How a careless teenager turned into a (step)mom - Part 19 - Threatened by CPS

'HOW A CARELESS TEENAGER TURNED INTO A (STEP)MOM'

(life of a girl who survived domestic violence and stalking, fighting for a better life)

Welcome to the Nineteenth day I'm participating in the #monthlyauthorchallenge!
I'm really excited to join the challenge! Why? Because I would love to share some bits of my life with you.
I think it might surprise you and even shock you 😉

DAY 19 Threatened by CPS

We were glad to hear that CPS would interfere. We had a lot of worries concerning the living situation and the lifestyle of @fitzgibbons ex. Finally someone would take a good look and make sure that the kids were safewhile they were with her during the weekends.

Right?!

The family guardian was a young guy, named Richard. We welcomed him into our home and offered him dinner. He looked around and asked us questions. No problem, we had nothing to hide!
We had a couple of conversations. In one of those conversations I told him we were worried because @fitzgibbons ex-wife seemed to be in contact with drugdealers and people who were into other illegal stuff.
Richard: 'Wow that's not a nice thing to say about someone. You talking about her in that way is a problem.'
Me: 'Ehm, I'm not just making this up. I can tell you exactly what we've seen and what we've heard.'
Richard: 'No, you can't say things like that. You're the crazy one.'

😲

A couple of weeks later he visited us again.
He said he wanted to talk to the kids.
Sure, that's fine.
He said he'd pick them up in his car and would buy them an icecream somewhere and talk to them. 🚗🍨
Me: 'Ehm, no that's not going to happen'
Richard: 'Huh, why not?!'
Me: 'Because I've always told my kids to never get in a car with a stranger. Espacially not when this person is offering you candy or something like that.' They don't know you and we don't either. So it's not going to happen.'
Richard: 'That's rediculous. I've never heard tis before! The things you're scared of always happen when you don't expect it to happen and with people you thought you could trust.'
Me: 'YES, like people who work for CPS. People like you!' 😒

I really don't think you can be 'too' careful with your kids when it comes to this subject. I think it's absurdly that people who work for CPS may be alone with kids in a closed room, while daycarecenters and schools are obliged to make sure that an employee will never be alone with a child in an isolated space, in the Netherlands.

Why are there exceptions for CPS?! 😲

Richard wasn't happy that we were thinking for ourselves. He wanted us to follow his lead.
That was hard for us, because he ignored the fact that we were an extended family.
He said we were just a 'joined household'.
He just wanted to focus on the contact between @fitzgibbon and his ex-wife. He didn't care that I had been taking care of the kids for eight years by then.
I was 'NOTHING' to them, so he said.
It was all about Seth en Lily and their mom and dad. He wasn't interested in the fact that there were two stepsisters involved as well. He didn't want anything to do with that.

This made things so difficult. Through the years we've found our way to deal with each other. We were all at ease.
The interference of CPS interrupted this in a brutal way by not respecting our family as it was.
Actually, Richard had no idea of the challenges that extented families have to face..
I asked him a lot of times how his ideas could work for us as a family in real terms. He never had an answer.
I just had to stop giving him a hard time, was always the answer.

He started threatening us. We had to work with him. He could take the kids away if he had to.
It scared me. This guy had the power to do so...
I even asked myself, do I have to get out of this situation and stay somewhere else with my girls until CPS is gone?
I was so worried! 😓

We saw how he was getting closer and closer with @fitzgibbons ex-wife. First I thought he was just feeling sorry for her. Later on it got suspicious..
The two of them talked a lot on the phone. The two of them went outside together smoking cigarettes during conversations they had with @fitzgibbon. He even offered to pay her travelling cost. (while she never payed one cent of allimentation for her kids, so we had to spent a lot of our own money because of the arrangement concerning parental acces)

Then I heard something from some mothers, that I knew from the school our kids attented. They told me they saw @fitzgibbons ex-wife standing on the schoolyard with her boyfriend.
They were standing close to each other while touching each others hear.
Me: 'But she doesn't have a boyfriend'.
Then they started to decribe Richard.

REALLY?! 😲

That's the moment that I decided I wasn't going to let him get away with it. I was not letting him threaten my family.
I knew it.. His first priority was not 'the kids' but 'their mom'.
@fitzgibbon and I got his beautiful family, I was not going to let CPS destroy it.
I started to get under his skin, to trigger him to do or say things that would get him in trouble.
@fitzgibbon had a greater idea. He decided to tackle THE SYSTEM..

Stay tuned!

-Thank you for your interest! I would love to hear something from you! Please leave a comment and I'll get back to you 😊 Hope to see you back tomorrow! Love you 😘!-

This story is part of a series I'm writing this month in the #monthlyauthorchallenge, here below are the previous parts:

Part 18: Stricken by fate
PART 17: Nothing is impossible!
PART 16: We doubled!
PART 15: The stalking continues
PART 14: A Life-changing experience on Valentine's day
PART 13: Getting to know myself again
PART 12: CPS-Mill
PART 11: The Attack
PART 10: CPS
PART 9: Stalking
PART 8: The divorce
PART 7: Running away
PART 6: Domestic violence
PART 5: Now what?
PART 4: Becoming a young mom
PART 3: Kissing and making out
PART 2: The first guy I'll kiss
PART 1: This is me