Long-Separated Father, Daughter Sue L.A. County Foster Care Agency
July 18, 2006
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Posted by ANCPR
Long-Separated Father, Daughter Sue L.A. County Foster Care Agency
By Sandy Banks, LA Times Staff Writer, July 17, 2006
After the mother lost custody, the girl spent 10 years in foster homes
before L.A. County acted to contact her dad.
There were plaudits all around last fall when a troubled teenager who spent
10 years in foster care was reunited with the father she had hardly known,
thanks to what Los Angeles County supervisors described as a “groundbreaking
effort” at family unification.
But the genesis of that heartwarming story is now the basis of a lawsuit
alleging that Los Angeles County officials condemned Melinda Smith, now 17,
to a decade of foster homes and institutions by failing to take the most
basic steps to find her father.
Melinda’s parents were not married when she was born in 1988, but her
father, Thomas Marion Smith, agreed to pay child support in 1989. He saw
Melinda often, he said, but when she was about 4, her mother moved and left
no forwarding address. Two years later, in 1995, after the county had
received two complaints of suspected child abuse, Melinda’s mother turned
the girl over to foster care officials.
Meanwhile, Thomas Smith continued to receive monthly bills and make support
payments to the county for several years, while Melinda was ? unbeknownst to
him ? being shuffled through a series of institutions and foster homes.
The Department of Children and Family Services – required by law to use “due
diligence” to locate a foster child’s noncustodial parent – never notified
Smith that Melinda was in foster care and never gave him a chance to claim
her, the lawsuit alleges.
The department listed Smith’s whereabouts as unknown in court documents
filed a decade ago, even though department records indicate that Melinda’s
caseworker knew that Smith was paying child support through a separate
county agency and his address was on file there.
“He’s a registered voter with a valid driver’s license and an open child
support case,” said his attorney, L. Wallace Pate. “All they had to do, at
any time during those 10 years, was pick up the phone and ask the L.A.
County Child Support Services Department, ‘Do you have a contact on this
man?’ ”
Ultimately, Smith was located last spring by retired social worker Peggy
Crist, who was brought in to help the Department of Children and Family
Services launch a program to find permanent placements for teenagers who had
spent years in foster care.
After meeting Melinda ? who told Crist “the most important thing she could
think of ? was that she wanted to find her father” – it took the social
worker one day to find Thomas Smith, who was living with his wife in a
comfortable two-bedroom home in Pine Valley, east of San Diego.
Last July, the father and daughter saw each other for the first time in more
than 10 years. In November, Melinda left foster care and moved into her
father’s home.
Their reunion was celebrated at a Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
meeting Sept. 13, when board Chairman Mike Antonovich praised Crist for
saving a child from graduating from foster care at 18 with no support system
in place.
“Now that child will have an opportunity for education, a loving family
environment and will become a productive citizen,” Antonovich said.
But the promise of a new family cannot undo the damage of 10 years in foster
care, said Pate, who filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking unspecified damages
against Los Angeles County, the social workers who handled Melinda’s case
and the private agency that provides attorneys for children in foster care.
If proper procedures had been followed, the lawsuit contends, Melinda would
have been placed in her father’s custody after her mother relinquished her,
rather than languishing in foster care.
Instead, social workers misled Melinda and family court officials by
portraying Smith as a “deadbeat dad,” the lawsuit said, even though they
knew he was paying child support and had received “no notice that his
daughter was being detained.”
Melinda grew up in seven different foster care placements. For five years,
beginning at the age of 7, she lived in a residential treatment center
alongside older children convicted of criminal activity because social
workers decided her emotional issues ruled out placement with foster
parents.
Agency records cited in the lawsuit detail a litany of behavior problems:
She threw toys, punched windows and walls, and was frequently restrained by
staff members when her tantrums escalated into kicking and biting attacks.
When Melinda was 8, her social worker reported that she refused to speak,
suffered from extreme depression and was so “oppositional and defiant” that
she was “not appropriate for adoptive placement.”
“She feels hopeless and helpless, as if the world is against her,” the
social worker noted. She was ordered to take Prozac and remained on the
medication – at steadily increasing doses – for more than seven years.
The lawsuit says social workers knew that Melinda was deteriorating in the
county’s custody, care and supervision, yet insisted that her father be
stricken from Melinda’s case plan.
The father and daughter were deprived of their constitutional rights by
county officials’ deception, incompetence and flagrant disregard of laws
intended to safeguard family ties, Pate said.
Melinda “remained warehoused in defendant’s custody against her will, in a
restrictive environment on trumped-up grounds and suffered severe
deterioration, isolation, depression and loss of – her father’s care,
nurture and companionship,” the lawsuit contends.
“What would Melinda’s life have been like if she’d had the chance to know
her father, who looked for her, loves her and wanted to know her?” Pate
asked. “For the county to pat itself on the back for finally getting them
together after all these years – that’s like freeing the slaves, then saying
‘Oh, well.’ ”
Pate would not allow the father or daughter to be interviewed. Nor would
county officials comment on the case because litigation is pending.
But Louise Grasmehr, director of public affairs for the Department of
Children and Family Services, praised the program that reunited Melinda and
her father, saying that it has the potential to free hundreds of children
from foster care. In the year the program has been in place, 50 children
have been reunited with their parents, 80 more are in the process of being
adopted by relatives and almost 100 have acquired legal guardians.
Child welfare consultant Kevin Campbell, who trained Crist for the program
last summer, said Los Angeles came late to the “family finding” movement but
has recently demonstrated a strong commitment to connecting foster children
with missing family members.
Until recently, little was done to find relatives of unclaimed foster
children because the search process was difficult and tedious, social
workers were untrained and overworked, and there was an inherent bias
against family members of children in foster care.
There was a presumption that the father was probably unsuitable or
uninterested, Campbell said. “The attitude has been ‘the apple doesn’t fall
far from the tree.’ If one parent has problems, the other relatives are
probably not worth searching for.”
But research shows that children almost always fare better with relatives
than in long-term foster care. And technological advances now make locating
missing family members easy and inexpensive, he said.
Even children who remain in foster care benefit from contact with family
members, Campbell said. Residential mental health therapy often fails if
“while they are in that institution, children are not feeling love and
affection from somebody out of that institution,” said Campbell, who is
familiar with Melinda’s case. “What may have happened with [Melinda], she
may have gone a decade without feeling that.”
Campbell, who works with child welfare agencies around the country, said
homes with willing relatives have been found for more than three-quarters of
the children whose cases he has reviewed. The average successful search
takes less than six hours.
Crist initiated her search May 16, 2005. By May 17, she had Thomas Smith’s
current address, along with his addresses for the last 15 years, the lawsuit
said.
She enlisted a San Diego social worker to visit Smith, who called Crist and
said that he had tried unsuccessfully to find his daughter for years. All
that time, he said, he thought she was living with her mother.
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This is a true problem that I have discovered in my own caseload, and have had a really hard time correcting. I only discovered it when I was asked to fill in for an attorney for CPS on a case, and the mother was absent in court because CPS could not locate her to serve her. I (at child support) had a good locate on her for years.
The reason for it is “confidentiality,” which is drilled into our heads. The problem is, Califonria law allows for information to be passed between CPS and Child Support, but everyone is so afraid of violating confidentiality that they don’t reach out for the information, and don’t share information.
I have requested that the court provide me with the “confidential calendar” that includes juvenile matters so that I can make sure CPS has a good address, and so we can stop charging when the kid goes back to the parent, etc. So far my request has been denied.
It is rediculous that CPS doesn’t have the same locate tools that child support has.
This is the problem with our system. Why is it that the courts and family services are unable to find a parent? Becasue when I do searches for someone or something guess what? I FIND THEM. It’s not that hard. I’ve located several documents and several people that I have inquired about. Regardless of having to pay to do the search. It’s not that expensive if an everyday person can pay to look up informtaion. It’s really sad that our system that is suppose to take care of our children and the parents can not do that due to their own incompetence. This poor girl and her father had to suffer for NO REASON. All someone needed to do was make a phone call. Thank God for the person that took the very little time needed to find the father. It’s too bad it took so long for someone to figure it out. It’s too bad that our system thinks a child is better off in a foster home then with the other parent or family members. Now if the child had been rasised by the father and the mother was needed to be found to take care of the child the system probably would have found her right away. But since it was the father they figured he was a deadbeat and did nothing to find him. I’m ashamed of our family services system.
This young girl’s life has been completely destroyed by an incompetent bueauracracy. I hope the girl and the father take the state to the cleaners. And if I was in the father’s shoes I’d be pressing for criminal charges of child abuse, fraud, and discrimination.
I live in a small county, so it is easier to make sure kids don’t fall through the cracks, unlike LA county with tens of thousands of kids in placement
There is one aspect that has to be considered. The father never once in all of those ten years filed a motion for visitation. California Department of Child Support Services authorizes the Local Child Support Agency to accept service of legal documents and serve them on the opposing party.
Had the father filed a motion for visitation, he would have immediately found out that the payee of his child support dollars and custodian of his daughter was foster care, not the mom.
This is not attempting to absolve CPS of responsibility. This is just one more reason that fathers should not just give up and not even ask for visitation.
It is ironic that the system can find a man when he owes child support payments but not when it is in the child’s best interest to have their father. The system is set up against men and the culture needs to change. The mind set of the people (mostly women) that run the system needs change. We need to change the laws and make shared parenting a mandatory requirement for divorced couples and unmarried parents.
Men we need to get involved and change the laws. We need to fight back for our kids and our manhood.
I would like to see the county pay lots of money for their mess and the responsible people severely punished.
“A little child shall lead them”
Perhaps the children are the answer to the atrocities commited by the family court systems. Perhaps the children who have been denied the contact, love and care of their fathers, should be the ones to insist that their constitutional rights have been voilated. Perhaps the children should be the ones to testify before congress about how they have been damaged. Perhaps it should be the children who read aloud to congress all the studies and reports of how important two parents are to their development and mental health. Perhaps all children of divorce, who have been damaged by little or no contact with the non-coustodial parent, no matter how old the child, should be able to hold the government and the family court system accountable. Perhaps it is the children who should be the ones who say that they are victimized by the family court system. Perhaps we should listen to the children.
angelc20, the funny thing about what you said is that it inadvertently points out the real problem.
“The system” that can find a man that isn’t paying child support isn’t the same system that cannot find him to reunite with his child.
The Child Support system and the Child Welfare system are two different departments entirely, and they do not share resources. They each have their own budgets, and allocatet hem as they see fit.
Child Support, of course, puts a huge chunk of its budget into its investigation tools. Because we are attempting to collect a debt, we are able to access all public records and credit report information. We are able to find where the person last applied for credit, had any account, worked, rented an apartmeent, or had public utility services.
Child Welfare has none of this. The best they can do is ask people who might know the missing parent (and who might not have an incentive for him to be found), and send the post office a request for forwarding information from the last known address. OH, and they can send a request for information over to Child Support, but no one ever thinks of that.
Well I’ve heard enough propaganda about how this is a case of incompetence, privacy or the short comings of the father. I and many others who have had the misfortune to deal with all the government agencies in question will be met with belligerence and defiance. The only resolution that will take place is what’s best for the collective.
The federal taxpayers do indeed take care of those interests. $ 18,000 years for foster care, matching funds for child support collection. The victim of their use and abuse is now 17. The gravy train is pulling into the station. Time to contact the father (no doubt from readily available records) and take responsibility for the collective’s crimes.
Considering the threat the collective poses to society, if they want to portray themselves as a subspecies incapable rational thought, they should be taken out and put down.
The “system” works in concert like a finely tuned symphony when it comes to placing the father on a financial or emotional spit. But, when it comes to looking out for the father’s rights, and in many cases, as this one, an innocent child’s rights, all of the sudden, the “system” is deaf, dumb, and blind.
Believe me, don’t buy that the different family law agencies don’t keep in contact with each other very intimately concerning each and every case. In my case, and every case of every man I have talked to, family court, child support enforcement, child welfare, court clinic, DV court, the police, the DA, (this list could go on forever) etc, all have every detail concerning family law cases down to even knowing your middle name, where you work, what car you drive, etc.. And, the reason they have this info is because, all these agencies network with each other concerning the very crucial “bread and butter” (fathers) that they pay their mortgage, car payment, etc with.
Every family law agency (private and public) that I went to for assistance in my situation denied me services saying that I was the abuser. I wasn’t convicted of any of my ex’s charges, I was just accused. So, how could every agency have known I had been accused unless they were in close contact? Hell, in New Mexico, they even revoke your fishing licence if your late on child support. If the departments of game and fish, and child support enforcement can get together to strip a man of the only diversion that possibly keeps him from going crazy dealing with this corrupt family law system, then CPS and child support enforcement can drop a dime to reunite a father with his child.
John Alvarez
j5alvr@aol.com
It’s great the father made his payments for ten years. Why wasn’t he keeping tabs on his daughter? He “thought” she was with her mother. Sounds like the kind of father that a child could do without. Of course the government screwed up bigtime, what else is new! This sound like more of a lawyer feeding frenzy case, and carefully crafted journalism to tug at our hearts for ten minutes. Any real parent would have kept tabs on their children – period.
Oh dear, it appears that the story gets even worse. According to ABC News, the child’s case manager knew that the father had an open child support case and that the father was paying child support, and the guy was a registered vother and had a valid driver’s license.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/LegalCenter/wireStory?id=2201265&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312
This is so sad on so many levels.
In hopes that it makes a difference, I am sending a copy of these news stories to my local cps, advising them that we should never allow this to happen to one of the children in our community, and make sure they know to contact me for locate information.
Despite all attempts to keep “tabs” on my daughter my ex and the corrupt system that is assisting her have done everything in their power to keep me away. I never would’ve imagined that trying to be a father to my daughter would subject me to false prosecution, financial ruin, incarceration, and emotional and mental aguish beyond belief.
Many men though, are just not willing to face the possibility of bankruptcy, prison, or even death as a consequence of fighting to stay in their childs life. This doesn’t make them bad parents, it just makes them human beings whose desire for self-presevation brought them to the conclusion that they could not win against a corrupt system. I don’t know, but maybe that was the case in this situation. Maybe Mr. Smith fought as hard as he could to be in his child’s life but, for the sake of his own sanity, just cut his losses and stopped fighting.
If this was the case for Mr. Smith or many other men, I don’t judge them, or hold it against them. Because, like I said, this fight to be a father to my daughter was precipitated by the most vicous destructive attack against me that I have ever known in my life. And, God knows, even though I would never willingly give up my rights as a father, the thought of just not fighting anymore has crossed my mind a few times.
John Alvarez
j5alvr@aol.com
Reading this account was sickening. We see how these agencies act towards us. Its no different in Texas with arrogant attorney generals (AG) turning every father into a noncustodial after encouraging mothers to flock to thier offices, surrendering certain rights over the child for the collection of a dollar. The AG acts like they own these fathers then shaking their pockets at every turn but refusing to help them with anything, even when the so called debt has been ovrpaid.
I hope this father and daughter sues the hell out of the county and some of the principals go down for it. How dare an agency charged with the protection of a child behave this way!!
wanito,
You make a really good point. You never really know what someone’s motivations might be until you know all the facts.
I was talking to one guy who in now seeking visitation of a child he hasn’t seen in years, and never even asked to see until now, but has faithfully paid his support. The child has been living in really bad conditions with a neglectful, addict mother. I asked him how he could leave his child in a situation like that and he told me that for several years, he didn’t think himself fit to parent because of his own addiction problems, then when he first got clean, he knew he couldn’t face a custody battle with that ex and stay clean. (He is a great dad right now, by the way. I am so proud of him.)
I’m saddened and frustrated when I read the above article and bewildered by many of the comments in response. The suffering involved for this young woman and the millions more like her cannot be fully understood or appreciated by anyone that has not suffered their experiences at the hands of this corrupt system. The fact that all this pain and suffering is being inflicted on millions of men and children nationwide for profit is a crime of appalling proportion.
For anyone to pretend that this is just a case of poor communication or merely a “misguided practice†is delusional. It has been done to this victim for profit, just as it is done to millions of others for profit. To place blame on the father is the equivalent of blaming blacks for being sold into slavery or blaming Jews for the policies of the Third Reich. This is a “government sponsored†slave trade that is using millions of our children for their personal profit.
I agree with Ron Rutgers. If these criminals are incapable of reason and refuse to acknowledge their guilt, they should be locked in a cage, or put down like any sick animal.
Kevin Merck
John, I am not judging anyone, however let’s not make this guy out to be father of the year either. Come on, for ten years he didn’t check out anything! Yes, he probably did get two black eyes and the usual sucker punches like to the rest of us, but after reading these posts while being bedridden for a few day I believe that we cannot give up. I never have and I never will give up. Fathers don’t need to be Darren Macks, nor do they need to walk away for ten years – no matter how badly they were beaten. And Kevin, I am blaming the father for not checking jack squat for ten years.
Iittlelawyergirl:
Your response actually brings up a question that I have had much on my mind lately. Does or should the courts, or anyone for that matter, have the moral authority to decide whether my character is good enough to be a father to my daughter? My loss of contact with my daughter has been because of false criminal charges filed by my ex against me, but I have begun to wonder whether the reason the police and the DA and the whole damn system runs with her charge every time is because maybe they’ve just made a decision that my character meets with less than their ideal.
More to the point I guess would be to ask, if I can provide a home, clothing, food, the necesities of life etc, for my child, does that make me fit to parent? What about teaching a child things like tying her shoes, or riding her bike, or showing her that puppies like to be scratched behind the ears? If I provided the former “necesities” but not the latter, could I still be considered a “fit parent.”
I’m going the long way around it but basically what I’m asking is, what gives anyone the right to deny me, or any father, contact with our children, because we don’t happen to meet, their standard of what a parent should or shouldn’t be. Not the legal standard mind you, such as in provable cases of abuse or extreme poverty, but just the personal standard. The case you mentioned with the father that didn’t see his daughter because of his addictions, and then his fight to stay clean. His estrangment from his child was self-chosen, unlike cases like mine where I am kept away by the “law.” But, don’t you think it would do a child good to have contact with his/her father even if it had to be supervised just so the child would know that their father didn’t abandon him/her. Everyone has problems of one kind or another. Some have addictions, some have emotional problems, some have eating disorders, some have illness, but if you were to take contact with their children completely away from everyone who has a problem, there would be a lot of parentless children out there, and you and I both know, that does a child much more harm than good.
If you were the official in my case and you were looking for faults, believe me you would find a lot of them. But, I love my daughter, and when I was able to see her, I taught her how to fly a kite, and I took her fishing, and played “invisible force field” with her. I read something the other day that I didn’t know. Fathers help children develop better motor skills because the activities they do with them are much more physical. Hell, even the bible when talking about parents says “you being wicked know how to give good things to your children.” So, lets say I’m not a citizen of the year candidate. The rewards and benefits my child (and I) get from having me in her life, faults, imperfections, and all, are a hundredfold greater than any negatives she would get from my “imperfect character.”
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but your a professional woman. I’m sure your job demands a big chunk of your time. If you can’t spend the time that a homemaker mother spends, or that I or someone else personally beleives that a mother should spend with her child, should we deem you an unfit mother because you don’t meet our expectations of a parent? No. Your not a perfect parent, just like I’m not, and just like no one is. But, you love your child. Why should your contact with your child be given or taken based on someone elses idea of what the “perfect standard” of a parent is.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. There was no section on the “parent application” that required perfection as a prerequisite to be a father. I am my daughters father, a responsibility bestowed by God, and he, and only he, has the right to take that responsibility from me.
John Alvarez
j5alvr@aol.com
James:
none of us are the father of the year. Even the ones that they give the trophy to. But, like “littlelawyergirl” said you have to know “all the facts” before you can make a decision about what’s really going on. All I was saying is that some men, and I have personally known some, do stop contact to literally save their own sanity or very life. And I , having been, and now going through this battle, and even though I wouldn’t make this decision myself, can empathize with why a man would make this decision. Thats why I don’t think any less of a man who does stop fighting. I won’t get into it, but this fight has cost me more than anyone will ever know. But, with that said, I’m with you, I will NEVER give up.
John Alvarez
j5alvr@aol.com
What a bunch of huuy! These people know exactly what theyr’e doing. They’ve been playing this game for years. I’ve been through this stuff more than once over the years. They work on the government payroll and have no fear of retribution. The father who is suing will only be recieving money from the tax payers him included after all he is a tax payer. Nothing will happen to the people responsible. You have an organization that has no watch Dog to watch over them. They are the only court in the land that doesn’t answer to any one. The guy who wrote the guidelines on the California child support system is a former child support services employee because the top dogs who were supposed to set the guid lines couldn’t get it together to do it. And the guy who set it up also set the amount and also has a business to collect the so called delequent support and gets a percentage of every dollar he collects. Do you think this guy kept the support amount so low as to keep the percentage down? There well over 3000 plus laws on the books pertaining to child support and other issues concerning the children. How about emancipation? If the child doesn’t want to be your child they can have child services to help them and they will appoint a lawyer to seperate the child from the parent and they will trump up some so called good reason. I have no doubt there are good people in the system but you can bet there a plenty more who don’t care about the family unit and especially having fathers to be a part of it. Just a phone call is all that is needed! You will see that more child abuse happens in the costudy of the mother then with the father. OOPs I’m sorry I guess I let the cat out of the bag there. Or how about the fact on many occasions the child thrown in foster care is put a place worse than the one the were removed from just based on hear say. There is way to many dirty little secrets in the business. What needs to happen is the same thing to them as what they do to the families they have the case with. Maybe lose their children and so on, and deal with the same fear and desperation they put other people through. If there ever was a system that needs an overhaul is this one. And no one thinks so then the world is perfect and we should just let it all go and not say anything more about it. Every one knows this is a mess and it is beyond comprehension that we can’t fix it. There is two reasons I see the possible reasons we can’t. One we are all stupid. Or the organization is so morally and legaly corrupt There is only one way tocorrect it is but cleaning house completely and put in new people. And a legitment watch dog organization of endependent individuals like a group of parents to serve on the board for one year and then change to a different group of parents to watch over the courts. Say like a jury of people that take a case to review complaints and vote on it and they have only one day to decide. It would have to be a federal mandate because I don’t think the family courts would go along with it. Just an Idea.
A father that wants to be in his child’s life who is dealing with a mother that doesn’t want him in the child’s life has 2 options – fight to remain in the child’s life and she will (with the family law system’s help) drive him to bankruptcy, prison, the assylum, or the morgue, or abandon the child to save himself, but try to live with the anguish, shame, and guilt of that abandonment for the rest of his life. Thats the bottom line! The real shame is that these are the only options available to a father in a society that sees males as the cause of every problem from world hunger to domestic violence, to ingrown toenails. And, because this is the erroneously accepted view of males by every “sociologist”, “psychiatrist”, and “social worker” gathering “statistics” and doing “studies” , it makes these horrible things that are being done to them throught the family law system okay in the minds of the people making the decisions.
John Alvarez
j5alvr@aol.com
Youv’ve got that right. And to get them to talk about it, you can drag them by their heels to the microphone and they will scream bloody murder about privacy laws etc. They hide behind it and the families they are supposedly caring for and refusing to talk because they are hiding their lack of directions and dishonest tactics they play everyday. I’ve been through and I know guys now going through it. If you have your I’s and T’s crossed they play the old rope a dope game and will not deal with you head on. They start canceling appointments, stalling,. rescheduling and every thing else. Meanwhile the Lawyer money meter keeps going cachiiing! cachiiiing! For every dollar these family courts collect from the father for support, the county collects a dollar. So why would they set a support at a resonable order? That money goes into their bank and they get their raises. And they are not going to talk about it or anything else that’s why they through out the privacy rule. It’s like discrimination or racism. If disagree with some one who is a quote unquote minority your a racist. It is something to hide behind instead of dealing with the truth. If you can’t solve a problem with an already fragile marriage or or broken family you blame it on the father no matter what. It’s standard procedure. How in the hell is denying the child the benefit of the other parent beneficial to the child? It’s money and politices pure and simple.
wanito,
There are several schools of thought in “child welfare.” One side says we need to get the process done very quickly and get permanency for the child in as rapid form as possible, terminating parental rights in only about a year. They believe no child should be in long term foster care at all. They chould be adopted by a new family promptly, and basically cut all ties with the “bad parents.” This is the position of most folks who have no contact with the child welfare system, and don’t understand all of the complexities.
I have represented lots of children, and I always ask them the same question, “If you had a magic wand, and you could make your life any way you want it, what would you do?” They all, always, without a single exception, want a relationship with their parents (even when their parents have hurt them really bad).
I have personally supervised visitations in Pelican Bay Prison to ensure a child got to see his father at Christmastime. I didn’t do that for the father, I can assure you. The man is a heinous criminal. The boy just wanted to see his dad so bad, I couldn’t deny him that. I went into the situation with loads of judgment, as you can imagine. And guess what? You are right. It was apparent that this man, despite all of his shortcomings, loves his son with all his heart, and his son loves him.
So yes, I agree with you. The only time I have ever asked to stop visitation was when the parent fails to show on several occasions, because it hurts the kid so bad. But what I do instead is then set up tentative visitations with the parent and foster parent, so the kid doesn’t know about them unless the parent actually shows up.
By the way, when I am at work, my husband is caring for our infant son. He is the best dad! They have a relationship that is absolutely priceless, and frankly, I can’t imagine what would have to happen in our marriage that could make me be willing to disrupt that relationship down the road if we were ever to split.
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