Non-Productive to Say the Least

TDM yesterday for the boys was a disaster. These are supposed to be "safe, no shaming, no blaming, blah blah blah" type of meetings. Yeah, my eye.

Even their grandma totally flip-flopped and blamed the boys behavior on their desperation to get away from here. Okaaaay. She allowed them to list "boys behave with mom and family" as a strength even though the boys have threatened to make false allegations against her husband until she told them they would never see her again if they did that and for a while they were not allowed to come for overnight visits because of their misbehavior, stealing, and lying there. Plus boys only have short unsupervised visits with mom. No day-to-day, no chores, no homework, no trying to get along with others. Yeah, I think they can behave that long. Good grief.

Their mom is tryng to make all sorts of allegations to get them moved including saying that the boys told her mom who told a friend who told her that all we feed the kids is cold hotdogs. WTH? That's a new one. "Cold Hotdog" is now our euphemism for "Utterly Ridiculous Complete Nonsense Lie" which happens quite often around here. At least her sources were direct and no hearsay was involved at all. Right. So we'll likely get investigated.

Their mom is adament that they be moved immediately because of the abusive environment here. So far she has on us: 1. We called the police on a destructive, violent kid. TRUE. 2. Ana took one of the kids by the arm and steered him up the stairs in order to keep him from running away out the front door. TRUE. Although their mom used the words "grab" and "drag". 3. We feed the boys only cold hotdogs. Whatever...FALSE. We hardly ever even feed them hotdogs at all unless we are having a cookout and then they are, well, cooked out. The boys often say that at least the food here is really good (despite no tv). Jeez. 4. We favor the other kids. FALSE. Sometimes, due to behaviors, some kids are excluded from some activities. More often, everyone is excluded due to the behavior of one or some. We have to stay home alot because we can't trust the kids to behave correctly. The boys often complain that the others have privileges that they don't. This is, in fact, the quite the opposite of fact since Squeaker, who is two years older than Drama Boy, is not allowed to do some of the things that they are because of her behavior. It's even in a social worker's report that one of their complaints is that they have to go to bed earlier than one of the other kids who happens to be SIX years older than the oldest boy.

The three social workers in the meeting were supportive of us, denied that any of the above would be considered abuse, confirmed that foster parents must call the police if a child is acting in an destructive, unsafe manner. Sadly, their mom would rather have them live in a group home in order to have increased visitation. Their grandma had complained about the boys treatment at their former group home saying "They had to fight for their food. They had to fight for everything. All their Christmas presents were stolen." but when the social worker told bio mom that they would likely go back there but that he would recommend one supervised visit a week she said "Already better."

The agency decided over the protestations of birth mom that the boys would remain here until the trial was concluded. Ana insisted on "no contact" with any of the birth family during this period.

And after the trial they want another TDM since no decision was made in this one. Sorry, there's not enough Peptol Bismol in the world to get me through another meeting with those two women.

Much more on this subject as we can bear to write it. The above barely touches it. This ridiculousness went on for nearly three hours. What a nightmare these people are.