Good morning – this is meant to be a prerequisite to my “First 24 Hours” series. I hope others who are facing similar challenges find this useful & encouraging.
-Steve
As a parent, you think you are ready to face about anything. You’ve raised a large family, faced a business failure, battled mental health disorders, plus a number of things that you’ve long forgotten. You’re past your child bearing years, the oldest children are young adults. You feel like an old warhorse that’s ready to be put out to pasture.
Then BOOM! The bomb is dropped. And this won’t be the first one. Your daughter tells her mother of a conversation she had with her teacher at school that day. A conversation about some horrible things her older brother did to her in the years past. A lot of what’s and when’s and how’s race through your mind.
Ten minutes later the phone rings. The number appears to be a local number. Its Child Protective Services (CPS). Its an awkward introduction because you only found out that anything has happened. You haven’t even began to process anything. The knot in your stomach gets tighter as the CPS caseworker explains that the offending son must leave the home immediately and stay with someone else that night.
You try to explain to CPS that you just found out, but the process has already moved beyond that. There is no explaining, there are no excuses. The confusion and embarrassment comes later… for now, just awkwardness as you try to put a puzzle together in your head, a puzzle that may never be finished as its missing those few last pieces. You as parents have no clue how far reaching the damage is. It will be many months… perhaps over a year…. until the devastation is fully known.
Milepost 81 