Back Off My Kid

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’ve known me for anything over about ten minutes, you would know – my children are off-limits. I raised excellent children. They might be a little rough around the edges, but they are intelligent, funny, spiritual, and most importantly, they’re MINE. There is nothing a stranger is going to tell me about any one of my children that is going to make me think otherwise.

Today, I received a stressful message from my son, DJ. Ever since he left Missouri to live with me here in Texas, his bio father has been harassing him. DJ is on probation for some stupid crap he did as a teenager WHILE STAYING WITH HIS BIOLOGICAL FATHER!! When we first discussed him moving back here, near the parent who actually raised him, and away from the deadbeat father he’d briefly been staying with, it was discussed at length the urgency that he follow every law governing a transfer of his probation to Texas. For months I answered calls from Missouri about my home and job, as well as Texas. When it was finally approved, DJ picked up his transfer and his traveling papers and moved back home near his family.

My ex, who we’ll call BF, for biological father, went ballistic. DJ had been paying a high sum for rent, utilities, and food, as well as being BF’s free babysitter for his 8 year old sister that BF has custody of. The only thing that BF has any real power to use to upset DJ is threatening to have him put in prison for violating his parole. Yeah. Great parenting.

I thought that this had all stopped when both DJ and I made it clear, DJ had followed the procedures exactly. It didn’t matter what BF would threaten us with because there was nothing there to use. So what did he do? He had his friends send messages to me, my daughter, DJ’s best friend, and to DJ himself, AGAIN throwing around accusations about DJ skirting the law. Plus, they informed me of the date his parole is to end. Really???

I don’t know what gets into a stranger’s mind that they think they can scare me into abandoning my own kid. I know for a fact, he’s living here with me in Texas legally. I also know that this isn’t about DJ’s welfare. This is about DJ’s income going to a deadbeat father who was leeching every cent he could get off of his estranged son. This is about having to pay child care now, when he once could pretty much dump his kid on DJ whenever it suited him. This is about money, not DJ’s well-being.

What did you really think to achieve with you calling out my son to me with half truths and a whole lot of bullshit? Did you think I would be friendly, and pack up my own son and send him back to be used? Did you think I’d help you in any way, when I have no idea who you are and why you feel like you have some right to judge my kid? You are a hypocrite, calling my son a liar. You called and talked to his parole officer, did you? You never got any of this information, that is almost word for word, exactly the same crap BF has been spewing, from my ex, huh? I’m calling you on your bullshit. You are lying. You are stirring the pot. You are doing this out of malice, and not for any other reason.

I’d say next time, don’t take things like this public, but there had better not be a next time. You aren’t a friend of our family’s, nor are you a relative. You are a stranger who stepped over the line, and I expect you to butt out of my life and the lives of MY children.

~ Bird