Anger, Night Terrors, Every Day Life

Normal left our family a long time ago. Our life before CPS was an everyday same routine. Now it all depends on each person's moods in this house. There is 3 of us with depression and PTSD so moods go from happy to crying to just mad and yelling.

The night terrors are the worst most of the time. Mindy, Clint and I have them terrible. We jump out of the bed screaming and yelling. We hit walls. We don't know we are doing it and don't remember doing it the next day. The thing with these PTSD night terrors is you don't touch the person when they are doing it. You are reliving what happened to you. They are terrible.

Its hard to deal with your own PTSD and depression when your trying to help your kids deal with it. How do you help them when you don't have the answers for them?

The anger I have and my kids have toward CPS and KSP will never go away. I can't explain to them why what happened happened or how to make it better. They are angry for being jerked away from us. They are angry for never being allowed to say what we were accused of is a lie. They are angry for being mistreated in foster homes. There is so much anger from all of us.

Jeff had only been away from me one time in his life in 9 years before foster care. He was a mama's boy. He hugged me and told me he loved me 10 times a day. When he came home he had been mistreated in foster care and drugged. I remember telling him he couldn't do something one day and him getting in my face and saying what you gonna do about it bitch?. I just turned around and walked off and didn't say a word. NEVER in his life would he ever have spoke to me like that before foster care. He has gotten a lot better but he still has his days. Some days he will just get so mad he will cry and say he just doesn't understand why they did what they did to us. He goes from calm to plain downright pissed off and can't think in 2 seconds. He will be 12 this year and he still sneaks in our bed every night. He doesn't want to go anywhere away from us. He is fine with his friends coming over here but he won't stay with friends. He doesn't want anyone to know they were in foster care. He doesn't want anyone to know anything that happened. Before foster care him and Mindy was VERY close. Now they are not. While they were in foster care they weren't even allowed to step in each others rooms or hug each other if one was crying. I am slowly getting my baby back but he will never be the same.

Mindy has night terrors every night. Her moods are crazy. One minute she is happy and the next she is crying. Yes she is in counseling and on medicine. Her night terrors are of being taken away from us and the detective grabbing her arm and screaming in her face. Plus she was sexually abused by a former foster dad and has to deal with that. She lives in fear of him coming after her every day. Mindy has a lot of guilt for telling what happened because she feels that is why I can't see my parents and why my siblings turned on me. Her guilt over that will never go away no matter what we say to her.

Clint has missed a lot of school this year. He actually got ulcers from this crap and was in the hospital from that. This caused tension migraines and he was in the hospital from that. Then he got so depressed he went to bed and wouldn't get up. He cried for a day and a half straight. He lost 20 pounds in one month. I tried and tried to pull him out of it and couldn't  He finally said he needed to go to the mental part of Kosiars and get help. He was there for a week and I missed him like crazy. His behaviour when he first came home was a lot like Jeffs. He has turned around 75%.  He is very very close to my parents and brothers and can't see my parents due to the no contact order with my brother because he still lives at home. He is very angry and depressed over that. He wants my mom to come here and stay a few days and she can't because of my brothers and he resents that also.

Each day is a little better for the most part. What keeps us going is each other supporting each other and the kids knowing I am still fighting trying to find someone to sue CPS and KSP. And now trying to help other foster kids and making a positive out of this negative. No matter what the five of us will always stick together. 

Seeing the kids for the first time

Clint was released from Kosairs after we had our care plan meeting. A worker went and picked him up and brought him to the CPS office. I will never ever forget seeing him for the first time since they took them. I grabbed him and wrapped my arms around him and wouldn't let go. I just kept telling him I love him and asking him if he was ok. He said yes he was ok and mom can you please let go now. I know I held him for a good five minutes before Kate Jeffcoate rudely told us to come out of the hall.

We went in a room where they had glass and they sat on one side and watched and listened to everything we were saying. At that point I was so glad to see him I just didn't care.

The foster parent was bringing Mindy and Jeff to the office so we could see them. I don't know who ran to each other faster me or them. I just grabbed them and didn't want to let go. We all went back in the meeting room and of course they had a lot of questions. Geneva called me out in the hall to tell me that we weren't to talk about what had happened and just to tell them we just wanted to visit with them so we wasn't going to talk about it. Do you know how hard that was one me? I wasn't allowed to answer any questions they had. The whole point of that was they didn't want me to say anything negative about CPS or KSP. We tried to make the best of the little time we had with them.

It didn't seem like we had very long with them. We asked them if there was things they wanted from home and told them we would bring them the next visit. About all we could say at that point was we was doing what we could to get them home as fast as we could.

Leaving them that day was terrible. The foster mother had brought them and when it was time for them to leave the workers got in their cars and left and left us standing in the parking lot with our kids and foster mom. They got in her truck and before we got back to our car Mindy and Jeff was running across the parking lot screaming. The foster mother was all mad because they wouldn't get in the truck. We hugged them and I carried Jeff back to the truck while Mindy walked with my husband. I had to literally put Jeff in the truck and fasten his seatbelt  He was screaming for me not to make him go and I was crying and said I don't have a choice. He was screaming crying and saying yes you do. The foster mom shut the truck door and drove off. Later when i was thinking about it I came to the conclusion we must not be such bad parents if the workers felt comfortable enough leaving us alone with them. For all they knew we could have beat the foster mom and took the kids and ran. This was only the first week of the next 6 months of hell we would have....

Court

When you feel like your whole world has crumbled down around you I don't understand how anyone thinks you can go to court and hold yourself together. To start with our Judge was Judge Miles. Remember he is the one that didn't help us with my husbands ex wife and kids. 

The day didn't start well anyhow. When i was walking to the courthouse there stood my step daughter Cathy and her mom Anita. I will be honest I was so mad I couldn't see straight but my husband told me to keep my mouth shut. I simply walked right by them as if they wasn't there while my husband stood and talked with them. The nerve of them to come to a closed court case over something they had caused!

My husband and I both had legal aid family attorneys waiting for us. He went to talk to his and I went to talk to mine. Mike Simms was my attorney and one of the first things he told me was I was not to speak to anyone but him from then on. We talked some but not much before we went in front of the Judge.

I was sitting with my mother in law when Cathy came and sat beside me. She went on to say that I should give her and her mom custody of my kids. I got up and walked up to Mike and told him what she had said and he said there was no way any Judge would ever do that. That was some relief for me.

We went up to stand in front of Judge Miles and Mike leaned over and said oh by the way Clint is in the hospital. I thought for sure I was going to pass out. When they arrested me and took them away he said he was going to kill himself so they took him to Kosairs and left him. They didn't even wait for him to see a Doctor and settle in because as the worker said it was past her time to be off work. My baby had been in Kosairs for a week and I hadn't known.

How they expect you to function is beyond me. It was all I could do not to strangle the lying CPS worker Kate Jeffcoat and stop crying for five minutes. The Judge told us the kids had to stay with CPS and made orders for us to visit and set another date to come back.

That was the start of our court dates. We was in court every two weeks for 6 months fighting for our kids.