This is what happens when you don't listen to your mom when she asks you to pick up your bike that you left behind dads truck. Aunt Nikki was here picking up the cousins from karate and when he wasn't looking, she hid it under the truck. Unfortunately Carson saw her do it from across the yard and he came running screaming. Kaden, came to Carson's rescue and helped him pull it out from under the truck.

 

Yes, I know that our birthparents and birth-family read this blog, but I am about to get serious here.

 

I am going to say this, I don't normally bad mouth our birth-families in a public way, but I am at my wits end and am ready to cut all contact period because it is getting exhausting managing these relationships and walking on egg shells. I am just done walking on egg shells. You need to know and understand what we are dealing with on a daily basis. No it is not all bad every day, but yes, things are coming out more and more recently that have us questioning information that we are being given by the kids. If we can't get the truth from the birth-family, then we are going to have to assume the kids are correct in their thinking and that certain things really happened to them.

So if I text or call you asking for information that is vital and very important to the kids well being, all I ask for is that you either give me the correct information or say you don't know. Don't ignore me or give me false information. If you give me information, you better have a way to back it up and show me the information because I need to get these kids the proper help and I can't do that, if I am getting false info. A couple of our kids are and were too little to remember details, all they can and are doing is acting out. They can't vocalize what happened to them, they can only act it out. And some of that acting out is not a good thing. We have been 3 years trying to figure out the entire story and trying to piece things together as the kids come to us and asks us if they can tell us something. We have never turned them away nor have we ever gotten mad at them for talking about it because that is what is going to help in their healing process. So yes, when I ask for information or am asking for you to verify what we have been told, all I ask for is that you either tell me the truth or say I don't know, or I am not sure. And for crying out loud don't ignore my texts or phone calls.

I wish I knew what triggered the kids, but we don't know. They could be playing outside just fine one minute and then the next they are in tears wanting to tell us stuff. My heart breaks for my kids every time something comes out.

I hate to say it like this but, it is the truth. You would think if you have failed your kids/grandkids many times in the past and have lost all rights to them, that you would want to do anything and everything in your power to work with us to better everyone's lives especially the kids. We understand that mistakes happen and we all have to pay the consequences for those mistakes, but when children are involved, we can't continue to make the same mistakes over and over because it is only hurting them.

 

Here is an article that I think is amazing. We do not keep secrets in our home especially if it has anything to do with stop touches. I think I have touched on this before and a stop touch does not have to be necessarily touching in inappropriate places, it can be a hug, tickling, wrestling, or in my case, I hate when the kids hang off of me and it does not feel good to me, so that is a stop touch. In a nutshell, if it does not feel good to that person, then it is a stop touch.

 

Why We Don’t Keep Secrets In Our House {Child Abuse Prevention}

By Melissa Meuzelaar on April 23, 2015 in Abuse Prevention & Awareness, Parenting

About a month ago, our family was having dinner with some friends at their house. I walked into the kitchen just as the other mom, while winking at me, handed my son a second cookie and whispered, “shhhh. It’s a secret. Don’t tell your mom.” To my delight {and surprise}, my son exclaimed, “Oooooh, but we don’t keep secrets in our house. We do surprises.” In that moment I thought, he gets it and he’s not afraid to say it, thank goodness.

You see, thanks to an excellent Sexual Abuse Prevention workshop that my husband and I attended, called Parenting Safe Children, we have a “no secrets” rule in our house. We have this rule because secrecy is a key ingredient to the sexual abuse of a child. In fact, sexual predators count on the fact that the child will keep a secret. Sometimes they even test the child by asking him to keep small, innocent secrets first to see if he will keep bigger ones later. So, when we teach our children that we don’t keep secrets, even about small and seemingly harmless things like a cookie, we are also instilling in them that they don’t have to keep big and unsafe secrets, like that of someone touching them inappropriately.

This other mom, the one who asked my son to keep the secret, is a friend of mine and I know that she meant no harm by it at all. Nonetheless, the interaction created a great opportunity for me to share with her about our Body Safety Rules {which we also adapted from the workshop}, one of which is that we don’t keep secrets. I shared with her that we have “surprises” instead of secrets because surprises are something that you keep quiet about temporarily; then you share the surprise and people are happy. But secrets are meant to be kept quiet forever and they’re often to protect something that would make people unhappy.

My friend asked me more about the Body Safety Rules – what they are, why we have them, where we keep them, how I talk about them with my kids – and I began to explain that we have Body Safety Rules in effort to keep our kids safe from sexual abuse, to empower our kids, and to communicate to others that our kids are off limits. I told her that we keep the rules posted front and center in our kitchen; that we went over each rule with our kids when we first made the sign and that we discuss them regularly as situations arise. For example, when I’m trying to get a moment of peace, err go to the bathroom by myself and one of them comes barging in, I remind them that because we’re the bosses of our own bodies, we’re allowed to have privacy when using the toilet. And {for the love} Mommy would like some privacy while going to the bathroom. Or when we go to the pediatrician, I remind them, “no one is allowed to touch your private parts {which we call by their correct name}, but because the doctor is checking to make sure you are healthy, he needs to check your whole body, including your private parts and because Mommy is here, it is ok.” We talk about the Body Safety Rules in the context of different every day situations and we also sometimes play “what if” scenarios, like “what would you do if you were playing at someone’s house and they asked you to take your clothes off?” My kids would likely respond, “I would tell them that we play with our clothes on.”

When a child knows his body safety rules and feels empowered to say no to inappropriate touch and to keeping secrets, it communicates to a potential predator that the child is off limits. And when friends or child care providers see the Body Safety Rules hanging in our kitchen, it’s obvious to them that sexual abuse prevention is on our radar. A conversation is usually quick to follow, sometimes it’s comfortable and other times it’s just plain awkward. But I simply have to ask myself, am I willing to have a moment of awkwardness with someone in order to have my child’s back and keep him safe? The answer is always, without a doubt, Yes.
 

On to other news...

We are getting so close to closing on the sale of our current home and the purchase of the new home. Our loan officer called this morning saying that there was a new inquiry on our credit report that happened this past Friday. We have been extremely careful not the put anything on our credit card or even purchase any big ticketed item on credit. We have been paying cash for everything because we do not want to ruin our chances of getting into our new home. Needless to say, I was very angry when I heard this news. Don't worry, it was easily fixed by me writing a letter explaining that we do not currently have any new debt with this company nor did we give our permission for them to run our credit.

 

So here is my little public service announcement for the evening...

 

Do not ever deal with convenient loan. We have not had any transactions with them since 2008. Well apparently they are allowed to randomly pull your credit without your knowledge even if you do not currently have an account with them. Thank goodness we have an awesome loan officer that caught it and we were able to take care of it quickly.