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nuentoter
conduit



Registered: 09/17/08
Posts: 2,721
Last seen: 7 years, 21 days
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Morality & stoicism
#23693025 - 09/30/16 05:36 AM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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OK so I have had shitty neighbors since I moved 2 years ago. The wife and I have known our neighbor for almost a decade. She was cool to hang with and a good friend. Was. Over the past 4 years he drug use has become the main theme of her days. She has an eleven year old son who is actually a pretty cool kid, he comes over and plays Minecraft with me or my son when his mom sleeps through the afternoon sometime.
I have had a problem the past 2-3 months though. She has had access to fentanyl patches for $100 a pop. She also smoke weed like she fiends for it. For the past few months her son has come over to ask for food the week before they get their foodstamps. At first I'd give him some package of deer meat or frozen rabbit and some canned veggies or something else that was basically free to us and good for you. Last month this happened again but instead I told him if he was hungry he could eat supper/lunch with us. I fed this kid for 8 days, 1 meal a day. Yesterday we went for a ride to another town to run some errands and our neighbor asked us to stop by Mr. Dealers house for her cuz he had something of hers. We were stopping in there anyway(guy sells only weed) and he hands me her fucking foodstamps card and an eighth. She's been getting fucking weed @ 50¢/$1. Last night here son came over to see if we could feed him. I apologized and told him not tonight, that I was very sorry, and he should ask his mom why they got no food.
My wife did not like me turning him away. I feel like I had to though, our neighbor has had no negative side effects from blowing her food money on getting fucked up. She's been relying on its to feed her kid and I refuse to perpetuate it.
My wife is not happy about this, understandably.
I don't know what to do, I don't want to turn this kid away but I can't keep this cycle up.
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The geometry of us is no chance. We are antennae, we are tuning forks, we are receiver and transmitters of all energy. We are more than we know. - @entheolove "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" - Georgia O'Keefe I think the word is vagina
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DividedQuantum
Outer Head


Registered: 12/06/13
Posts: 9,819
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Re: Morality & stoicism [Re: nuentoter]
#23693603 - 09/30/16 10:00 AM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Wow, that's an unfortunate situation. I wish I had advice, but I'd like to offer my sympathy anyway. Good luck.
-------------------- Vi Veri Universum Vivus Vici
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
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Re: Morality & stoicism [Re: nuentoter]
#23695621 - 09/30/16 09:52 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Feeding the child is not your personal or legal responsibility, but your civic responsibility, and the compassionate thing is to report the situation to Child Protective Services. As a matter of fact, if it comes out to authorities that you are aware of this sad situation and did not reported it, you might be cited with 'callous indifference' or some trumped up charge. You can phone it in anonymously. The kid is a victim of parental neglect due to his mother's irresponsibility and criminal neglect. I applaud you in feeding the boy, but at the same time you are enabling the mother to continue in her pathological behaviors. The boy will hopefully be placed with relatives (first choice by CPS), or in state custody until his mother can dry out (and/or do jail time) and assume her legal parenting responsibilities. Going into foster care is not a good thing, but neither is starving and being traumatized regularly by a sick and dysfunctional mother. Of course the mother doesn't evidence "negative side effects from blowing her food money on getting fucked up," she's in the throes of profound addiction! If someone doesn't intervene, and she dies of an O.D., the boy is going to have to experience that trauma PLUS the trauma of being placed in foster care. I had to take this kind of responsibility for some 27 years in my former profession as crisis intervention specialist in the nation's 4th largest school system, so I'm passing this bit of experience to you.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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nuentoter
conduit



Registered: 09/17/08
Posts: 2,721
Last seen: 7 years, 21 days
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I didn't go any further into it but my wife and I are the sponsor family for the boy since he's been 3, when his father (a multi offence felon for drug charges) topo a handful of Ambien and went for a short ride into a phone pole. That's when Mon and dad split up. We were interviewed by dhhs and approved then, in case something happened to mom and dad, kid becomes ours rather than foster.
I do not WANT to call child protective services, does not mean I won't though. It's just a hard fucking call, I'm too "in" it to think objectively i fear.
She's a good person, just fucked up. I don't want to wield someone else's future in my hands with a phone call, but I'm pushed into this position. Fuck.
The wife decided if there is another issue she will go talk to them calmly about what the options going forward are if she doesn't straighten herself out. I am not going for that conversation, my wife can maintain/contain herself much better than I can. I just want to fucking yell and belittle her for her disgusting behavior. But I won't. It will accomplish nothing besides possibly depressing her, which will feed the addiction in afraid.
Thank you Markos my friend. I DO NOT know how people can do this stuff for a living like did and go home and sleep, or not be terminally depressed from the knowledge that these things happen much too often. It eats at me.
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The geometry of us is no chance. We are antennae, we are tuning forks, we are receiver and transmitters of all energy. We are more than we know. - @entheolove "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" - Georgia O'Keefe I think the word is vagina
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Re: Morality & stoicism [Re: nuentoter]
#23696547 - 10/01/16 08:47 AM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Why are women addicts who mistreat their kids somehow still "good people"? Seems women usually get an out on their bad habits, where as guys are held to much higher standards. Women virtually always benefit from family court, and the guys lose their asses.
Anyway, OP, I'd offer to adopt this kid. Your house is better and mom can come over to visit when she's not shit faced. CPS? I wouldn't call them on my worst enemy. There may be other solutions. A slap in the face as in I want to take your kid by adoption may be enough, versus the actual authorities coming by and taking them away to somebody elses house. Also mom finds out you ratted her out you'll never see the kid again anyway, mom will make sure of that.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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MarkostheGnostic
Elder



Registered: 12/09/99
Posts: 14,279
Loc: South Florida
Last seen: 3 years, 3 days
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Re: Morality & stoicism [Re: nuentoter]
#23697624 - 10/01/16 04:08 PM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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I feel ya nuentoter. I recently called DCF for my first private client (14 year old, 79 lb. girl) who was brought to me to treat diagnosed Anorexia nervosa. She DID begin to eat bread after seeing me which was huge, but then she called me in crisis after mom beat her up for not gaining weight quickly enough. I HAD to call the Department of Child and Family Services. It was my legal responsibility as a professional, and I had to identify myself. What if her non-green carded mom killed her and she fled to Eastern Europe? When the girl then disclosed to me that she had not kept her promise even after 24 hours and was vomiting her food up, I had to recuse myself from treating her and refer the family to a list of eating disorder programs. I betrayed the child's trust but I didn't want her to die and it would've been irresponsible of me to continue treating her with the tools of MY trade which were not being effective. I felt badly, but my feelings are irrelevant. What matters is that the girl not die of a heart attack from an electrolyte imbalance and get treated by specialists (which I announced that I was not, as I didn't want to misrepresent myself).
One has to protect the endangered child as well as protect oneself. I have intervened in several instances of incestuous rape, in sexual torture, in physical abuse including forcing kids to butcher live animals. Much of the damage had already been done, but once I became aware of it I HAD to act, and the discontinuance of continued suffering helped me to sleep at night. NOT doing whatever I could to intervene would've been much much worse on me, on every level. Looking back I realize I overlooked things when I was a newbie, and even when it was out of my hands, things were sometimes terribly mishandled by professionals or semi-professionals who didn't maintain ethical standards. Shit happens and sometimes there isn't a damn thing one can do to prevent it.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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nuentoter
conduit



Registered: 09/17/08
Posts: 2,721
Last seen: 7 years, 21 days
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Quote:
LunarEclipse said: Why are women addicts who mistreat their kids somehow still "good people"? Seems women usually get an out on their bad habits, where as guys are held to much higher standards. Women virtually always benefit from family court, and the guys lose their asses.
Anyway, OP, I'd offer to adopt this kid. Your house is better and mom can come over to visit when she's not shit faced. CPS? I wouldn't call them on my worst enemy. There may be other solutions. A slap in the face as in I want to take your kid by adoption may be enough, versus the actual authorities coming by and taking them away to somebody elses house. Also mom finds out you ratted her out you'll never see the kid again anyway, mom will make sure of that.
Being a good person in this scenario has nothing to do with being male or female. It has to do with the fact that she actually cares for her son and interacts and tries to raise him well. She's done a pretty fucking good until lately. She has faults that are consuming her and now, starting to consume her family but she is not a piece of shit, she just doing what she feels she needs to do stay get by. A lot of numbing unfortunately. Besides for the food thing, she is not neglectful in any way, which is by no way a reasoning or excuse or anything. She actually started painkillers on a perfectly legal basis, and that following her perscription, became quite addicted. When her hips got better and the pills stopped, she just started getting e every once in awhile to be able to do housework without aches and pains. All downhill from there.
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The geometry of us is no chance. We are antennae, we are tuning forks, we are receiver and transmitters of all energy. We are more than we know. - @entheolove "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" - Georgia O'Keefe I think the word is vagina
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LunarEclipse
Enlil's Official Story


Registered: 10/31/04
Posts: 21,407
Loc: Building 7
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Re: Morality & stoicism [Re: nuentoter]
#23699239 - 10/02/16 06:21 AM (7 years, 3 months ago) |
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Quote:
nuentoter said:
Quote:
LunarEclipse said: Why are women addicts who mistreat their kids somehow still "good people"? Seems women usually get an out on their bad habits, where as guys are held to much higher standards. Women virtually always benefit from family court, and the guys lose their asses.
Anyway, OP, I'd offer to adopt this kid. Your house is better and mom can come over to visit when she's not shit faced. CPS? I wouldn't call them on my worst enemy. There may be other solutions. A slap in the face as in I want to take your kid by adoption may be enough, versus the actual authorities coming by and taking them away to somebody elses house. Also mom finds out you ratted her out you'll never see the kid again anyway, mom will make sure of that.
Being a good person in this scenario has nothing to do with being male or female. It has to do with the fact that she actually cares for her son and interacts and tries to raise him well. She's done a pretty fucking good until lately. She has faults that are consuming her and now, starting to consume her family but she is not a piece of shit, she just doing what she feels she needs to do stay get by. A lot of numbing unfortunately. Besides for the food thing, she is not neglectful in any way, which is by no way a reasoning or excuse or anything. She actually started painkillers on a perfectly legal basis, and that following her perscription, became quite addicted. When her hips got better and the pills stopped, she just started getting e every once in awhile to be able to do housework without aches and pains. All downhill from there.
Look pal, you don't need to defend her to me. I don't really care about her, unfortunately. You, however, seem to feel the need to do something to change things, yet defend this woman at the same time. You sound confused. I'd suggest you back off of this situation and let the cards fall where they may, instead of being this codependent person just adding confusion to an already bad situation. Don't get in the middle of it if you don't have the spine to actually do something constructive.
-------------------- Anxiety is what you make it.
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nuentoter
conduit



Registered: 09/17/08
Posts: 2,721
Last seen: 7 years, 21 days
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I am confused and I don't have the choice to not be involved. These types of things are not anywhere close to my normal life decisions. I don't have the guts for this shit, it literally turns my fucking stomach.
My wife went over yesterday and talked to them and made a deal of sorts. They have one week to straighten their shit out. If they can't at least maintain the basic needs of her kid then she told them that they will come over and call cps on themselves. Don't ask me how the fuck she convinced them to agree but I suspect guilt and lots of crying happened.
We'll see what happens I guess. I wish this all would just pass me by.
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The geometry of us is no chance. We are antennae, we are tuning forks, we are receiver and transmitters of all energy. We are more than we know. - @entheolove "I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for" - Georgia O'Keefe I think the word is vagina
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