Fear of Abandonment - He's ours now
by Diane
When I was a teenager my mother took in a boy around the same age I was. He came from the most broken of backgrounds, but he became my brother. We are grown-ups now, in our 30s. My mother did her best to help him reach some sense of normalcy, but I guess in the end this failed. He now has 4 children by 4 different women, he barely ever sees or cares for the past children. He is briefly interested in new children, but seems to move on and have little to do with them. I am writing this, because his third child is currently living with my family. This child's mother was completely incompetent and was abusing drugs during her pregnancy. We saw that the child was not thriving and convinced him that he had to take custody of this child. My brother has never really paid attention to this child, there were numerous incidents where this child was out of the house while he slept, he fed him junk food most of the time, and even when he was awake his son could call his name 150 times before receiving a response. To make a very long story short, my mother finally took custody of this child. He is consistently in trouble at school, he steals, lies, and writes curse words on public property. Everyone in my family tells him that we love him, but we are certainly not perfect either. I am certain there are some real abandonment issues here, and I suspect that he sees us as having stolen him from his father. We also have reason to believe there has been some sexual mistreatment as well. He is seeing a therapist, but we are at the end of the rope in ideas on how to deal with the situation. Any good suggestions are welcome. |
