Thank you for sharing your touching story. I am glad your son survived and it sounds like he is doing ok.
However, I have to disagree with the theory the social worker put forth to you. While I agree it is detrimental for a child to be abandoned by a parent, I have to assert that it is even MORE detrimental to force a relationship with a parent that is based on physical and mental cruelty. He thought she didn't love him because she walked away. Would he have felt she loved him more if he continued his childhood with an abusive mother? At least he did not have to live his whole childhood in that abusive lifestyle, only to pass it on to another generation. Thank goodness he had you and his father to show him a better way.
I think sometimes that needle we give our kids with our eyes closed can represent excising an evil person out of their life as well. Just because a person can reproduce does not mean that person has the capacity or will to be a good parent. I do not think children should bear the brunt of bad parenting just because the latest social services theory says it is best.
Again, thank you for sharing.
Keep in mind that this took place over 30 years ago, so it's hardly a new theory.
It wasn't a case of just turning him over to his mother to do with as she pleased. She got something like 12 hours a week (my husband still has all the legal papers but they are up in the attic now) under extremely close supervision.
There was a social worker sitting right in the room with mother and son for the duration of every single visit. That person observed everything his mother said and did with him and had the authority to stop her and even remove her from the building if they thought his mother was doing anything wrong.
If the standard of care is "absolutely risk free" then no one would be allowed to put their child in their car to take them anywhere. The conditions of her visitation were set up to be as protective of my stepson as possible while still allowing contact.
My point (and I do have one!) is that supervised visitation can be arranged to benefit the child while minimizing the risks to a reasonable level, similar to or less than the normal sorts of risks children are exposed to every day.
Off topic but part of the rest of the story: my stepson was diagnosed with traumatic brain injury last summer, which is something his father has been suspecting for over 30 years. He'd gotten all sorts of testing as a baby and child which showed nothing but apparently medicine has moved forward quite a bit since then.
He has several deficits in reflexes, which really startled both his father and me. He was never an athlete or anything like that but he never seemed unusually clumsy or anything like that. Plus he has problems processing written information; it isn't dyslexia or dysgraphia but something different. He does much better with spoken information.
If only we'd known that when he was younger! Of course, back then, it would only have gotten him placed in the classes for the developmentally delayed (what few of them there were back then).
It makes more sense of his legal problems as an older teen and young adult; the neurologist who diagnosed him told him that emotional regulation is often one of the results of traumatic brain injury.
I feel really guilty now for every time I scoffed (to my husband, never to my stepson) whenever my stepson would say "I just did it and I don't know why." I thought he was evading responsibility for his actions. Now I realize that he was just telling the truth, he really didn't know why he did certain things.
I wish I could kick myself for every time I thought "you little weasel." I'm not physically capable of doing so and what tangible good would it do? My only comfort is that I never said it to my stepson directly although I think he probably picked up on my emotions.
Damn, damn, damn.
