15 year old cousin ran away to my place amidst family drama... what NOW???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Moving schools is probably one of the LEAST difficult things your cousin is dealing with right now. Sure, it will be a last minute scramble, but getting out of a physically abusive home (I don't care if you're opposed to spanking or think it's great discipline - beating a child with a special wooden spoon is abusive), negotiating her sexual identity, and facing adulthood a lot sooner than she was planning are much bigger deals.

I also agree with the poster who suggested not to let this experience sway your desire to have kids. You start with a tiny baby and work your way up to teenage sexual identity.

Also, I wanted to say that this is something that my family went through as well, though not with a relative. My mom has ALWAYS been the parent who me and my siblings' friends came to in times of crisis. Her rule was that she would never call their parents and tell on them, but if they wanted to stay in our house more than a couple hours, they had to call their parents and let them know where they were. One of my sister's friend's father responded to Friend's sexuality in the same way as your aunt, and Friend ended up living with my mom for several years. Friend is now fairly stable and well adjusted and credits having a safe place to run to when she was in crisis as why she didn't kill herself.

OP here again. Oh no! I'm completely ant-spanking. Please don't think I support my aunt and uncle's "discipline" method... I think it's disgusting and agree that it's abuse, but unfortunately CPS in cousin's home state/county at the time did not, so there was nothing my mom could do about that other than not allow any "spankings"/beatings of anyone in HER house (she tried; I heard her call and report it but nothing came of that). I wasn't trying to excuse it; sorry if my post came across that way.

Thank you so much for sharing your/your friend's story. That gives me hope that things might turn out alright for my cousin despite this mess as long as the rest of the family finds a way to help & protect her.

Your post didn't, but there are people on this site who probably would not agree that what you've described is inappropriate. It is one of the topics of The Mommy Wars.

One other thought - if you live in DC, there are a lot of organizations that might be useful to your cousin. A list is here: http://www.thedccenter.org/groups_topic.php?x=Youth

There are "mommy wars" over whether it is okay to hit your kid with a piece of wood? As in, intentional infliction of pain? My aunt said the spoon was "so that she remembers that bad choices are painful". Wow, you learn something new every day. Um, not this hypothetical future mom, let's just say that.

As a respite foster parent my mother had to sign a policy that she wouldn't use any physical discipline with the kids because it was considered inappropriate.

Because I've given so much detail in this thread I don't want to give specifics about our location, but we are in the dc area and your link looks very helpful - thanks!

[Anonymous]

I can't help but wonder how the family relationships were at the cousin's house a few days before mom read the teenager's diary. Was everything just peachy keen then?

Is there any chance the mom of this teen is just way over the top reacting and will calm down in a few days and say sorry to her daughter and the parents will take her back and everything will be okay?

[Anonymous]

You can call the Bar Association in your jurisdiction and ask for referral to a family law lawyer.
The local school system may require that someone have guardianship in order to enroll her in school.
Lastly: beating with a wooden spoon cause long lasting trauma. I'm sorry she experienced that.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think you and your fiancé are awesome! Please keep us posted; I think we're all emotionally invested in your cousin and her well-being!

[Anonymous]

OP, good for you. Seriously. You are an amazing person.

[Anonymous]

I haven't read all the responses but I'd contact CPS and explain the situation. At least then the mom's put on notice. At this point you shouldn't care what this Aunt thinks of you. She's a zero.

[Anonymous]

OP. You and your cousin seem like amazing people. I applaud you for being there for. Please keep being there for her. I was in a similar situation at that age and I was suicidal. Don't turn your back on your cousin.

[Anonymous]

OP, I just wanted to tell you that I don't normally have emotional responses to posts (well, maybe MIL posts, but that's another story), but everything you have written made me choke back tears - because of both the hell your cousin must have gone through leading up to this, and because of how lucky she is to have such a supportive family. You and your fiancé already seem like you have built such a solid foundation for the rest of your lives, and the fact that you're both willing to consider legal guardianship is just incredible. I can only imagine how emotional your wedding will be considering all you've already been through together.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can't help but wonder how the family relationships were at the cousin's house a few days before mom read the teenager's diary. Was everything just peachy keen then?

Is there any chance the mom of this teen is just way over the top reacting and will calm down in a few days and say sorry to her daughter and the parents will take her back and everything will be okay?

I'm not sure exactly how things were going in the household, but I know that in general over the years there has been a lot of tension between my cousin and her parents. She never really seemed to like her parents or her home life, but I gather that that's somewhat typical of teens and prior to all heck breaking loose with this incident most of the things she mentioned being unhappy about seemed like just exceptionally strict and demanding parents, nothing that raised concerns of abuse (beyond the spoon spanking, which I cannot call abuse because the legal authorities determined it wasn't at the time...)

I really, really hope you're right and her parents calm down over the weekend and change their attitudes/reactions. Nobody intends to do anything official until Monday at the earliest specifically in order to give them that time in case this was just a really bad first reaction to learning something shocking. I'm not very optimistic that that'll be what happens, but I'm really hoping I'm wrong because that is what I want to happen here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can call the Bar Association in your jurisdiction and ask for referral to a family law lawyer.
The local school system may require that someone have guardianship in order to enroll her in school.
Lastly: beating with a wooden spoon cause long lasting trauma. I'm sorry she experienced that.

My mother has taken over (via email, she'll be back in the country on Sunday night and able to help more directly) research on everything we will need to know/do if we have to pursue some sort of legal option on Monday, instead of a happy ending where cousin's parents stop acting like this and welcome their child back home again. I know that finding lawyers specializing in children's and family law issues in both cousin's home jurisdiction and both mom's and mine (because we've not yet decided who will seek guardianship if it comes to that) is an item on the list.

We're going to try the option provided for in the laws of my cousin's home state where parents, teen children (I think it's 14+, cousin definitely qualifies) and another adult relative who are in agreement on the course of action can petition the court for a legal guardianship change to the relative fairly easily and without CPS. Figuring out how to navigate that will be why we want the lawyers, but I know my mother understands more about the process than I do and seems to think it's a reasonable option. That is, if cousin's parents want to take that path. Basically, that seems to be our "middle" but also most likely scenario... best case would be her able to go home again to loving parents who just had a freak out over big news, then the voluntary guardianship option, but in the worst case we're prepared to involve CPS if her parents still seem like an unsafe option but no longer agree to just let her live with a relative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can call the Bar Association in your jurisdiction and ask for referral to a family law lawyer.
The local school system may require that someone have guardianship in order to enroll her in school.
Lastly: beating with a wooden spoon cause long lasting trauma. I'm sorry she experienced that.

My mother has taken over (via email, she'll be back in the country on Sunday night and able to help more directly) research on everything we will need to know/do if we have to pursue some sort of legal option on Monday, instead of a happy ending where cousin's parents stop acting like this and welcome their child back home again. I know that finding lawyers specializing in children's and family law issues in both cousin's home jurisdiction and both mom's and mine (because we've not yet decided who will seek guardianship if it comes to that) is an item on the list.

We're going to try the option provided for in the laws of my cousin's home state where parents, teen children (I think it's 14+, cousin definitely qualifies) and another adult relative who are in agreement on the course of action can petition the court for a legal guardianship change to the relative fairly easily and without CPS. Figuring out how to navigate that will be why we want the lawyers, but I know my mother understands more about the process than I do and seems to think it's a reasonable option. That is, if cousin's parents want to take that path. Basically, that seems to be our "middle" but also most likely scenario... best case would be her able to go home again to loving parents who just had a freak out over big news, then the voluntary guardianship option, but in the worst case we're prepared to involve CPS if her parents still seem like an unsafe option but no longer agree to just let her live with a relative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP. You and your cousin seem like amazing people. I applaud you for being there for. Please keep being there for her. I was in a similar situation at that age and I was suicidal. Don't turn your back on your cousin.

I am so sorry you went through that. Thank you for your kind words and for reminding me how important it is that we get our handling of this situation right. Our extended family will be there for her and we will never abandon her to deal with this alone. I know my posts have revealed a lot of confusion and turmoil as we try to deal with the situation, but one absolute certainty is that we will figure out a way to make sure she is safe, accepted, loved, and supported.

I'm a little worried about the fact that my cousin knows this is a rapidly changing situation for which we have no one specific plan yet since a lot of things are still up in the air. I know that kids need stability and they need to know that the adults in their lives are competent to handle things and take care of them. Basically, the opposite of this chaos. I've done everything I can so far to shield her from my personal confusion and from the most uncertain/speculative discussions about how to handle this, but that can only go so far since we've also been trying to find out and take into account her thoughts on how she wants this all resolved.

[Anonymous]

This story sounds super fake.

[Anonymous]

Troll

[Anonymous]

eh, the mother of this kid was reading her diary for a reason. Maybe the mom suspected that something was up with her daughter and was worried about her so she decided to read the diary only to discover what (for her) were some real bombshells about her kid.

She cussed her kid out because she was feeling very stressed out/worried/freaked out/scared to death. Then her daughter ran off. Mom had know idea where she was.

And when mom found out that her daughter had left the state to go to her 23 year old cousin's apartment - she flipped out again. I think that most parents would flip out if their teenager left the state w/o their permission and went to stay with a 23 year old.

Op - you are hearing one side of this story and that is coming from a very emotional teen. You are judging a mom for flipping out and not using polite language. You are considering "legal options", possibly calling CPS.

If CPS was called every time a parent cussed out their teenager you would never be able to get through to them.

I think this kid (and her mother) need a weekend away from each other. Emotions are running high right now. Let them simmer down a bit and then maybe they can try to sort things out with each other.