser. He did not work. The mother is also a hoarder who was being kicked out of her rental property for filling it with animals, literally. She had chickens, guinea pigs, dogs and cats in the house and goats under the house. We believe she also has a mental illness because she was convinced people were breaking into her house and stealing her food.

The child , A, came to live with her father, our son. A seemed fine emotionally, although very immature for her age in all aspects. She comes to our house after school most days and I drop her back to her dad's after homework, bath and dinner in the evenings. She spends most of the weekend with us, unless we have something on. This is largely due to the fact that we have a swimming pool and she loves swimming. The mother did not make any effort to contact A at first, she was living rough in her car with 3 dogs and 2 cats. If A's father did not call the mother for A to talk to her, there would have been no contact for weeks.

A has been going to school each day, she goes to a special ed programme 3 days a week because she is way behind in education and she has been improving in leaps and bounds.

Recently, the mother has taken to driving here randomly and hanging around my son's place, taking A out. We have no idea what the mother is telling her during these times, however, since the last visit, A has been moody and withdrawn, not wanting to play with other kids in the park behind our house or socialise at all. We have just received an email from her school teacher saying she is crying at school and running out of the classroom.

Has anybody has experience with kids who have been taken off their mums and how we can help her to cope? Sending her back to her mother is not really an option, she is still living in her car and is getting progressively more paranoid, not to mention dirty.


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## SecondTime'Round (Jan 15, 2015)

I'd say A is in serious need of counseling.


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## NextTimeAround (Dec 15, 2011)

Your predicament breaks my heart. I hope that you and your son get full custody and she can only have supervised visits.


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## Bellavista (May 29, 2012)

SecondTime'Round said:


> I'd say A is in serious need of counseling.


Yes, she definitely does. I think she is having great conflict with her feeling for her mother. We don't say anything bad about her mother to her, when she asks our son why Mummy does some of the things she does he tells her that Mummy's brain does not work like it should.

A occasionally asks me if it is ok to still love Mummy and I tell her that of course it is, she should always love her Mummy.

The problem is, Mummy put a load of crap on this child. Recently my son moved to a bigger place, when he took her in he was living in a tiny apartment, sharing with a friend. While I was taking them around to look at places (neither son nor friend drive), A told him that she would try to keep her room clean so that they would not get kicked out. Her mother has been kicked out of three rentals because she fills them with animals, and she had been telling A that it was her fault they were being kicked out. From the age of 4 she has been quietly bearing this burden The woman has never taken responsibility for anything, everything is someone else's fault. Who knows what else she has blamed A for.


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## SecondTime'Round (Jan 15, 2015)

Bellavista said:


> Yes, she definitely does. I think she is having great conflict with her feeling for her mother. We don't say anything bad about her mother to her, when she asks our son why Mummy does some of the things she does he tells her that Mummy's brain does not work like it should.
> 
> A occasionally asks me if it is ok to still love Mummy and I tell her that of course it is, she should always love her Mummy.
> 
> The problem is, Mummy put a load of crap on this child. Recently my son moved to a bigger place, when he took her in he was living in a tiny apartment, sharing with a friend. While I was taking them around to look at places (neither son nor friend drive), A told him that she would try to keep her room clean so that they would not get kicked out. Her mother has been kicked out of three rentals because she fills them with animals, and she had been telling A that it was her fault they were being kicked out. From the age of 4 she has been quietly bearing this burden The woman has never taken responsibility for anything, everything is someone else's fault. Who knows what else she has blamed A for.


Oh this breaks my heart . Thank God she has you and your son!!


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## Mr. Nail (Apr 26, 2011)

The pattern looks bad. You are giving her love acceptance, and a safe place with stimulation. That is great and the best you can give. Counseling is the next need. Something is happening and it's going to take a professional to get to the bottom of it.


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## Bellavista (May 29, 2012)

NextTimeAround said:


> Your predicament breaks my heart. I hope that you and your son get full custody and she can only have supervised visits.


It takes ages for the court custody process to happen. Family services have registered that she is living with her father now. They had been investigating the mother for neglecting the child (only took them a year of us making reports to them to do this), so if the mother takes off with her, FS will be able to involve the police to bring her back.

It is heartbreaking, we were helpless to do anything before the mother agreed to hand her over to her father. Our son was told that although there was no formal custody agreement, if he went and just took the child it would look very bad when it does eventually go to court. All we could do during this time was drive the 3 hours to where she was living and visit often, take her during the holidays, and our son was in contact with the school there. He was told by one of the teachers that she was the most neglected child in the town. When she turned up to school the teacher had to wash her and brush her hair, the school tuckshop would feed her and sometimes the teacher would have to give her food before she could do her lessons.

I know that she will have emotional issues, at some stage she will realise that her mother has screwed her over big time. One of our sons is getting married to a lovely girl who had a mother who treated her badly due to mental illness. Her mother died when she was young, leaving her to be brought up by her father. She has said she will be willing to chat with A and help to understand the feelings she has and how to develop helpful coping skills. It seems that time might have come sooner than we thought.


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