HippieGirl
Member
What is the name of your state? California
My youngest daughter has a history of mental illness (PTSD, DP/DR) including running away, alcohol issues and psych ward hospitalizations and one serious su*cide attempt. She's been in therapy since age 12. She is now 16.
About a year and a half ago, at age 14, she ran away for 3 days. There wasn't a trace of her. We had detectives in our home and on the street looking for her, her missing posts on social media had tens of thousands of shares, our family went out looking for her and posting flyers. Just thinking back makes me nauseous. On the 3rd night that she was gone, her phone turned on and the police pinged it and brought her home. She refused to tell anyone, including the police, where she had been.
A while later I found out she was at a boy's house. He was 17. She wanted to see him so badly. She threatened to kill herself or run away for good again if I didn't let her see him. She said this time we would never see her again. Out of fear, I let her see him with supervision.
She was on birth control (after she started running away I put her on it because I didn't know what she was doing when she left.) At the end of her depo provera cycle in November of 2019, we found out she was pregnant. By the same boy she had been seeing. By this time he had turned 18.
Their relationship is awful. It seems the more I keep her away the more they want to be together. He is verbally abusive and she shared with me that he had held her down on several occasions when she wanted to leave his house. He was also using psychedelics and smoking a lot of pot and just generally not making good choices.
When she got pregnant she realized he wasn't doing good things with his life and she left him.
My daughter absolutely bloomed during pregnancy. She caught up in school and started college classes. I hadn't seen her look so happy since she was 10 or 11.
She had the baby c-section. It was traumatizing and the baby was born with respiratory failure. The baby spent 5 days in the NICU. My daughter struggled with postpartum depression and a lack of attachment to the baby.
My daughter asked me to raise the baby. She met with the boy and told him her plan
He got angry and said either his mom could raise the baby or they would put the baby up for adoption. His mom has a long history of drug addiction, and my daughter didn't want to put the baby up for adoption.
I raised the baby in our home with my daughter playing a supportive caregiver role, fighting her postpartum, keeping up with school and exclusively pumping breastmilk for her baby over 4 months. From the time of birth at the end of July until shortly after Thanksgiving. I tried as much as I could to encourage my daughter to be a mama.
In that time, Dad saw the baby a handful of times-always supervised in our home. On one visit he yelled at the baby because she wouldn't stop crying. The baby was still a newborn at that point. He and my daughter argued over it and he didn't see the baby again for over 3 months. She begged him to be a dad and he wasn't interested.
Somehow in the course of their co-parenting chats, she decided she wanted to work things out with him. She took a beautiful new interest in her baby as HER baby, and not as the child she had felt so detached from. She started making plans for their future as a family. Note that this young man is 19 years old now. She is 16.
He has angry outbursts and yells at her. He has texted her several times saying he would kill himself when they argued.
Over the last several months he has told her on several occasions that he would kill himself...when they argue he threatens to kill himself. (This is all over the phone.)
On one occasion he told her he had a rope hanging from his ceiling fan. He texted her from a fake Instagram account named "illreallydoit" that had an icon of a man with a noose around his neck. We called 911 to do a health and welfare check. Occasion number 2 we were on the road to visit my father 6 hours away when the young man's mom calls me and asks if I've seen her son. She explains that he took a bunch of pills and then ran away when she called 911. (late September) On Halloween daughter and the young man went to a party with some other kids. The young man was talking so badly to my daughter that another boy at the party beat him up. A couple of weeks later young man texted my daughter "this is my last text. I overdosed on Xanax and hoped to talk to you before I die." Then he passed out and woke up the next day, according to his brother. (This was mid-November. )
My daughter initially told me that the baby's Dad (in previous texts referred to as young man) would have supervised visits until he completed therapy, anger management and parenting classes. They were going to take the parenting classes together to help learn how to coparent in a healthy manner. She said they both agreed upon this supervised visitation and then they would move to unsupervised after he had gotten some help.
Well now my daughter is all enamored that the baby's dad is talking to her and paying attention to her again. She has started just having him pick up the baby and take the baby alone for visits. Tonight she has the baby spending the night at Dad's house.
Sometimes the visits appear to be used to manipulate me. I tell her she can't see the baby's dad so she invites him to "visit the baby." When I object she says "You have to let him visit the baby, he's her dad. " The other day she got mad at me and didn't want me to be around the baby, so he offered to pick the baby up so I couldn't see the baby all day.
Today my daughter was on the phone with baby's Dad and I told her she needed to get off the phone so I could talk to her about this. Baby's Dad was on speaker phone and loudly asserted to my daughter "It's ok baby, you don't have to get off the phone." On Christmas she was told she couldn't go to their house with the baby because it was an abusive environment (baby's paternal grandfather has said some really awful stuff to my daughter) and the baby's dad snuck her and the baby out anyways, with the help of his family. (Daughter said she was going somewhere else and baby's dad's family snuck her to their house when they knew she wasn't supposed to be there. Baby's Dad is increasingly mouthy towards me during phone calls with my daughter when he knows he's on speaker and I can hear him. The blatant disrespect for me as a parent shown by my daughter, baby's Dad and his family is becoming frustrating.
1) First and foremost, I'm concerned for the baby's safety. My daughter is in therapy and I really think Dad should be doing therapy, anger management and both Mom and Dad should do the parenting classes. Preferably before Dad has any more unsupervised visits.
2) The manipulation behind some of the visits is getting ridiculous. It's not fair to the baby to have my daughter snatch her out of my arms and tell me I can't see her for the day and then Dad comes to pick baby up. It's even more confusing for baby as I have been her primary caregiver for many months and she is just getting used to mama being primary.
3) I am not interested in trying to take guardianship or custody. I am concerned that my 16 year old daughter is pretty much responsible for deciding how much parenting time baby's Dad has right now, and how "fit" he is to visit and have overnights. She's clearly head over heels for him and her newfound hope in their relationship is driving some of her decisions. I worry that she is not taking the baby's safety as seriously as she was before.
I want a judge to make a fair decision on parenting time, solid dates and times for visitation, etc. so that it is not being used by these teens to manipulate.
Do I have any options here? Daughter says she refuses to file on behalf of herself because she "likes the way it's being handled now." Can I file on her behalf as she is a minor? None of this is fair to the baby.
Please understand that every decision I've made over this last year and a half has been what I thought I should do to keep my daughter safe. I see that I could have done things differently. I feel like I've let my daughter call the shots this whole time. I'm trying to stop that and also help the baby not get caught in the middle by having clear parenting time established.
I'm sorry this is so long.
My youngest daughter has a history of mental illness (PTSD, DP/DR) including running away, alcohol issues and psych ward hospitalizations and one serious su*cide attempt. She's been in therapy since age 12. She is now 16.
About a year and a half ago, at age 14, she ran away for 3 days. There wasn't a trace of her. We had detectives in our home and on the street looking for her, her missing posts on social media had tens of thousands of shares, our family went out looking for her and posting flyers. Just thinking back makes me nauseous. On the 3rd night that she was gone, her phone turned on and the police pinged it and brought her home. She refused to tell anyone, including the police, where she had been.
A while later I found out she was at a boy's house. He was 17. She wanted to see him so badly. She threatened to kill herself or run away for good again if I didn't let her see him. She said this time we would never see her again. Out of fear, I let her see him with supervision.
She was on birth control (after she started running away I put her on it because I didn't know what she was doing when she left.) At the end of her depo provera cycle in November of 2019, we found out she was pregnant. By the same boy she had been seeing. By this time he had turned 18.
Their relationship is awful. It seems the more I keep her away the more they want to be together. He is verbally abusive and she shared with me that he had held her down on several occasions when she wanted to leave his house. He was also using psychedelics and smoking a lot of pot and just generally not making good choices.
When she got pregnant she realized he wasn't doing good things with his life and she left him.
My daughter absolutely bloomed during pregnancy. She caught up in school and started college classes. I hadn't seen her look so happy since she was 10 or 11.
She had the baby c-section. It was traumatizing and the baby was born with respiratory failure. The baby spent 5 days in the NICU. My daughter struggled with postpartum depression and a lack of attachment to the baby.
My daughter asked me to raise the baby. She met with the boy and told him her plan
He got angry and said either his mom could raise the baby or they would put the baby up for adoption. His mom has a long history of drug addiction, and my daughter didn't want to put the baby up for adoption.
I raised the baby in our home with my daughter playing a supportive caregiver role, fighting her postpartum, keeping up with school and exclusively pumping breastmilk for her baby over 4 months. From the time of birth at the end of July until shortly after Thanksgiving. I tried as much as I could to encourage my daughter to be a mama.
In that time, Dad saw the baby a handful of times-always supervised in our home. On one visit he yelled at the baby because she wouldn't stop crying. The baby was still a newborn at that point. He and my daughter argued over it and he didn't see the baby again for over 3 months. She begged him to be a dad and he wasn't interested.
Somehow in the course of their co-parenting chats, she decided she wanted to work things out with him. She took a beautiful new interest in her baby as HER baby, and not as the child she had felt so detached from. She started making plans for their future as a family. Note that this young man is 19 years old now. She is 16.
He has angry outbursts and yells at her. He has texted her several times saying he would kill himself when they argued.
Over the last several months he has told her on several occasions that he would kill himself...when they argue he threatens to kill himself. (This is all over the phone.)
On one occasion he told her he had a rope hanging from his ceiling fan. He texted her from a fake Instagram account named "illreallydoit" that had an icon of a man with a noose around his neck. We called 911 to do a health and welfare check. Occasion number 2 we were on the road to visit my father 6 hours away when the young man's mom calls me and asks if I've seen her son. She explains that he took a bunch of pills and then ran away when she called 911. (late September) On Halloween daughter and the young man went to a party with some other kids. The young man was talking so badly to my daughter that another boy at the party beat him up. A couple of weeks later young man texted my daughter "this is my last text. I overdosed on Xanax and hoped to talk to you before I die." Then he passed out and woke up the next day, according to his brother. (This was mid-November. )
My daughter initially told me that the baby's Dad (in previous texts referred to as young man) would have supervised visits until he completed therapy, anger management and parenting classes. They were going to take the parenting classes together to help learn how to coparent in a healthy manner. She said they both agreed upon this supervised visitation and then they would move to unsupervised after he had gotten some help.
Well now my daughter is all enamored that the baby's dad is talking to her and paying attention to her again. She has started just having him pick up the baby and take the baby alone for visits. Tonight she has the baby spending the night at Dad's house.
Sometimes the visits appear to be used to manipulate me. I tell her she can't see the baby's dad so she invites him to "visit the baby." When I object she says "You have to let him visit the baby, he's her dad. " The other day she got mad at me and didn't want me to be around the baby, so he offered to pick the baby up so I couldn't see the baby all day.
Today my daughter was on the phone with baby's Dad and I told her she needed to get off the phone so I could talk to her about this. Baby's Dad was on speaker phone and loudly asserted to my daughter "It's ok baby, you don't have to get off the phone." On Christmas she was told she couldn't go to their house with the baby because it was an abusive environment (baby's paternal grandfather has said some really awful stuff to my daughter) and the baby's dad snuck her and the baby out anyways, with the help of his family. (Daughter said she was going somewhere else and baby's dad's family snuck her to their house when they knew she wasn't supposed to be there. Baby's Dad is increasingly mouthy towards me during phone calls with my daughter when he knows he's on speaker and I can hear him. The blatant disrespect for me as a parent shown by my daughter, baby's Dad and his family is becoming frustrating.
1) First and foremost, I'm concerned for the baby's safety. My daughter is in therapy and I really think Dad should be doing therapy, anger management and both Mom and Dad should do the parenting classes. Preferably before Dad has any more unsupervised visits.
2) The manipulation behind some of the visits is getting ridiculous. It's not fair to the baby to have my daughter snatch her out of my arms and tell me I can't see her for the day and then Dad comes to pick baby up. It's even more confusing for baby as I have been her primary caregiver for many months and she is just getting used to mama being primary.
3) I am not interested in trying to take guardianship or custody. I am concerned that my 16 year old daughter is pretty much responsible for deciding how much parenting time baby's Dad has right now, and how "fit" he is to visit and have overnights. She's clearly head over heels for him and her newfound hope in their relationship is driving some of her decisions. I worry that she is not taking the baby's safety as seriously as she was before.
I want a judge to make a fair decision on parenting time, solid dates and times for visitation, etc. so that it is not being used by these teens to manipulate.
Do I have any options here? Daughter says she refuses to file on behalf of herself because she "likes the way it's being handled now." Can I file on her behalf as she is a minor? None of this is fair to the baby.
Please understand that every decision I've made over this last year and a half has been what I thought I should do to keep my daughter safe. I see that I could have done things differently. I feel like I've let my daughter call the shots this whole time. I'm trying to stop that and also help the baby not get caught in the middle by having clear parenting time established.
I'm sorry this is so long.
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