Child Protection

Anonymous

Child Protection

Hello - I have a question about child protection. My husband and I have been together for 11 years. We have two children. When our first born child was 9 weeks old, he fell/rolled off a lounge chair. We took him straight to our closest ED to be checked out. He was fine (thank god) but 4 days later I had 2 Child Protection officers rock up at my door. They were so awful. I get that there are people out there who don’t care for their children, and I understood why they had to come out and ‘investigate’ the incident, but they were just awful. They wanted to see where my baby slept, how I cleaned bottles, they talked to our families, talked to my husband and it felt like an interrogation more than a fair investigation. A week and a bit later they made contact with me and told me that they had closed the case - as it was clearly an accident. It was such an awful experience and I’ve always had this doubt in my mind about how I should parent. Fast forward two years and my husband and I were experiencing some difficulties in our relationship. It got so toxic that he ended up punching me in the face and breaking my nose. This was not witnessed by our then, 2 year old child, but I never in a million years thought my beautiful, loving and kind husband would ever do that to me. I went to the police station just to see what sort of support was out there for me to leave and they ended up locking me in a room and basically forced me to tell them what had happened. They wouldn’t even let me leave to go and pick my son up from daycare. I told them what happened and they put a DVO against my husband. My husband moved out of the town we were living in and we were apart for 14 weeks. He was still calling and FaceTiming everyday to speak with our son and we were civil. i could tell he was extremely sorry. He ended up getting an amazing job in this new town and a beautiful house and I could tell everyday that he was sorry for what he had done. I absolutely do not condone what he did to me, but I can see why it happened. I had backed him into a corner and he had told me on a number of occasions to leave him alone and to go away but I kept going and it ultimately led to him hitting me. Anyway, after a 14 week ‘break’ my son and I moved to this new town with my husband and things were amazing. A lot of the issues we were having in our relationship were due to certain people (Family members) in the town we were living in, so once we left it all behind we were good. About 12 months later, I was at work and I get a call from Child Protection, again, but this time due to the DVO. I’m guessing the police reported it to Child Protection. They came out to our home and we basically had a chat for about an hour. My husband then came home and they had a chat with my husband also. I got really emotional and started to cry because I was so terrified of them taking our son away. They reassured me that they only take children away from their parents in ‘extreme’ circumstances and that everything they were seeing in regards to us was positive. Two days later I get a call from the case workers and they told me that the case had been closed. My son is around 3-3.5 at this point and over the next 12 months we start having some major issues with him, behaviourally. He had always been a full on baby/toddler. He was constantly on the move and always moving either his leg or his hand. He got kicked out of one daycare due to his impulsivity and behaviour. We found an amazing little kindy for him who had educators that were really experienced with behaviourally challenged kids. He was 4 at that point so was in kindy. We had started seeing paediatricians and child psychologists to try and get to the bottom of his behaviours. The child psychologist worked extremely closely with us. We would see her on a fortnightly basis and she would have a session in our home and then also at the kindy (to monitor his behaviours in a social environment). About two months into starting at this new kindy, there was an incident involving my son and three other boys. They were hiding in the outdoor play area and they were found touching each other’s private parts. Ofcourse, because my son had the behavioural problems, he was blamed for it all. One of the sons mothers was so mortified that it had happened, she went to our local police station and made a report against my 4 year old son. I had a great relationship with the director of the kindy and she advised me two weeks later that child protection had been made aware of the situation and made contact with the kindy. The director told me that she reassured the child protection officer that we were very ‘involved’ parents and that my son was going through some behavioural problems at that time. She also told the child protection officer that the incident was unwitnessed and that there were three other children involved, and that they can’t be certain that my son was the instigator. A Child Protection Police Officer made contact with myself (due to the other mothers report) and I explained it all to her and even invited her out to our home to meet my son. She declined and said that she see’s these sorts of things happening at schools and kindy’s quite often and that she just had to make contact with me and get my side of the story. The ‘investigation’ was closed and no further action was taken. My son did some work the the psychologist about ‘the human body’ and safe behaviours etc and we haven’t had any issues with ‘private parts’ since. Fast forward two years, we’ve had another baby and my son has been diagnosed with ADHD. He is on medication and see’s and OT every month. The medication he is on causes horrible ‘come down’ effects and our sons behaviour. He is so violent and aggressive (common side affects with the medication) and his meltdowns last 1-2 hours. We are waiting on an appointment with the paediatrician to change his medication. Two weeks ago, I turned the TV off because my son swore at me. He was given three warnings that I was going to turn the TV off but he disregarded the warnings and I turned the TV off. The meltdown started at around 2pm. He was screaming, slamming doors, hitting me, kicking his cupboard, and just being awful. I’ve been to parenting classes and have worked closely with all of his specialist so I feel like I am equipped with all of the tools and knowledge to deal with his behaviours. My husband on the other hand, works 10-14 hours a day and hasn’t been able to attend as many appointments or the parenting classes. He was bought up completely different to me. If he ever spoke to his parents the way our son speaks to me, he would have been flogged. My husband has very little, to no patience with the sorts of behaviours our son has. He doesn’t understand that ADHD is a neurological disorder and that our son really can’t help some of the behaviours he is experiencing. He feels we should discipline every negative thing our son does. He is terribly scared that our son is going to turn out to be some sort of delinquent in his teenage years, but I am working extremely hard to make sure that doesn’t happen (therapies, lots of sports and exercise, the right diet, and just trying to get his medication right).
Anyway, back to two weeks ago when my son was having a meltdown. It had been about an hour and a half since the meltdown started and our son is STILL screaming. My husband cant tolerate it so I’m always the one to deal with it. My husband is in our room with our baby, and I am in my sons room trying to calm him down. I am a very patient and tolerable person, but my son was starting to really get to me, so I decided to leave him in his room and walk away. As I was walking into our room, my son runs up behind me and fly kicks me in the middle of the back. I fell flat on my face because I wasn’t expecting it. I look up at my husband and he is seeing red. He grabs my son, drags him to his room (by his arm) and then gives him three big smacks on the bottom (with his hand). He puts on his big scary voice and says ‘IF YOU EVER HURT YOUR MOTHER AGAIN, I WILL FLOG YOUR ASS, DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME’. Our son was abit shaken up, as this hasn’t happened before. Our son will get the occasional tap on the bottom, but that’s it. My husband will use his big scary voice as a last resort but 90% of the time we keep calm and use all of the strategies provided to us from the specialists.
My husband and I are now doing ‘family counselling’ to try and get him on the same page as me, and for him to understand that ADHD is an actual disorder and it seems to be helping (so far). Our son goes to Vacation Care three times a week to get him out of the house, and I advised them of what had happened, just incase my son told anyone about it. I wanted to be upfront and honest. I am extremely terrified about them having to report it to child safety though. I know we are good parents. We are invested in our kids. We love our kids. My husband works so hard to provide for our kids and I work really hard being a stay at home mum. Our son is in two team sports, does an after school activity program every Friday and I am heavily involved in his schooling. We are doing our best in regards to our sons ADHD and behavioural challenges. Yes there are times where I yell and scream, but I’m only human. We certainly don’t abuse our kids, we don’t drink or smoke and definitely don’t do drugs. I am so concerned with the last three encounters with Child Safety, that I’ve actually contemplated putting up a security camera inside our house, so that if they ever do come again, I can show them what we deal with, how we parent and how we live. I feel like I actually have some sort of PTSD from the first Child Protection Visit. I constantly think about them coming again. I’ve seen a counsellor because of my fear and the only thing I got from her was your know you’re a good parent, so don’t worry’ 😪
I’m worried that if another report gets made, they’re going to look back at the other three encounters and think ‘we’ve missed something’. I am so stressed out about it all, and I constantly second guess myself as a Mother. I’m not really too sure what I’m asking for, I guess I just needed to get it out.

Posted in:  Parenthood Guilt, Kids

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