Disturbing Decisions

The best help is sometimes helping them down. That's what I hear anyway. I watch our daughter, 19, 7 months pregnant--homeless until recently. She is still hanging with some of the group that will take her down again. She is not prepared for the baby. Smoking, not taking care of herself, not making the responsible decisions and actions she needs to in order to prepare either to be a mom or to give Taylor (her baby girl) up for adoption. We aren't equipped to handle a newborn any longer...have spent many painful, frustrating years raising Amelia and are worn out. We had her living with us briefly and it was hellish--same as the past several years with her running away, drug use, promiscuous behavior and more damaging, the continuous flow of lies that keep coming as long as her mouth is moving. She lies about things that don't even matter. It's sick. And sad.

When I found out that my sister was 8 months pregnant at 30 and living in her car, I felt that it was my responsibility since our parents were dead to try to take care of her. Our mother had passed away and she had been her chief enabler since Becki was 16. When Mom had died, I vowed NOT to follow that pattern and then when there was a baby involved, I felt that it was necessary to try to provide some different guidance instead of just handing things to her. I had her make some phone calls to the welfare offices. In a few days, she had an apartment. When Amelia was born, I was there in the delivery room and Becki had the nurse hand her to me---she didn't even want to hold her. That spoke volumes. I ended up keeping my nose in her life until I could not tolerate it any longer and called Children's Services on her. Over a year's time, they watched her actions and monitoring her. One night in June 2004, Becki came to pick up Amelia after I'd had her for the weekend. She was drunk. I wouldn't let Amelia go with her. Becki finally said that she was moving to Kentucky with someone who I knew had been in prison for molesting a 6-year old boy. She wanted us to keep Amelia. She was taking Raymond, Amelia's half brother with her--she couldn't take both of them. Meaning the man didn't like little girls. I took Amelia and turned Becki in to Children's Services; they removed Raymond too. He ended up in foster care since our house wasn't big enough. She never went to Kentucky with that guy since her "lure" was taken from her.