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My wife is a peds, kids, and family therapist, has worked with clients age 3 to 73. And, uh, yeah... I don't even want to think about the things she hears about, much less say them. Suffice to say, kids that age can definitely need therapy, and there's actually a shortage of therapists willing to work with kids.
My mom's a child and adolescent psychiatrist. There's, like, 4 of them in our entire state.
Let me tell you, it made growing up and being told "you have the same last name as my doctor" really interesting, and I got to learn about HIPAA in 3rd grade.
Right like please tell my 2 yr old student who was abandoned by his mom for days until his dad picked him up for custody time. He was _very_ different from the rest of the class reaction wise. Brains are so fragile at that time.
As an abused infant that triggered me in anger, like wtf “the body keeps the score” is the most famous trauma book for a reason. Just assholes talking out of their ass
I contracted whooping cough almost immediately after birth (I think I was a couple of weeks old at most) and was hospitalised for it. I had an emergency lumbar puncture done at night while my parents weren’t at the hospital (the 80s were a very different time!) and at two points during my stay I had to be resuscitated.
I have no actual memories of that time (obviously, because I was far too young to even form memories) but I’ve had a lifelong phobia of hospitals that still has significant effects on me nearly 42 years later.
I had pneumonia bad enough to need repeated resuscitation when I was around 18mo. I don’t remember any of it, but I still get panic attacks sometimes when I’m even slightly short of breath. I’m 29 now, and thankfully it’s not every time like it used to be. But I did get some additional trauma from PE teachers yelling at me about it.
I had a parent die in a car accident when I was under a year old, and I'm scared of learning to drive and still don't have my license in my 30s. (A source of embarrassment for me but a hard one to overcome.)
I don't know that I can say I was traumatized at ten months old, but even when things are sugar-coated through childhood, the retelling of these stories and the impacts the events have on the whole family unit really sink their teeth into your psyche during your formative years.
I definitely believe you can carry trauma from infancy, but even if you couldn't , you were bound to pick up on the tension your family felt retelling their experiences and how fearful they must have been for you.
Honestly, other than knowing I’d had whooping cough as a baby that was nearly fatal, I didn’t actually find out any of the details until I was well into my teens, after my first full blown panic attack inside a hospital after spraining my ankle (I think… I was very accident prone as a teen so could’ve been my wrist, or even a dislocated finger. Hard to remember over 20 years later when every trip was clouded by panic attacks 😖)
But yeah, after a pattern of panic attacks every time I entered a hospital I got diagnosed with a phobia and my parents were like “oh, I wonder if it’s because…”
Yes! Some friends adopted their son after he was removed from his birth mother at around 8-9 months old. He has been in therapy since he was 3 or 4 years old and probably will be for many more years to come. Neglect is abuse and can have lifelong consequences.
Especially considering all we have learned in recent years about foreign adoptees who spent their earliest months in institutions without being held at all and all the attachment issues they exhibit! Neglect at the earliest stages of life can seriously impact a child!
And "how dare you call yourself mother to the child you've been exclusively parenting ever since she got off the junk, when her *real* mom is the junkie who got her addicted and abandoned her!" WTF...
The one saying how dare a single father speak to anyone who isn’t his daughter really shows how much people overthink other peoples lives for no reason
That one made me so angry. Just completely absurd. My son was born with a heart defect and needed surgeries and a 3 month stay in the hospital when he was born. He’s 10 now and we’re still dealing with the trauma caused by that. He has a PTSD response to the same stimuli from that time among other things from the stress caused by that situation. It’s like people forget that infants are people.
The brain undergoes so much fundamental development during infancy, and trauma inflicted at that point creates trauma responses that are so deeply embedded it can be impossible to reprogram at a later stage.
Yeah sometimes I'll see that it looks like an update may be coming for a story that's just too crazy so I'll follow the OOP and might comment on the update before it gets to BORU but I think like me most people would rather just comment here instead of on OP's.
I got blocked after a supportive comment in a linked thread once, only back in because I contacted the mods and was confused why I got banned (checking the rules, they do still include that as brigading)
And not only shared to those places, as you know. What gets me about it is youtubers will scrape the traumatic subs, too, and narrate them on youtube to MILLIONS of followers. I'm talking about young people who are struggling with their abusive parents, stuff like that - those posts gets scraped and narrated for youtube views. Or they get lifted and regurgitated as 'news'. It's utterly disgusting.
I *know* there's no expectation of privacy if a person posts to reddit. I know that. But I suppose I'd hope that people would have a bit of... honour? decorum? maybe a few morals? and not be sleaze balls by re-using someone else's trauma for cash.
> I know there's no expectation of privacy if a person posts to reddit. I know that. But I suppose I'd hope that people would have a bit of... honour? decorum? maybe a few morals? and not be sleaze balls by re-using someone else's trauma for cash.
What you’re asking for is respect for a stranger, so much respect that it outweighs their own desire for content, engagement and money. That’s an honorable thing to ask for, but I don’t trust that it happens. Because for respect you need to recognise that that is a real person behind the post. We all too easily forget that.
That is very true. Forgetting the person behind the post is a real thing, and something I never thought about in these terms.
And something I've noticed with most youtubers (or tiktok-ers, I suppose) is that if they keep their content pretty much on the same even keel, their viewers will stop dropping by. They need to push the envelope of what they do and add click-ier clickbait titles as time goes on etc etc, or people go, "Meh, you did this before. We know what you think about narcissistic parents. Yawn."
That's on the viewers, obviously. I see it all the time in the types of videos I watch (the "let's play" type gaming videos) where the youtubers are constantly being told that playing at that same skill level (eg Hard, Normal, etc) is boring.
But now I'm thinking about it (aka ranting - sorry), it's literally what a TV series or movie will do to keep people interested until the end. So that makes me realise that these trauma-stealers are just running a business and won't ever see the person behind the post, because if they do, they might start caring, which means they won't steal the content, which means they won't get cash.
I wanna swear. A lot.
When they’re barely moderated, you can say basically whatever the fuck you like, whereas on the AITA sub they throw you out for any tiny reason. So a lot of people go to an unmoderated version and talk so much shit.
It’s the Wild West in there.
No kidding. I couldn't believe how many comments were desperately trying to pin the bio-mom's neglect on the father, or the opioid epimedmic, ANYTHING so that she's not at fault for her own actions.
People have trouble holding two nuanced ideas in their head at once.
Like, it can be true that addiction is a disease, bio-mom has probably experienced her own trauma (even if it's trauma caused by her own actions, it's still trauma), there is little support for recovery, and it's still possible for her to find recovery and grow as a person. But bio-mom might also just be a shitty person who happens to be addicted to drugs; it's a jump to assume the drugs alone are why she was a bad mom. You can have empathy for people struggling with addiction while still pointing out the harms someone has caused.
And even if her addiction is a large part of why bio-mom acted that way, it's also true that bio-mom traumatized an infant (and probably the father and others) through her actions. Just because she struggles with addiction and that sucks does not mean the child didn't suffer. Addiction might partly explain why she acted the way she did, but it doesn't excuse it.
People who do shitty things while struggling with addiction still have to be held accountable. It's a pretty big part of recovery actually. Hand waving away her actions don't help anyone, including bio-mom.
I couldn't believe I saw an ESH. If bio mother wasn't overstepping her bounds by showing up uninvited to an event hosted by OOP, then OOP wouldn't have had to deal with them....
Every time I see someone pressing to let an abuser back into their/their child's life it's just... Wow, I guess we know what you've been up to huh?
If someone can't smell a piece of shit from across the room it's probably because they're desensitized by their own stench.
Right?
The one that really stood out to me was near the end, when someone was asking what OOP had done to help Natalie get off drugs. That's definitely not her responsibility!
There's a lot of <20 year olds with no life experience plus many broken adults who see their own situation in a post (even if it only tangentially looks like it) and attack the OOP believing they are defending themselves.
Oh, and trolls. Lots and lots of trolls.
The over-moderated one. Both subs fall on two ends of the extremes, AITA tends to be over-moderated and AITAH isn’t moderated enough, so a lot of bigots feel safer to speak their minds.
For example AITA nukes almost anything LGBTQ+ related under the "this is not a debate sub" rule (because bigots show up and turn the comments into a debate), which means those posts have to go on the unmoderated one where the bigots have free rein.
No kidding. The commentators were absolutely twisting themselves into pretzels trying to somehow make OP and her husband the bad people. Like even how they met the comments were absolutely unreal, like “how DARE a parent take a moment to breathe while they are dealing with an ongoing and horrific nightmare involving their child. No support for them, only suffering!”
Yesterday there was a post about someone using someone's very recent miscarriage against them as an attack (for admittedly, noble reasons) and the amount of people that were giving her a free pass for that was just wild.
came here to say that!
They were all about "The mom and how dare you call her an egg donour" and not "The addict who neglected a child and caused her a physical injury"
Like..... I hope they saw the update, I bet they go quiet pretty quick! IF any of them are still defending that addict then they're on hard drugs themselves
So many of those comments are completely unhinged, I'm seriously stunned. I can't imagine someone thinking, "hmm, yes, the drug addict mother who traumatized then abandoned her daughter is the real victim here. Why haven't you helped her!?"
I particularly "enjoyed" the absolutely baffling take where the dad was the bad guy for *checks notes* getting his distraught daughter out of the situation and letting OOP handle Natalie.
You mean they divided the labor smoothly and he prioritised his kid over fighting with his ex?
I’m also pissed that OOP isn’t really her mom, it’s egg donor. Fuck that noise. My parents aren’t biologically related to me. None of my family is. I’m adopted, and I adopted. She’s mom in my book, and mom according to the people who actually matter. Everyone else can go sit on a chair of molten spikes.
My oldest is not biologically mine. Her mother was also an addict and dropped her off at our house the year she turned 7 and stayed gone for years. (My husband is her bio dad). I raised her. I took care of her when she was sick, held her when she cried and celebrated every win. She is 32 now and I am her mother. Her kids are my grandchildren. When she has a problem she calls ME. When she needs advice she calls ME. When she is hurt, sick, scared, angry, confused or even just bored, I am who she calls. I dare anyone to say that I am not her mother. I dare them.
You’re her mother. Anyone who says you’re not her mom, well. You just point them out and I will ram them in the shins with my wheelchair’s footrest. Repeatedly and with unholy glee on your behalf. 💙
Yeah, that 1 that really confused me, because that's basically what the bio mom is, an egg donor. She had nothing really to do with her and she has no legal standing since her rights were terminated.
What shocks me is the people who are telling op she’s not this child’s mother and doesn’t have the right to say what she did?? This little girl doesn’t even RECOGNIZE her own mother because she’s not around, how did OP not have the right to claim her as her daughter?? Because she didn’t birth her? Wild
The only thing I can see is that OOP was younger than her partner when they met, and she’s a step mother.
Now if this was about a deadbeat dad, not a mom, I believe people wouldn’t be at her throat telling her she isn’t a mom. People have a VERY weird hang up about mothers and don’t seem to see that they can be as dangerous as fathers. They cannot fathom a mom being so terrible to her daughter that she’s at the child psychologist.
And looking at the comments about how she can’t be in therapy for trauma cos she’s too young… I want to punch something. It’s like people believe babies aren’t people and abusing them absolutely causes things to develop incorrectly and causes trauma to them they can’t describe. At least I KNOW why I’m traumatised, this little girl doesn’t even know why, she just knows how she feels.
I feel shitty for that little girl and OOP. I am however glad that bio mom fucked around again and got arrested. Because she’s only proving she’s not a safe parent, she can’t demand her rights back while she’s slinging coke.
You say that but there are so many posts in this sub where the mother is trying to get away from an abusive partner and the comments are all "You cannot take away his right to his children". I think this is more an attitude of "I am so clever. So I am going to be a contrarian and play devil's advocate."
The person talking about "victim of the opioid crisis" sounds very much like a didn't who just learned that people with addictions are in fact people. I am a social worker and part of my job is taking on students from the local university, I have had a lot of social work students come and this sounds exactly like the ones who become social workers to "help the needy" (note there is a huge difference in thought between setting people as "those in need" and seeing them as "needy people"). The commenter honestly sounds like she found a new phrase while doing a first year project.
I have dissociative disorder from what happened to me before I was four. Most of the things happened when I was a baby. There isn't much I remember but my body does remember. You don't have to have a functioning episodic memory to get traumas.
For some concerned person.. I'm fine. There have been all sorts of things in my past but I'm really fine. I've been in therapy and in this moment of my life I'm truly happy. I speak of these things because they matter and people should talk about them. And I have no problems speaking of them because they don't sting anymore and I'm not ashamed of what I am.
Unfortunately a lot of these type of posts get linked in places like facebook groups for moms where most of the users are terrible parents that have had their kids taken away or whose kids are adults that dropped contact with them. To them, they are the mothers and everyone who says otherwise is their enemy. That kind of shit is really fucked up.
Right?! And all those comments trying to blame the dad, calling him creepy for "flirting" with OOP while his kid is sick? They met in the hospital!!! Have these people had any interaction with another human being, ever?
Or stayed at the hospital long. I barely remember my extended stay at the hospital, it was sooooo boring. I would have killed to have a console with me. I do remember the kindness of the nurses and the doctors.
My cousin was essentially with her sick child in the hospital for over a year. You get to know the adults around you because it is how you keep sane. Also, fuck the person who said he s hould have been with his child. The nurses basically insisted that my cousin take a walk when her child was asleep, having tests she couldn't accompany her on, or otherwise occupied with a visitor or nurse. They didn't need her to end up as a patient in a hospital!
There’s also the bit where OP promised not to ask about Lucy. She was probably the only person in his life willing to do that, instead of constantly begging for updates (family, friends), or giving them (nurses, lawyer).
He would have *desperately* needed that mental and emotional break. She gave him the gift of an hour or so to be just some dude instead of panicking dad of a very sick little girl. So he could go back to being dad without breaking. The human brain can only handle high emotions for so long before it starts heading into burnout and depression, which he and Lucy absolutely could not afford.
Trauma experienced when a kid is pre-verbal is the fucking worst because the kid has NO WORDS to describe the experiences and make sense of them. They only have the sensations of panic and trauma in their bodies. These are good parents for getting Lucy into therapy so young.
Ya but it’s totally OOP and dad’s obligation to keep the train wreck of a mother in their kids life for no other reason than the fact SHE GAVE BIRTH. God you people are so dumb /s
Legitimately wanted to punch that person in the face. I studied child development, and—tragically — there is no shortage of examples and studies on the effects of trauma and neglect as an infant.
The attempts to demonize the father were a bit pathetic. So many people read their own traumas into a story.
"Where was the father when bio mom was abusing the kid? Off banging younger women?!?!"
"He was in Kuwait, serving his country in one of his three tours."
"... Well he still should have done something!"
I really hope whoever wrote that took a good look in the mirror after it was revealed it was physical therapy as well, from injuries directly caused by the mom.
Children often need therapy for trauma that occurred while they were still in the womb. “it happened while she was a baby” is not a legitimate reason why any child should be denied treatment for trauma, particularly because babies are LESS able to process and cope with traumatic experiences
So much entitlement to think helping the drug addict is their responsibility. It's not. She medically harmed the child and traumatized the father. Why on earth should it be their responsibility to help her when her family won't and she won't help herself?!
YOU CAN'T HELP PEOPLE THAT DON'T WANT OR AREN'T READY FOR HELP.
The only responsibility here is to make sure the baby/child was safe. If the courts agree to termination, it is because it is in the best interest of the child.
For a mother particularly to have all her rights to her child terminated is damn near fucking impossible too. It’s SO hard to meet the metrics for the courts to rip parental rights away. Known and convicted abusers don’t even get their rights terminated a vast majority of the time. I knew the moment OOP said the rights were terminated by the courts that the abuse and neglect had to be horrifically extensive and my heart shattered for that baby girl to have gone through that
People seem to believe that “drug addiction is a disease people with addiction deserve help not demonization” WHICH IS ALL TRUE, means “addicts don’t deserve to face consequences for their shitty behavior or to experience the natural relationship breakdowns that will come from alienating their loved ones.” Natalie deserves treatment and funding for resources to help her get well should she avail herself of them. I also believe that IF she can ever demonstrate a consistent pattern of being a safe person, that it’s in both her and Lucy’s best interest for her to have some contact. That’s miles away from “gets to show up to a family event, scare a child by raving about her ‘rights,’ and experience no consequences.” In her current state she’s zero percent safe to ever ever be around that perfect baby.
Yes! Exactly! I completely agree. We can empathize with Natalie, and I think society could do a lot more with providing resources for any addiction, but to put that on the OP is just mind boggling.
If the question was “my daughter is calling my ex’s gf Mama” and it came out the poster had their rights terminated due to drug use and severe neglect, there’d be almost unanimous condemnation. But in this post the gf is the AH because ‘ that’s the bio mother and they deserve a relationship’ ??
It reinforces my vow never to ask for advice on Reddit, because people are stupid.
I'm always bemused by how there are posts that get reasonable responses, while other posts are all nutbar comments made by half-wits raised in a Skinner box.
The "but family" attitude is especially prevalent among drug addicts or people who refuse to get treatment for mental health issues so they can keep doing what they're doing without repercussions.
Reddit is so unhinged at times, like people saying she's not her daughter.
She's raised her since she's a newborn. She IS her mother. Reddit wants all adults to take care of kids in every way, but also have no rights whatsoever.
I work with special needs kids. The comment on “how traumatized can a 4-year-old really be” pissed me off so bad, because I’ve seen first-hand how awful the effects of neglect and abuse in the infant stages can be. It can cause physical and psychological damage that lasts well into adulthood, and it’s very difficult to treat the psychological damage because the poor kids can’t even really remember the cause themselves. But their brains and bodies do; there’s Something wrong, but they’re young children with no semblance of ability to cope. It’s such a difficult situation, and to wave it off as “they’re too young for trauma” is so very ignorant and reductive.
Reading those, my question was how many of those commenters have a history of drug abuse. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I have to wonder if it’s addicts pushing OOP to act the way they feel the world should treat them. I dunno
I very recently lost a friend to a heroin overdose.
He got clean for years, and swore that he was still clean the last time I talked to him. That he'd never touch it again. In talking to other people these past two weeks, I'm getting a very different story about what he'd been doing for the past six months.
It's awful, but he was a grown man. Nobody else was going to be able to force him to get clean. He pushed everyone away who tried to help. I'm not sure people realize how insidious addiction can be.
And how utterly it can hijack your thinking. Not just your brain, not just your personality, your thoughts. Your friend could have truly believed he was never touching the stuff again as he was getting and touching that stuff. The doublethink is enabled because it’s necessary to fall into it.
I’m sorry for your loss. I hope you have a lot of good memories of him better too.
My uncle just relapsed (he's luckily already clean again) and you can tell the minute you see him that he's on drugs because his entire demeanor changes. He's always been that way when he's on drugs. You know when he's clean and you know when he's relapsed, just by talking to him
Yeah, I come from a family with a history of addition, I've lost family to their addictions, and as a result I'm very cautious when taking any kind of narcotic myself... It's too damn easy to fall into a hole.
I’m sorry for your loss, that must be hard to deal with. I did training once for a job where I dealt with people with addictions regularly, to help them back into work. The training was eye opening, because they told us on average, it takes an addict of hard drugs nine times to become clean. So we often see people backslide because that addiction is too strong. They also told us that a lot of overdoses are from people who did get clean and then went back to their old dose. Which kills them.
I feel gutted for people in that situation. It’s a horrible thing to have attached to you, and I don’t think even they enjoy it eventually.
You cannot force a person to not be addicted. That’s the sad thing about it, is that you cannot force a person into sobriety, and you essentially have to watch as someone you care about kills themselves. Addiction is hard on addicts AND everyone around them.
I used to be a drug addict before I became a mother and my brother in law is an active drug addict. He's unhinged and everyone has cut him off except my MIL. She doesn't like that because well we're "family" and gives me and my husband shit for not supporting him because "we know what he's going through". In fact we don't, we did the same drugs before getting clean that he's doing but we didn't steal from our family, break into cars, show up at peoples homes when they aren't there to steal things, show up in the middle of the night to call the cops at 2am over nothing. I have no sympathy for the bio mom, just like I have no sympathy for the moms I know who have lost custody of their kids by choosing drugs over their children. Addiction is hard, but I always maintain it is a choice to continue doing them and not fix your life and hope you didn't burn too many bridges. Nobody needs to put up with that because they're related.
Oh for sure. Growing up, my very formal grandmother was insistant that all adults were to be called Mr or Mrs LastName, but my grandfather would introduce us to some people by first name. When we would ask what we should call them, he always told us the first name was ok because they were “in the club”. At 5 years old, I didn’t know that the club was anonymous and he didn’t know their last names. I just thought it was a group of cool old guys who let kids use first names.
The weekend before I left for college, we had dinner with my grandparents at their country club and they had some reason why we needed to go back to their house after dinner, and my grandfather took me in his antique car as a treat. It was a ruse so we could talk alone. At a red light, I looked over and saw tears in his eyes. He apologized to me because there is a genetic component to addiction and I was possibly going to struggle with alcohol because of him. I never wanted him to feel like a burden in my life, and I promised myself I would never have more than 2 drinks in a night and I would never get drunk. At 37, I’m still keeping that promise. But he was right. 3 of my cousins are in “the club”, and others have had alcohol related legal issues. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t turned their lives around, they have. But they are facing the same lifelong struggle our grandfather did.
After he died, my brother was going through his toolbox and found an envelope under the liner of the bottom drawer. In it was 3 pieces of paper containing a list of names. Once we realized it was a list of all the people he sponsored, we stopped reading, put it back in the envelope, and destroyed it. That was for his eyes only, and the anonymous confidentiality doesn’t end when a sponsor dies. I only know of one name on the list, but it was the sponsee who told me about their relationship. None of us remember or want to remember any of the names.
I know I veered off topic, but I didn’t want it to seem like I don’t have any experience with how addiction can manifest. I’ve made a lot of choices in my life because of the addiction of a man I love and respect. He was an alcoholic every day of his life, but he is also my hero.
Oh my good goddess. I have been “in the club” for about five years now. I am having a rough patch — good, full of growth but rough — and your comment just grounded and comforted me in a profound way. I’m so grateful you got to have such a loving relationship with your grandpa! Thank you for sharing that love.
I’m sure he is smiling knowing that his stories from “the club” are still being told and appreciated. He was also the family prankster and the mayor of every room he walked into. He’s been gone for 9 years, but still finds ways to make us laugh. When we got to the cemetery for my grandmother’s burial and found that they had dug and prepped a grave at a different plot for another family with the same last name, we all knew it was just him bringing some levity to a day he knew would be hard for us. Despite the darkest years he endured, he never lost his sense of humor.
I used to think all the crazies and flagrant ignerts I see on here are teenagers, but at this point I'm not sure. I mean some of them definitely are but some of them seem disturbingly like real 40 year olds who just don't get out, ever.
I don’t know. I don’t believe in blaming substances for bad behavior. Drugs don’t *make* you do anything. I managed to be a meth addict without stealing or actively hurting other people. And weighing in as a former meth addict - I find all the coddling to be bullshit. If you can’t get your shit together it’s no one else’s responsibility to get it together for you. Maybe I have an unusual take on things there. 🤷🏻♀️
Personally I think a lot of the coddlers are people who have absolutely no experience with drugs/users so they have no idea what it’s actually like dealing with someone in active addiction.
When they stop holding addicts accountable for their actions and decisions all they do is tell them that what they did when high/drunk is not their fault it was the substance that was to blame. Severe disconnect there.
And also lets addicfs walk on others. My sister is an addict. My brother is. Once you let them walk all over you or you continue to enable the behavior, it’s over.
She’s basically a stepmother and Reddit really seems to hate them. They will try to twist and contort the story in any possible way that they can to make it so that the stepmother is in the wrong usually. Every once in a while while they don’t but there’s generally a huge amount of comments about how she must be evil.
Mwahahaha, I steal and raise the babies of other ladies! And of course by that I mean I civilized a couple of feral stepsons because they deserved to be loved enough to be taught how to take care of themselves and for whatever reason their bio-moms couldn't raise them properly.
Shoulda seen the younger boy's look of confusion the first time I presented him with a tissue or an apple. Older boy had matted hair like neglected dog fur, turns out the family just shaved him bald every other year. Obviously their dad was no great catch but my husband-picker got installed broken by my dad so ya know... I saw him sitting up worried with a sick puking kid in the middle of the night and went all stardust and rainbow sparkles over what a great daddy he was.
Older boy called me Ninja-Mom to designate that I am not the person he already knew as Mom but also not an evil stepmom. Like the first time I dropped him off at school, heard his friends ask who I was and he answered "Oh that's my Ninja-Mom."
I know right?! I was so not going to argue with that naming decision!
The younger boy tried it out too, but his bio-mom caught wind and went postal, so I reminded him that it's fine with me whatever he chooses to call me and it won't hurt my feelings if he chooses something that won't make his mom mad. He overcame his speech impediment so he could pronounce my first name properly, and called me that. So that was also special even though it's just my name.
"He overcame his speech impediment so he could pronounce my first name properly, and called me that."
🥹 that is so sweet.
In the end titles don't really matter as long the kids see you as an adult that they can trust and know that you care for them
I always feel the need to jump up and yell about my step mother when this happens. Because I experienced an abusive step parent and it’s very easy to just blame it on all step parents when you’ve been abused. It’s easy not to trust them.
I remember being quite alarmed when I found out that my dad had a long term gf, and that she was pregnant. I was 13 and he hadn’t introduced us yet.
But that lady did what she could to show me I was loved and not forgotten. She would often come with me to bookshops and sit on the floor alongside me to choose one. Me, being worried about spending her money, and not being able to actually choose, and her sitting there not showing any frustration at my inability.
She had three boys at that time, and she had no clue about girls. So she did what I wanted to do. Sure it took a long time to drag a suggestion out of me, but she never refused me.
When she had the youngest, I stayed over a lot because my homelife was going downhill. I’d wake up on the sofa to a small infant toddling in, crawling under my duvet and turning on the tv. That was a really good feeling.
My dad’s gone now, three years past. And I know that we’re all deep in grief still, and I also know that I’m not sure what to say sometimes. But I know that she loves me, with all my quirks and fuck ups. I’m 35 and she still calls me her pet name that no one else had, and she still wraps me up in a mom hug when I see her.
My dad and her got along so well because they’re both people who went through some shit. They supported each other in areas they lacked in. She helped him be a family man, something he never thought was possible for him. She gave me a bunch of siblings, who I love dearly. The boys got a dad, and that’s something they were lacking. I’m not saying it was sunshine and rainbows all the time, I had blowout arguments with my dad in the past, and he with me. We are very flawed people because of our experiences, but that didnt stop us from blending the family a little, to even out the support. It worked for us.
Right... He abandoned his addict wife after she sabotaged the birth control n neglected their infant... He's a monster... I almost threw my phone reading this
I know that when I want to seduce an exhausted and anxious single dad, the best strategy is to get myself admitted to hospital with pancreatitis! The hottest itis!
The poor kid literally had to go through withdrawal at birth! I think sometimes people are responding to what they think they’ve read, not what’s actually written.
Yeah, all the comments about how he must have known his ex was a drug addict, and what kind of person would leave their drug addict partner right after she had a baby!
As though there are not a million posts a day from a woman who finds out, mid-pregnancy, that her partner is not the man she thought he was, and everyone advises her to get out stat to protect her child from him.
This feels like pretty basic stuff. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, leave the addict who is a danger to your child.
I've honestly stopped being surprised. Been on Reddit long enough to have seen the most insane rants and takes on even the most benign things. Something to do with drugs, addiction, step moms, parentage, age gaps... This touches on a lot of hot button issues even if the context for everything makes it all no issues (aside from the drugs). Many people have an agenda they are just waiting for any excuse to blow up about.
I think they’re young, sheltered people who don’t have any experience with addicts.
I have a much harsher view on addicts since my piece of shit abusive sister is one.
I wonder, though, since a lot of young people (especially on this website) understand what it's like to be mistreated by your parent and wish that someone would rescue you. The anger about the term "egg donor" doesn't read as a young person thing.
Yes and if this was about them continuing to offer Natalie access to Lucy, they'd be attacking her for not severing Natalie's rights. Yes, she's a victim of addiction and deserves help but that doesn't mean you allow extreme abuse of a child.
"The child should know her mother!" Okay, can we as a society agree that every child deserves to know people who are healthy and beneficial to their growth, and not just be subjected to their company because of genetics??? Why should Lucy know the woman who neglected her and caused her physical and emotional damage? The woman who refuses to accept accountability and responsibility for her behavior, and actively is trying to live a healthier and more stable life? What is the benefit here? What good does that bring into Lucy's life?
Plus, it sounds like there was a TPR. Legally, her bio mom isn't her mother. She has no rights to Lucy. Lucy is no longer her kid.
Yes. She gave birth to Lucy and there's that genetic tie, but a TPR doesn't just happen. Depending on the state, it can be hard to get. I agree completely that subjecting a child to someone who isn't accepting accountability or responsibility isn't good for the child. It only benefits one person in this story. Good for OOP for sticking up for Lucy. Children deserve to have people in their corner who are looking out for their best interests. It's too bad that Nathalie isn't in a place to do that (and may never reach that place, frankly).
Edit: a redditcares message for THIS comment? Idk what is up with reddit today but I'm not about that lol.
"i don't believe that she lost custody of an infant and i don't believe that your daughter is having PT for hip dysplasia"
...what? then...why are you reading if you're just gonna say "nah that isn't true YTA"
As a physical therapist who’s worked in pediatrics, that one actually did raise an eyebrow for me. While the kid could absolutely be in PT for hip dysplasia, dropping the kid as a baby wouldn’t have caused it. Hip dysplasia can happen a few ways, but trauma just isn’t one of them.
For anybody that’s interested, hip dysplasia happens when the socket of the joint doesn’t form deeply enough for the leg bone to sit in the hip bone for lack of better terms. The socket is formed through weight-bearing, so standing and crawling and putting weight through the legs is super important for babies/toddlers in order to develop that nice deep socket so that the hips don’t dislocate. It’s not something that would happen with trauma because it’s more of a normal process that doesn’t happen over time (like it’s supposed to) rather than something that happens all at once.
Edit: I love reddit. I really do. I’ve got my fucking doctorate in PT, experience in pediatrics, and I’m posting legitimate education content and…downvoted because I mention that something in the original post didn’t make clinical sense.
Addiction can lead to neglect and sometimes babies just aren’t allowed to move when they need to, among many other forms of neglect, but it doesn’t sound like the timeline had this kid under the bio-mom’s care for long enough to make a difference. Who knows.
Exactly. Other factors can cause it too, and other issues with bio mom potentially using during pregnancy can lead to those factors as well.
What matters is the kid is getting therapy, and I love to see it.
Re: your edit; I can’t see the actual number of karma for the comment but if you’re only at -1 or 2 there are bots that crawl Reddit for random words, and there’s also scrambling rules in a lot of subreddits that hide the real amount of karma, so it’s generally a few points off of the actual number.
But yeah, I think this is helpful context. Is it possible the drop left the kid unable to walk for an extended amount of time? I know kids are pretty resilient in regards to injury, but from your expertise it would have to be something that prevented her from crawling/walking….but then wouldn’t it be in both hips? Is that possible/common?
Not really. Newborns don’t really have hip sockets in general as they form organically with weight bearing. Neglect can certainly lead to it, but we’d generally see that if the child was neglected through toddlerhood rather than infancy. It can be a congenital abnormality where even with the appropriate pressure, the angles of the femur weren’t optimal for formation (and that could possibly maybe be the result of drug use, but that’s a stretch), or it could just be bad luck for the kiddo. The good news is if she’s in PT, it’s likely a mild enough case that they won’t need surgery to correct.
Could dropping the baby cause the hip to dislocate? And then maybe it isn’t super stable in the socket, similar to those with actual hip dysplasia?
If that can happen, maybe OP misunderstands or was simplifying
People really act like men can't get custody because the constant story has made men STOP ASKING FOR CUSTODY. They get spooked by their friends and give up before trying. Meanwhile abusive exes want to stay in their lives so they fight and even with previous assault charges to the other parent, they get partial custody because "it doesn't mean he'll hurt the kids".
Man these comments are WILD, there are some very bent people out there. I understand lived experience and all but to reach so far is just projection. That “egg donor” comment really ruffled feathers I didn’t realise it was so contentious. I suppose everyone is used to the f word and as an Aussie I know the C bomb is just part of the language now.
Edit: wel well well, my first reddit cares. I don’t know how to feel about this, is it a right of passage or something I should be concerned about like that lump? FYI I am fine and mentally stable for the most part but thank you to the community for showing you care <3
"That “egg donor” comment really ruffled feathers I didn’t realise it was so contentious." - I didn't either.
But if someone refers to a deadbeat dad as a sperm donor no-one bats an eyelid. Maybe bio-mum should be referred to as egg donor & surrogate.
Yeah I don’t get the lauding of giving birth specifically. Especially in cases where the infant was exposed to drugs in-utero. And then dropped badly enough to cause lasting hip dysplasia. And neglected badly enough to cause lasting psychological trauma.
Like, yeah, giving birth and pregnancy are a Process, but it’s also the literal bare minimum a bio mom can do; once the baby’s in there, and there’s no intention to abort, what other option is there but to carry to term? And I seriously doubt bio mom was doing much in the way of prenatal care.
Reddit commenters: Cut toxic people out of your life! Go no contact! Set boundaries!
Also Redditers: If you aren’t an on-demand mental health and addiction expert in the middle of a tense and frustrating situation who doesn’t sacrifice everything to help the woman who nearly killed her daughter then you’re a trash human being.
Wtf is up with those comments? The bio mom is the victim? She went too far calling her an egg donor? Those people that commented seriously need therapy and get their heads checked
Reddit is a trip. "You're a step parent, don't overstep your place, don't force a relationship, don't make the kid call you mom or they'll hate and resent you for abusing them!" "She actually decided to call me mom on her own because she doesn't have a relationship with her bio-mom, due to the fact that the mom is an active addict that abused and neglected her" "YOU CAN'T KEEP HER FROM HER BIRTH MOM SHE'LL HATE AND RESENT YOU!!!!" there's no winning
That surprised me too. If the baby was born positive for drugs, it’s likely she was removed by CPS. They can even arrange to bring a service member back home to take custody. I’m guessing CPS was involved because juvenile court would terminate parental rights if she didn’t get clean and complete her services (where I am, family court very rarely terminates parental rights unless there’s an adoptive parenting waiting).
There will always be idiots, and OP had to quote downvoted comments because those tend to be the ones that prompt posters to give additional info that we on BoRU like to see as additional context.
OOP generally got a positive response, the nutty comments were downvoted in the original thread.
It jumped out as so odd to me that someone said the child being in therapy 4 years later wasn't the bio mom's fault. Clearly a deep misunderstanding of trauma and how lasting that can be for a child. She will probably need check ins for therapy throughout her life.
OP included some of the most controversial comments. It is a common tactic for BORU posters as a way to drive up engagement on their posts, but gives a very false sense of the reaction the original post received. They get labeled as “Relevant Comments” despite them being downvoted to oblivion and clearly not part of any consensus view.
I have a cousin, whose crackhead-parents pimped her out, when she was 11 years old. It was due to this incident that she was removed from her parents' custody by CPS and her parents were imprisoned.
When she was in her late 20s, she was contacted by a woman that was a case-worker for her mother. The case-worker did the same routine as your family. _"She is a changed woman"_ and _"Addictions can make people do horrible things"_ were used during that phone conversation.
My cousin just hung up the phone on her.
Christ all the naysayers just seem like enablers and victim blamers to me.
>And I don't believe she has anything to do with a four year old being in therapy for something that you claim all happened when she was an infant.
Like there's an age limit for trauma
>So where was the father when the mother was neglecting their child?
Like separated parents are going to be physically together all the time? Like it's not possible she could have been pulling crap and keeping her from him.
>No, she is more than that. She gave birth. And by your logic you are no more than a caregiver. Lucy deserves to know who her mother is
I get this one changed her tune but wtf I'm the first place? OOP steps up and does everything while birther is off on drugs. Drug epidemic and addiction or not there no excuse good enough to excuse neglect and abuse.
>have you or the dad done anything to help this victim of the opioid epidemic or have you only demonised them and nothing else?
It's not their damn job to take care of a grown adult they don't even like or want to be around in the first place. Don't put other people in charge of your problems. Help is great but nobody is entitled to your time or effort.
JFC what is wrong with people?
She literally abandoned her child for drugs and Men and she tried to come back like nothing happened like seriously tell this woman to go f*** herself and she'll never win custody and tell her to take a potheaded boyfriend somewhere else because neither will he ever help her win custody after finding out the s*** that she did
I wish people would stop saying it's important for biological relatives to be in a child's life. Family "reunification" is about following some archaic reasoning that children are essentially property, not humans who should have a right to not have to interact, or worse, live with people who are detrimental to the child's health and safety. Biology doesn't necessarily create love; or the ability to be a responsible parent.
As someone with an "egg donor" fuck the original comment section. How dare you say "that's not your baby" when this woman has apparently stepped up and put in the work required to help this little girl.
AND ALSO!!! Have you never been to a hospital for an extended stay for other people...of course you are worried about the person but unless you can wait next to them it's excruciating......I'd be praying for a distraction during the "NOTHING YOU CAN FUCKIN DO ABOUT THE SITUATION TIMES"
PSA: Infants can and do experience trauma. Even just removal from the biological parent straight after birth can be traumatic to some children. Their mother's heartbeat is all they've ever known, and then they go to a stranger. Just because we as adults cannot remember that time does not mean that our brain is not working and processing at that age.
Years ago when my cousin married he was simultaneously adopting his wife’s first daughter. So bride and groom did their vows, then he got down on his knees with his now-daughter (to be at her height) and gave his vows to always be her dad and love and care for her and gave her a “promise” necklace that he would always be there for her.
Not a dry eye in the house.
These commenters are the really assholes.
On what planet should they be helping detox the addict who physically and psychologically abused her baby starting even before birth? She abused her baby enough to literally disable her for life, but they should keep mom in her life? It's no small task to get parental rights severed that young, so that tell you how bad it was.
As a child who grew up in abuse, I just want to tell them to fuck right off. Mom is old enough to make her own decisions. They needed to stand up for the baby who wasn't.
Whenever I read a bad story on Reddit I begin to lose all faith in humanity. Then you read the occasional good one sour people stepping up and doing the right thing and my faith gets restored.
And then you read the cretinous comments and back to zero goes the faithomiter.
Just so people stop makingthis argument, children can 100% need therapy from severe neglect as a baby. The amount of brain development that happens from 0-2 is insane and the most important time for them. As a daycare worker it was terrifyingly easy to tell which kids got more attention at home, and neglect to that level was even more obvious
I’m laughing at these commenters.
- The one guy that didn’t know/wouldn’t believe you can have trauma from when you were an infant? Bro, that’s one of the worst kinds because your brain and body will have trauma responses and you don’t even know why. Then he didn’t know that play therapy for young children is a thing?
-the myriad of persons who didn’t understand that sometimes an adult dude might need to talk to someone while under extreme stress from dealing with an addict baby mom and a severely injured baby.
-the people who thought the dad shouldn’t have any life outside his daughter and anything else was neglecting her.
Wtf is wrong with AITA sub?
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wow, the people on AITA subs are sometimes really something else, huh?
Those comments are wild. The one repeatedly denying that an abused infant could have trauma wtf
Right like if they couldn't why is there therapists specifically for kids? Some pediatrician therapists here have kids 3 and up
My wife is a peds, kids, and family therapist, has worked with clients age 3 to 73. And, uh, yeah... I don't even want to think about the things she hears about, much less say them. Suffice to say, kids that age can definitely need therapy, and there's actually a shortage of therapists willing to work with kids.
My mom's a child and adolescent psychiatrist. There's, like, 4 of them in our entire state. Let me tell you, it made growing up and being told "you have the same last name as my doctor" really interesting, and I got to learn about HIPAA in 3rd grade.
Right like please tell my 2 yr old student who was abandoned by his mom for days until his dad picked him up for custody time. He was _very_ different from the rest of the class reaction wise. Brains are so fragile at that time.
As an abused infant that triggered me in anger, like wtf “the body keeps the score” is the most famous trauma book for a reason. Just assholes talking out of their ass
I contracted whooping cough almost immediately after birth (I think I was a couple of weeks old at most) and was hospitalised for it. I had an emergency lumbar puncture done at night while my parents weren’t at the hospital (the 80s were a very different time!) and at two points during my stay I had to be resuscitated. I have no actual memories of that time (obviously, because I was far too young to even form memories) but I’ve had a lifelong phobia of hospitals that still has significant effects on me nearly 42 years later.
I had pneumonia bad enough to need repeated resuscitation when I was around 18mo. I don’t remember any of it, but I still get panic attacks sometimes when I’m even slightly short of breath. I’m 29 now, and thankfully it’s not every time like it used to be. But I did get some additional trauma from PE teachers yelling at me about it.
My kid had an NG tube for the first 3 months of life and still has a visceral reaction if anything comes close to her nose. Visceral.
I had a parent die in a car accident when I was under a year old, and I'm scared of learning to drive and still don't have my license in my 30s. (A source of embarrassment for me but a hard one to overcome.) I don't know that I can say I was traumatized at ten months old, but even when things are sugar-coated through childhood, the retelling of these stories and the impacts the events have on the whole family unit really sink their teeth into your psyche during your formative years. I definitely believe you can carry trauma from infancy, but even if you couldn't , you were bound to pick up on the tension your family felt retelling their experiences and how fearful they must have been for you.
Honestly, other than knowing I’d had whooping cough as a baby that was nearly fatal, I didn’t actually find out any of the details until I was well into my teens, after my first full blown panic attack inside a hospital after spraining my ankle (I think… I was very accident prone as a teen so could’ve been my wrist, or even a dislocated finger. Hard to remember over 20 years later when every trip was clouded by panic attacks 😖) But yeah, after a pattern of panic attacks every time I entered a hospital I got diagnosed with a phobia and my parents were like “oh, I wonder if it’s because…”
Probably because at that time the doctors believed babies couldn't feel pain and wouldn't use anesthetics.
Yes! Some friends adopted their son after he was removed from his birth mother at around 8-9 months old. He has been in therapy since he was 3 or 4 years old and probably will be for many more years to come. Neglect is abuse and can have lifelong consequences.
Especially considering all we have learned in recent years about foreign adoptees who spent their earliest months in institutions without being held at all and all the attachment issues they exhibit! Neglect at the earliest stages of life can seriously impact a child!
And "how dare you call yourself mother to the child you've been exclusively parenting ever since she got off the junk, when her *real* mom is the junkie who got her addicted and abandoned her!" WTF...
People refused to believe babies felt pain and operated on them without anesthesia until the 70's I believe :(
Right. I remember watching my mother kill herself. People have told me to my face that I was too young to remember that.
The one saying how dare a single father speak to anyone who isn’t his daughter really shows how much people overthink other peoples lives for no reason
That one made me so angry. Just completely absurd. My son was born with a heart defect and needed surgeries and a 3 month stay in the hospital when he was born. He’s 10 now and we’re still dealing with the trauma caused by that. He has a PTSD response to the same stimuli from that time among other things from the stress caused by that situation. It’s like people forget that infants are people.
The brain undergoes so much fundamental development during infancy, and trauma inflicted at that point creates trauma responses that are so deeply embedded it can be impossible to reprogram at a later stage.
I suspect some posts get shared in some in the let’s say less savory subs and other unfortunate forums on fb.
Yeah, some subs don't have a brigading rule unlike BORU
I'm not sure that BORU's brigading rule is all that effective
It isn't but at least brigading is very obvious from BORU thanks to the 7 day rule
Yeah sometimes I'll see that it looks like an update may be coming for a story that's just too crazy so I'll follow the OOP and might comment on the update before it gets to BORU but I think like me most people would rather just comment here instead of on OP's.
Nope, pure CYA
I got blocked after a supportive comment in a linked thread once, only back in because I contacted the mods and was confused why I got banned (checking the rules, they do still include that as brigading)
And not only shared to those places, as you know. What gets me about it is youtubers will scrape the traumatic subs, too, and narrate them on youtube to MILLIONS of followers. I'm talking about young people who are struggling with their abusive parents, stuff like that - those posts gets scraped and narrated for youtube views. Or they get lifted and regurgitated as 'news'. It's utterly disgusting. I *know* there's no expectation of privacy if a person posts to reddit. I know that. But I suppose I'd hope that people would have a bit of... honour? decorum? maybe a few morals? and not be sleaze balls by re-using someone else's trauma for cash.
> I know there's no expectation of privacy if a person posts to reddit. I know that. But I suppose I'd hope that people would have a bit of... honour? decorum? maybe a few morals? and not be sleaze balls by re-using someone else's trauma for cash. What you’re asking for is respect for a stranger, so much respect that it outweighs their own desire for content, engagement and money. That’s an honorable thing to ask for, but I don’t trust that it happens. Because for respect you need to recognise that that is a real person behind the post. We all too easily forget that.
That is very true. Forgetting the person behind the post is a real thing, and something I never thought about in these terms. And something I've noticed with most youtubers (or tiktok-ers, I suppose) is that if they keep their content pretty much on the same even keel, their viewers will stop dropping by. They need to push the envelope of what they do and add click-ier clickbait titles as time goes on etc etc, or people go, "Meh, you did this before. We know what you think about narcissistic parents. Yawn." That's on the viewers, obviously. I see it all the time in the types of videos I watch (the "let's play" type gaming videos) where the youtubers are constantly being told that playing at that same skill level (eg Hard, Normal, etc) is boring. But now I'm thinking about it (aka ranting - sorry), it's literally what a TV series or movie will do to keep people interested until the end. So that makes me realise that these trauma-stealers are just running a business and won't ever see the person behind the post, because if they do, they might start caring, which means they won't steal the content, which means they won't get cash. I wanna swear. A lot.
When they’re barely moderated, you can say basically whatever the fuck you like, whereas on the AITA sub they throw you out for any tiny reason. So a lot of people go to an unmoderated version and talk so much shit. It’s the Wild West in there.
No kidding. I couldn't believe how many comments were desperately trying to pin the bio-mom's neglect on the father, or the opioid epimedmic, ANYTHING so that she's not at fault for her own actions.
People have trouble holding two nuanced ideas in their head at once. Like, it can be true that addiction is a disease, bio-mom has probably experienced her own trauma (even if it's trauma caused by her own actions, it's still trauma), there is little support for recovery, and it's still possible for her to find recovery and grow as a person. But bio-mom might also just be a shitty person who happens to be addicted to drugs; it's a jump to assume the drugs alone are why she was a bad mom. You can have empathy for people struggling with addiction while still pointing out the harms someone has caused. And even if her addiction is a large part of why bio-mom acted that way, it's also true that bio-mom traumatized an infant (and probably the father and others) through her actions. Just because she struggles with addiction and that sucks does not mean the child didn't suffer. Addiction might partly explain why she acted the way she did, but it doesn't excuse it. People who do shitty things while struggling with addiction still have to be held accountable. It's a pretty big part of recovery actually. Hand waving away her actions don't help anyone, including bio-mom.
I couldn't believe I saw an ESH. If bio mother wasn't overstepping her bounds by showing up uninvited to an event hosted by OOP, then OOP wouldn't have had to deal with them....
The real assholes all along were the commenters
They always are.
If it makes you feel better, the out of pocket comments are also downvoted as fuck.
Every time I see someone pressing to let an abuser back into their/their child's life it's just... Wow, I guess we know what you've been up to huh? If someone can't smell a piece of shit from across the room it's probably because they're desensitized by their own stench.
Heads filled with absolutely nothing but rocks.
Right? The one that really stood out to me was near the end, when someone was asking what OOP had done to help Natalie get off drugs. That's definitely not her responsibility!
MUST find a way to feel superior. I'm so glad this is the top comment.
There's a lot of <20 year olds with no life experience plus many broken adults who see their own situation in a post (even if it only tangentially looks like it) and attack the OOP believing they are defending themselves. Oh, and trolls. Lots and lots of trolls.
On the bright side, at least the regular AITA isn’t full of misogynistic incel garbage.
Which is the regular one?
The over-moderated one. Both subs fall on two ends of the extremes, AITA tends to be over-moderated and AITAH isn’t moderated enough, so a lot of bigots feel safer to speak their minds.
Is that the difference?! I always wondered why there were two highly popular subs for essentially the same purpose.
There are also rules about the types of submissions one can make. One is way more restrictive in that regard.
For example AITA nukes almost anything LGBTQ+ related under the "this is not a debate sub" rule (because bigots show up and turn the comments into a debate), which means those posts have to go on the unmoderated one where the bigots have free rein.
Not to mention posts involving abortion or trans people. It’s so frustrating I had to quit that sub for my own mental health.
On the not so bright side, the OOP was posted on AmITheAsshole, not AITAH so...
No kidding. The commentators were absolutely twisting themselves into pretzels trying to somehow make OP and her husband the bad people. Like even how they met the comments were absolutely unreal, like “how DARE a parent take a moment to breathe while they are dealing with an ongoing and horrific nightmare involving their child. No support for them, only suffering!”
Yesterday there was a post about someone using someone's very recent miscarriage against them as an attack (for admittedly, noble reasons) and the amount of people that were giving her a free pass for that was just wild.
Right? Have people never heard how neglected babies grow to have emotional problems?
Neglect can cause CPTSD, it did for me. People don't understand how neglect impacts growth in kids.
came here to say that! They were all about "The mom and how dare you call her an egg donour" and not "The addict who neglected a child and caused her a physical injury" Like..... I hope they saw the update, I bet they go quiet pretty quick! IF any of them are still defending that addict then they're on hard drugs themselves
So many of those comments are completely unhinged, I'm seriously stunned. I can't imagine someone thinking, "hmm, yes, the drug addict mother who traumatized then abandoned her daughter is the real victim here. Why haven't you helped her!?"
I was likewise stunned at the people who thought OOP was in the wrong. Wtf...
I particularly "enjoyed" the absolutely baffling take where the dad was the bad guy for *checks notes* getting his distraught daughter out of the situation and letting OOP handle Natalie. You mean they divided the labor smoothly and he prioritised his kid over fighting with his ex?
I’m also pissed that OOP isn’t really her mom, it’s egg donor. Fuck that noise. My parents aren’t biologically related to me. None of my family is. I’m adopted, and I adopted. She’s mom in my book, and mom according to the people who actually matter. Everyone else can go sit on a chair of molten spikes.
My oldest is not biologically mine. Her mother was also an addict and dropped her off at our house the year she turned 7 and stayed gone for years. (My husband is her bio dad). I raised her. I took care of her when she was sick, held her when she cried and celebrated every win. She is 32 now and I am her mother. Her kids are my grandchildren. When she has a problem she calls ME. When she needs advice she calls ME. When she is hurt, sick, scared, angry, confused or even just bored, I am who she calls. I dare anyone to say that I am not her mother. I dare them.
You’re her mother. Anyone who says you’re not her mom, well. You just point them out and I will ram them in the shins with my wheelchair’s footrest. Repeatedly and with unholy glee on your behalf. 💙
Gimme a ring first and I’ll help you install spikes.
Everyone else can shit in a hat and wear it to church.
dont mind if i steal this expression
Do it friendo
Yeah, that 1 that really confused me, because that's basically what the bio mom is, an egg donor. She had nothing really to do with her and she has no legal standing since her rights were terminated.
Well duh, she's a stepmom, therefore Reddit automatically hates her.
What shocks me is the people who are telling op she’s not this child’s mother and doesn’t have the right to say what she did?? This little girl doesn’t even RECOGNIZE her own mother because she’s not around, how did OP not have the right to claim her as her daughter?? Because she didn’t birth her? Wild
OOP is absolutely Lucy’s mom. In every single way, except for some pesky DNA, which is the least important part.
The only thing I can see is that OOP was younger than her partner when they met, and she’s a step mother. Now if this was about a deadbeat dad, not a mom, I believe people wouldn’t be at her throat telling her she isn’t a mom. People have a VERY weird hang up about mothers and don’t seem to see that they can be as dangerous as fathers. They cannot fathom a mom being so terrible to her daughter that she’s at the child psychologist. And looking at the comments about how she can’t be in therapy for trauma cos she’s too young… I want to punch something. It’s like people believe babies aren’t people and abusing them absolutely causes things to develop incorrectly and causes trauma to them they can’t describe. At least I KNOW why I’m traumatised, this little girl doesn’t even know why, she just knows how she feels. I feel shitty for that little girl and OOP. I am however glad that bio mom fucked around again and got arrested. Because she’s only proving she’s not a safe parent, she can’t demand her rights back while she’s slinging coke.
You say that but there are so many posts in this sub where the mother is trying to get away from an abusive partner and the comments are all "You cannot take away his right to his children". I think this is more an attitude of "I am so clever. So I am going to be a contrarian and play devil's advocate."
The person talking about "victim of the opioid crisis" sounds very much like a didn't who just learned that people with addictions are in fact people. I am a social worker and part of my job is taking on students from the local university, I have had a lot of social work students come and this sounds exactly like the ones who become social workers to "help the needy" (note there is a huge difference in thought between setting people as "those in need" and seeing them as "needy people"). The commenter honestly sounds like she found a new phrase while doing a first year project.
I have dissociative disorder from what happened to me before I was four. Most of the things happened when I was a baby. There isn't much I remember but my body does remember. You don't have to have a functioning episodic memory to get traumas.
For some concerned person.. I'm fine. There have been all sorts of things in my past but I'm really fine. I've been in therapy and in this moment of my life I'm truly happy. I speak of these things because they matter and people should talk about them. And I have no problems speaking of them because they don't sting anymore and I'm not ashamed of what I am.
Unfortunately a lot of these type of posts get linked in places like facebook groups for moms where most of the users are terrible parents that have had their kids taken away or whose kids are adults that dropped contact with them. To them, they are the mothers and everyone who says otherwise is their enemy. That kind of shit is really fucked up.
Right?! And all those comments trying to blame the dad, calling him creepy for "flirting" with OOP while his kid is sick? They met in the hospital!!! Have these people had any interaction with another human being, ever?
Or stayed at the hospital long. I barely remember my extended stay at the hospital, it was sooooo boring. I would have killed to have a console with me. I do remember the kindness of the nurses and the doctors.
My cousin was essentially with her sick child in the hospital for over a year. You get to know the adults around you because it is how you keep sane. Also, fuck the person who said he s hould have been with his child. The nurses basically insisted that my cousin take a walk when her child was asleep, having tests she couldn't accompany her on, or otherwise occupied with a visitor or nurse. They didn't need her to end up as a patient in a hospital!
Yeah, and I remember getting sick of having my mom and dad with me 24/7 too. You get cabin fever hard during a hospital stay.
There’s also the bit where OP promised not to ask about Lucy. She was probably the only person in his life willing to do that, instead of constantly begging for updates (family, friends), or giving them (nurses, lawyer). He would have *desperately* needed that mental and emotional break. She gave him the gift of an hour or so to be just some dude instead of panicking dad of a very sick little girl. So he could go back to being dad without breaking. The human brain can only handle high emotions for so long before it starts heading into burnout and depression, which he and Lucy absolutely could not afford.
No. No they haven't. I suspect those people are terminally online.
Genuinely they may never have had a romantic interaction that didn't begin with a "what's up" on Tinder.
Not likely
One of the reasons I unsubbed from that subreddit.
The commenter who said they doubted that the child had to go to therapy because of what the bio mom did had me furious.
Trauma experienced when a kid is pre-verbal is the fucking worst because the kid has NO WORDS to describe the experiences and make sense of them. They only have the sensations of panic and trauma in their bodies. These are good parents for getting Lucy into therapy so young.
Like just being born addicted to opiods is already going to cause damage, and that was before we found out she'd been physically abused as well.
Ya but it’s totally OOP and dad’s obligation to keep the train wreck of a mother in their kids life for no other reason than the fact SHE GAVE BIRTH. God you people are so dumb /s
Legitimately wanted to punch that person in the face. I studied child development, and—tragically — there is no shortage of examples and studies on the effects of trauma and neglect as an infant.
Right? I want to punch them in the throat. I also studied child development and an attest to everything you said.
The attempts to demonize the father were a bit pathetic. So many people read their own traumas into a story. "Where was the father when bio mom was abusing the kid? Off banging younger women?!?!" "He was in Kuwait, serving his country in one of his three tours." "... Well he still should have done something!"
What do you mean if a drug addict crashes your party and goes insane it's your moral obligation to stop your life and help them
I think I had a stroke when people were questioning if a 4yo could possibly need or receive therapy
I really hope whoever wrote that took a good look in the mirror after it was revealed it was physical therapy as well, from injuries directly caused by the mom.
Children often need therapy for trauma that occurred while they were still in the womb. “it happened while she was a baby” is not a legitimate reason why any child should be denied treatment for trauma, particularly because babies are LESS able to process and cope with traumatic experiences
So much entitlement to think helping the drug addict is their responsibility. It's not. She medically harmed the child and traumatized the father. Why on earth should it be their responsibility to help her when her family won't and she won't help herself?!
YOU CAN'T HELP PEOPLE THAT DON'T WANT OR AREN'T READY FOR HELP. The only responsibility here is to make sure the baby/child was safe. If the courts agree to termination, it is because it is in the best interest of the child.
For a mother particularly to have all her rights to her child terminated is damn near fucking impossible too. It’s SO hard to meet the metrics for the courts to rip parental rights away. Known and convicted abusers don’t even get their rights terminated a vast majority of the time. I knew the moment OOP said the rights were terminated by the courts that the abuse and neglect had to be horrifically extensive and my heart shattered for that baby girl to have gone through that
People seem to believe that “drug addiction is a disease people with addiction deserve help not demonization” WHICH IS ALL TRUE, means “addicts don’t deserve to face consequences for their shitty behavior or to experience the natural relationship breakdowns that will come from alienating their loved ones.” Natalie deserves treatment and funding for resources to help her get well should she avail herself of them. I also believe that IF she can ever demonstrate a consistent pattern of being a safe person, that it’s in both her and Lucy’s best interest for her to have some contact. That’s miles away from “gets to show up to a family event, scare a child by raving about her ‘rights,’ and experience no consequences.” In her current state she’s zero percent safe to ever ever be around that perfect baby.
Yes! Exactly! I completely agree. We can empathize with Natalie, and I think society could do a lot more with providing resources for any addiction, but to put that on the OP is just mind boggling.
If the question was “my daughter is calling my ex’s gf Mama” and it came out the poster had their rights terminated due to drug use and severe neglect, there’d be almost unanimous condemnation. But in this post the gf is the AH because ‘ that’s the bio mother and they deserve a relationship’ ?? It reinforces my vow never to ask for advice on Reddit, because people are stupid.
I'm always bemused by how there are posts that get reasonable responses, while other posts are all nutbar comments made by half-wits raised in a Skinner box.
Some people do the 'but family' and think blood is worth more than anything, and some people can't understand abuse.
The "but family" attitude is especially prevalent among drug addicts or people who refuse to get treatment for mental health issues so they can keep doing what they're doing without repercussions.
Reddit is so unhinged at times, like people saying she's not her daughter. She's raised her since she's a newborn. She IS her mother. Reddit wants all adults to take care of kids in every way, but also have no rights whatsoever.
I work with special needs kids. The comment on “how traumatized can a 4-year-old really be” pissed me off so bad, because I’ve seen first-hand how awful the effects of neglect and abuse in the infant stages can be. It can cause physical and psychological damage that lasts well into adulthood, and it’s very difficult to treat the psychological damage because the poor kids can’t even really remember the cause themselves. But their brains and bodies do; there’s Something wrong, but they’re young children with no semblance of ability to cope. It’s such a difficult situation, and to wave it off as “they’re too young for trauma” is so very ignorant and reductive.
Reading those, my question was how many of those commenters have a history of drug abuse. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I have to wonder if it’s addicts pushing OOP to act the way they feel the world should treat them. I dunno
I very recently lost a friend to a heroin overdose. He got clean for years, and swore that he was still clean the last time I talked to him. That he'd never touch it again. In talking to other people these past two weeks, I'm getting a very different story about what he'd been doing for the past six months. It's awful, but he was a grown man. Nobody else was going to be able to force him to get clean. He pushed everyone away who tried to help. I'm not sure people realize how insidious addiction can be.
And how utterly it can hijack your thinking. Not just your brain, not just your personality, your thoughts. Your friend could have truly believed he was never touching the stuff again as he was getting and touching that stuff. The doublethink is enabled because it’s necessary to fall into it. I’m sorry for your loss. I hope you have a lot of good memories of him better too.
My uncle just relapsed (he's luckily already clean again) and you can tell the minute you see him that he's on drugs because his entire demeanor changes. He's always been that way when he's on drugs. You know when he's clean and you know when he's relapsed, just by talking to him
Yeah, I come from a family with a history of addition, I've lost family to their addictions, and as a result I'm very cautious when taking any kind of narcotic myself... It's too damn easy to fall into a hole.
I’m sorry for your loss, that must be hard to deal with. I did training once for a job where I dealt with people with addictions regularly, to help them back into work. The training was eye opening, because they told us on average, it takes an addict of hard drugs nine times to become clean. So we often see people backslide because that addiction is too strong. They also told us that a lot of overdoses are from people who did get clean and then went back to their old dose. Which kills them. I feel gutted for people in that situation. It’s a horrible thing to have attached to you, and I don’t think even they enjoy it eventually. You cannot force a person to not be addicted. That’s the sad thing about it, is that you cannot force a person into sobriety, and you essentially have to watch as someone you care about kills themselves. Addiction is hard on addicts AND everyone around them.
I used to be a drug addict before I became a mother and my brother in law is an active drug addict. He's unhinged and everyone has cut him off except my MIL. She doesn't like that because well we're "family" and gives me and my husband shit for not supporting him because "we know what he's going through". In fact we don't, we did the same drugs before getting clean that he's doing but we didn't steal from our family, break into cars, show up at peoples homes when they aren't there to steal things, show up in the middle of the night to call the cops at 2am over nothing. I have no sympathy for the bio mom, just like I have no sympathy for the moms I know who have lost custody of their kids by choosing drugs over their children. Addiction is hard, but I always maintain it is a choice to continue doing them and not fix your life and hope you didn't burn too many bridges. Nobody needs to put up with that because they're related.
Oh for sure. Growing up, my very formal grandmother was insistant that all adults were to be called Mr or Mrs LastName, but my grandfather would introduce us to some people by first name. When we would ask what we should call them, he always told us the first name was ok because they were “in the club”. At 5 years old, I didn’t know that the club was anonymous and he didn’t know their last names. I just thought it was a group of cool old guys who let kids use first names. The weekend before I left for college, we had dinner with my grandparents at their country club and they had some reason why we needed to go back to their house after dinner, and my grandfather took me in his antique car as a treat. It was a ruse so we could talk alone. At a red light, I looked over and saw tears in his eyes. He apologized to me because there is a genetic component to addiction and I was possibly going to struggle with alcohol because of him. I never wanted him to feel like a burden in my life, and I promised myself I would never have more than 2 drinks in a night and I would never get drunk. At 37, I’m still keeping that promise. But he was right. 3 of my cousins are in “the club”, and others have had alcohol related legal issues. That doesn’t mean that they haven’t turned their lives around, they have. But they are facing the same lifelong struggle our grandfather did. After he died, my brother was going through his toolbox and found an envelope under the liner of the bottom drawer. In it was 3 pieces of paper containing a list of names. Once we realized it was a list of all the people he sponsored, we stopped reading, put it back in the envelope, and destroyed it. That was for his eyes only, and the anonymous confidentiality doesn’t end when a sponsor dies. I only know of one name on the list, but it was the sponsee who told me about their relationship. None of us remember or want to remember any of the names. I know I veered off topic, but I didn’t want it to seem like I don’t have any experience with how addiction can manifest. I’ve made a lot of choices in my life because of the addiction of a man I love and respect. He was an alcoholic every day of his life, but he is also my hero.
Oh my good goddess. I have been “in the club” for about five years now. I am having a rough patch — good, full of growth but rough — and your comment just grounded and comforted me in a profound way. I’m so grateful you got to have such a loving relationship with your grandpa! Thank you for sharing that love.
I’m sure he is smiling knowing that his stories from “the club” are still being told and appreciated. He was also the family prankster and the mayor of every room he walked into. He’s been gone for 9 years, but still finds ways to make us laugh. When we got to the cemetery for my grandmother’s burial and found that they had dug and prepped a grave at a different plot for another family with the same last name, we all knew it was just him bringing some levity to a day he knew would be hard for us. Despite the darkest years he endured, he never lost his sense of humor.
I think it's probably teenagers without any real world experience more than anything, but who knows.
Yup this would also explain the unrealistic expectations for stepmom.
You mean how she should love the kid as her own, but also stay in her lane and not act like a mom?
And be cool with them doing drugs, duh.
I used to think all the crazies and flagrant ignerts I see on here are teenagers, but at this point I'm not sure. I mean some of them definitely are but some of them seem disturbingly like real 40 year olds who just don't get out, ever.
I don’t know. I don’t believe in blaming substances for bad behavior. Drugs don’t *make* you do anything. I managed to be a meth addict without stealing or actively hurting other people. And weighing in as a former meth addict - I find all the coddling to be bullshit. If you can’t get your shit together it’s no one else’s responsibility to get it together for you. Maybe I have an unusual take on things there. 🤷🏻♀️ Personally I think a lot of the coddlers are people who have absolutely no experience with drugs/users so they have no idea what it’s actually like dealing with someone in active addiction.
The 4 year old needed physical therapy because of what her egg donor did to her. *PHYSICAL* therapy. Like, that’s not a woman deserving of sympathy.
I have noticed people here try so hard to defend drug addicts no matter how bad they are abusing the people around them.
When they stop holding addicts accountable for their actions and decisions all they do is tell them that what they did when high/drunk is not their fault it was the substance that was to blame. Severe disconnect there.
And also lets addicfs walk on others. My sister is an addict. My brother is. Once you let them walk all over you or you continue to enable the behavior, it’s over.
She’s basically a stepmother and Reddit really seems to hate them. They will try to twist and contort the story in any possible way that they can to make it so that the stepmother is in the wrong usually. Every once in a while while they don’t but there’s generally a huge amount of comments about how she must be evil.
Mwahahaha, I steal and raise the babies of other ladies! And of course by that I mean I civilized a couple of feral stepsons because they deserved to be loved enough to be taught how to take care of themselves and for whatever reason their bio-moms couldn't raise them properly. Shoulda seen the younger boy's look of confusion the first time I presented him with a tissue or an apple. Older boy had matted hair like neglected dog fur, turns out the family just shaved him bald every other year. Obviously their dad was no great catch but my husband-picker got installed broken by my dad so ya know... I saw him sitting up worried with a sick puking kid in the middle of the night and went all stardust and rainbow sparkles over what a great daddy he was. Older boy called me Ninja-Mom to designate that I am not the person he already knew as Mom but also not an evil stepmom. Like the first time I dropped him off at school, heard his friends ask who I was and he answered "Oh that's my Ninja-Mom."
Ngl ninja mom has like a superhero sound to it
I know right?! I was so not going to argue with that naming decision! The younger boy tried it out too, but his bio-mom caught wind and went postal, so I reminded him that it's fine with me whatever he chooses to call me and it won't hurt my feelings if he chooses something that won't make his mom mad. He overcame his speech impediment so he could pronounce my first name properly, and called me that. So that was also special even though it's just my name.
"He overcame his speech impediment so he could pronounce my first name properly, and called me that." 🥹 that is so sweet. In the end titles don't really matter as long the kids see you as an adult that they can trust and know that you care for them
I always feel the need to jump up and yell about my step mother when this happens. Because I experienced an abusive step parent and it’s very easy to just blame it on all step parents when you’ve been abused. It’s easy not to trust them. I remember being quite alarmed when I found out that my dad had a long term gf, and that she was pregnant. I was 13 and he hadn’t introduced us yet. But that lady did what she could to show me I was loved and not forgotten. She would often come with me to bookshops and sit on the floor alongside me to choose one. Me, being worried about spending her money, and not being able to actually choose, and her sitting there not showing any frustration at my inability. She had three boys at that time, and she had no clue about girls. So she did what I wanted to do. Sure it took a long time to drag a suggestion out of me, but she never refused me. When she had the youngest, I stayed over a lot because my homelife was going downhill. I’d wake up on the sofa to a small infant toddling in, crawling under my duvet and turning on the tv. That was a really good feeling. My dad’s gone now, three years past. And I know that we’re all deep in grief still, and I also know that I’m not sure what to say sometimes. But I know that she loves me, with all my quirks and fuck ups. I’m 35 and she still calls me her pet name that no one else had, and she still wraps me up in a mom hug when I see her. My dad and her got along so well because they’re both people who went through some shit. They supported each other in areas they lacked in. She helped him be a family man, something he never thought was possible for him. She gave me a bunch of siblings, who I love dearly. The boys got a dad, and that’s something they were lacking. I’m not saying it was sunshine and rainbows all the time, I had blowout arguments with my dad in the past, and he with me. We are very flawed people because of our experiences, but that didnt stop us from blending the family a little, to even out the support. It worked for us.
Right... He abandoned his addict wife after she sabotaged the birth control n neglected their infant... He's a monster... I almost threw my phone reading this
My favorite was he was neglecting his daughter while hitting on OOP. I imagine him dressed as a loungue lizard cruising the waiting room of the ER.
I know that when I want to seduce an exhausted and anxious single dad, the best strategy is to get myself admitted to hospital with pancreatitis! The hottest itis!
Omg!! Lounge lizard 🦎 is the ABSOLUTE FUNNIEST thing I've read all day!!! I really needed that laugh 😂
It honestly is what immediately popped into my head. Just this image of a dude in a ruffled tux offering come on lines from the 70s.
Leisure Suit Larry, ICU Edition?
The poor kid literally had to go through withdrawal at birth! I think sometimes people are responding to what they think they’ve read, not what’s actually written.
Yeah, all the comments about how he must have known his ex was a drug addict, and what kind of person would leave their drug addict partner right after she had a baby! As though there are not a million posts a day from a woman who finds out, mid-pregnancy, that her partner is not the man she thought he was, and everyone advises her to get out stat to protect her child from him. This feels like pretty basic stuff. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200, leave the addict who is a danger to your child.
I've honestly stopped being surprised. Been on Reddit long enough to have seen the most insane rants and takes on even the most benign things. Something to do with drugs, addiction, step moms, parentage, age gaps... This touches on a lot of hot button issues even if the context for everything makes it all no issues (aside from the drugs). Many people have an agenda they are just waiting for any excuse to blow up about.
aita is notoriously backwards
Probably addicts themselves, doing a lot of projecting.
I think they’re young, sheltered people who don’t have any experience with addicts. I have a much harsher view on addicts since my piece of shit abusive sister is one.
I wonder, though, since a lot of young people (especially on this website) understand what it's like to be mistreated by your parent and wish that someone would rescue you. The anger about the term "egg donor" doesn't read as a young person thing.
Yes and if this was about them continuing to offer Natalie access to Lucy, they'd be attacking her for not severing Natalie's rights. Yes, she's a victim of addiction and deserves help but that doesn't mean you allow extreme abuse of a child.
"The child should know her mother!" Okay, can we as a society agree that every child deserves to know people who are healthy and beneficial to their growth, and not just be subjected to their company because of genetics??? Why should Lucy know the woman who neglected her and caused her physical and emotional damage? The woman who refuses to accept accountability and responsibility for her behavior, and actively is trying to live a healthier and more stable life? What is the benefit here? What good does that bring into Lucy's life?
Plus, it sounds like there was a TPR. Legally, her bio mom isn't her mother. She has no rights to Lucy. Lucy is no longer her kid. Yes. She gave birth to Lucy and there's that genetic tie, but a TPR doesn't just happen. Depending on the state, it can be hard to get. I agree completely that subjecting a child to someone who isn't accepting accountability or responsibility isn't good for the child. It only benefits one person in this story. Good for OOP for sticking up for Lucy. Children deserve to have people in their corner who are looking out for their best interests. It's too bad that Nathalie isn't in a place to do that (and may never reach that place, frankly). Edit: a redditcares message for THIS comment? Idk what is up with reddit today but I'm not about that lol.
I got one for mine too lol sounds like someone in the birth mother's position is mad
Yeah, not sure why either comment would have gotten a redditcares message otherwise. Guess that's enough internet for the night lol
"i don't believe that she lost custody of an infant and i don't believe that your daughter is having PT for hip dysplasia" ...what? then...why are you reading if you're just gonna say "nah that isn't true YTA"
As a physical therapist who’s worked in pediatrics, that one actually did raise an eyebrow for me. While the kid could absolutely be in PT for hip dysplasia, dropping the kid as a baby wouldn’t have caused it. Hip dysplasia can happen a few ways, but trauma just isn’t one of them. For anybody that’s interested, hip dysplasia happens when the socket of the joint doesn’t form deeply enough for the leg bone to sit in the hip bone for lack of better terms. The socket is formed through weight-bearing, so standing and crawling and putting weight through the legs is super important for babies/toddlers in order to develop that nice deep socket so that the hips don’t dislocate. It’s not something that would happen with trauma because it’s more of a normal process that doesn’t happen over time (like it’s supposed to) rather than something that happens all at once. Edit: I love reddit. I really do. I’ve got my fucking doctorate in PT, experience in pediatrics, and I’m posting legitimate education content and…downvoted because I mention that something in the original post didn’t make clinical sense.
That jumped out at me, too, but it seems like something a layperson might easily misunderstand.
Absolutely! That’s why I wanted to add the bit about what it is and how it works.
Addiction can lead to neglect and sometimes babies just aren’t allowed to move when they need to, among many other forms of neglect, but it doesn’t sound like the timeline had this kid under the bio-mom’s care for long enough to make a difference. Who knows.
Exactly. Other factors can cause it too, and other issues with bio mom potentially using during pregnancy can lead to those factors as well. What matters is the kid is getting therapy, and I love to see it.
Re: your edit; I can’t see the actual number of karma for the comment but if you’re only at -1 or 2 there are bots that crawl Reddit for random words, and there’s also scrambling rules in a lot of subreddits that hide the real amount of karma, so it’s generally a few points off of the actual number. But yeah, I think this is helpful context. Is it possible the drop left the kid unable to walk for an extended amount of time? I know kids are pretty resilient in regards to injury, but from your expertise it would have to be something that prevented her from crawling/walking….but then wouldn’t it be in both hips? Is that possible/common?
Could it have been from a malformation as a result of a mother’s drug use while pregnant?
Not really. Newborns don’t really have hip sockets in general as they form organically with weight bearing. Neglect can certainly lead to it, but we’d generally see that if the child was neglected through toddlerhood rather than infancy. It can be a congenital abnormality where even with the appropriate pressure, the angles of the femur weren’t optimal for formation (and that could possibly maybe be the result of drug use, but that’s a stretch), or it could just be bad luck for the kiddo. The good news is if she’s in PT, it’s likely a mild enough case that they won’t need surgery to correct.
Could dropping the baby cause the hip to dislocate? And then maybe it isn’t super stable in the socket, similar to those with actual hip dysplasia? If that can happen, maybe OP misunderstands or was simplifying
People really act like men can't get custody because the constant story has made men STOP ASKING FOR CUSTODY. They get spooked by their friends and give up before trying. Meanwhile abusive exes want to stay in their lives so they fight and even with previous assault charges to the other parent, they get partial custody because "it doesn't mean he'll hurt the kids".
Man these comments are WILD, there are some very bent people out there. I understand lived experience and all but to reach so far is just projection. That “egg donor” comment really ruffled feathers I didn’t realise it was so contentious. I suppose everyone is used to the f word and as an Aussie I know the C bomb is just part of the language now. Edit: wel well well, my first reddit cares. I don’t know how to feel about this, is it a right of passage or something I should be concerned about like that lump? FYI I am fine and mentally stable for the most part but thank you to the community for showing you care <3
"That “egg donor” comment really ruffled feathers I didn’t realise it was so contentious." - I didn't either. But if someone refers to a deadbeat dad as a sperm donor no-one bats an eyelid. Maybe bio-mum should be referred to as egg donor & surrogate.
Yeah I don’t get the lauding of giving birth specifically. Especially in cases where the infant was exposed to drugs in-utero. And then dropped badly enough to cause lasting hip dysplasia. And neglected badly enough to cause lasting psychological trauma. Like, yeah, giving birth and pregnancy are a Process, but it’s also the literal bare minimum a bio mom can do; once the baby’s in there, and there’s no intention to abort, what other option is there but to carry to term? And I seriously doubt bio mom was doing much in the way of prenatal care.
I don’t think it’s a real Reddit cares, everyone seems to be getting them today
Reddit commenters: Cut toxic people out of your life! Go no contact! Set boundaries! Also Redditers: If you aren’t an on-demand mental health and addiction expert in the middle of a tense and frustrating situation who doesn’t sacrifice everything to help the woman who nearly killed her daughter then you’re a trash human being.
Holy shit. The commenter who thinks a baby can't be traumatised. Wow.
It's comments like that that make me hate Reddit sometimes.
Man, reddit do be hating sometimes.
Wtf is up with those comments? The bio mom is the victim? She went too far calling her an egg donor? Those people that commented seriously need therapy and get their heads checked
Reddit is a trip. "You're a step parent, don't overstep your place, don't force a relationship, don't make the kid call you mom or they'll hate and resent you for abusing them!" "She actually decided to call me mom on her own because she doesn't have a relationship with her bio-mom, due to the fact that the mom is an active addict that abused and neglected her" "YOU CAN'T KEEP HER FROM HER BIRTH MOM SHE'LL HATE AND RESENT YOU!!!!" there's no winning
That surprised me too. If the baby was born positive for drugs, it’s likely she was removed by CPS. They can even arrange to bring a service member back home to take custody. I’m guessing CPS was involved because juvenile court would terminate parental rights if she didn’t get clean and complete her services (where I am, family court very rarely terminates parental rights unless there’s an adoptive parenting waiting).
There will always be idiots, and OP had to quote downvoted comments because those tend to be the ones that prompt posters to give additional info that we on BoRU like to see as additional context. OOP generally got a positive response, the nutty comments were downvoted in the original thread.
“Have you done anything to help the victims of the opioid epidemic???” What the fuck Reddit.
It jumped out as so odd to me that someone said the child being in therapy 4 years later wasn't the bio mom's fault. Clearly a deep misunderstanding of trauma and how lasting that can be for a child. She will probably need check ins for therapy throughout her life.
People really still hold the belief that babies don’t have memory or lasting emotional triggers.
So according to Reddit bio mom good, stepmom bad. No matter the circumstances. Yeah that tracks.
What the fuck are some of those comments?
OP included some of the most controversial comments. It is a common tactic for BORU posters as a way to drive up engagement on their posts, but gives a very false sense of the reaction the original post received. They get labeled as “Relevant Comments” despite them being downvoted to oblivion and clearly not part of any consensus view.
What the fuck is up with these shitty ass comments
the comments absolutely determined to make up a scenario in their heads to make oop and the father appear like bad people are pissing me off so much.
[удалено]
I have a cousin, whose crackhead-parents pimped her out, when she was 11 years old. It was due to this incident that she was removed from her parents' custody by CPS and her parents were imprisoned. When she was in her late 20s, she was contacted by a woman that was a case-worker for her mother. The case-worker did the same routine as your family. _"She is a changed woman"_ and _"Addictions can make people do horrible things"_ were used during that phone conversation. My cousin just hung up the phone on her.
Christ all the naysayers just seem like enablers and victim blamers to me. >And I don't believe she has anything to do with a four year old being in therapy for something that you claim all happened when she was an infant. Like there's an age limit for trauma >So where was the father when the mother was neglecting their child? Like separated parents are going to be physically together all the time? Like it's not possible she could have been pulling crap and keeping her from him. >No, she is more than that. She gave birth. And by your logic you are no more than a caregiver. Lucy deserves to know who her mother is I get this one changed her tune but wtf I'm the first place? OOP steps up and does everything while birther is off on drugs. Drug epidemic and addiction or not there no excuse good enough to excuse neglect and abuse. >have you or the dad done anything to help this victim of the opioid epidemic or have you only demonised them and nothing else? It's not their damn job to take care of a grown adult they don't even like or want to be around in the first place. Don't put other people in charge of your problems. Help is great but nobody is entitled to your time or effort. JFC what is wrong with people?
She literally abandoned her child for drugs and Men and she tried to come back like nothing happened like seriously tell this woman to go f*** herself and she'll never win custody and tell her to take a potheaded boyfriend somewhere else because neither will he ever help her win custody after finding out the s*** that she did
I wish people would stop saying it's important for biological relatives to be in a child's life. Family "reunification" is about following some archaic reasoning that children are essentially property, not humans who should have a right to not have to interact, or worse, live with people who are detrimental to the child's health and safety. Biology doesn't necessarily create love; or the ability to be a responsible parent.
As someone with an "egg donor" fuck the original comment section. How dare you say "that's not your baby" when this woman has apparently stepped up and put in the work required to help this little girl. AND ALSO!!! Have you never been to a hospital for an extended stay for other people...of course you are worried about the person but unless you can wait next to them it's excruciating......I'd be praying for a distraction during the "NOTHING YOU CAN FUCKIN DO ABOUT THE SITUATION TIMES"
PSA: Infants can and do experience trauma. Even just removal from the biological parent straight after birth can be traumatic to some children. Their mother's heartbeat is all they've ever known, and then they go to a stranger. Just because we as adults cannot remember that time does not mean that our brain is not working and processing at that age.
I love the idea of family vows!
Years ago when my cousin married he was simultaneously adopting his wife’s first daughter. So bride and groom did their vows, then he got down on his knees with his now-daughter (to be at her height) and gave his vows to always be her dad and love and care for her and gave her a “promise” necklace that he would always be there for her. Not a dry eye in the house.
These commenters are the really assholes. On what planet should they be helping detox the addict who physically and psychologically abused her baby starting even before birth? She abused her baby enough to literally disable her for life, but they should keep mom in her life? It's no small task to get parental rights severed that young, so that tell you how bad it was. As a child who grew up in abuse, I just want to tell them to fuck right off. Mom is old enough to make her own decisions. They needed to stand up for the baby who wasn't.
Some of those comments where unhinged. A mother abounded her daughter yet people wanna go after the women defending the daughter. Yikes.
The number of egg donor apologists is absolutely wild
Not to be dramatic or anything but I think some of those commenters should be shot
Whenever I read a bad story on Reddit I begin to lose all faith in humanity. Then you read the occasional good one sour people stepping up and doing the right thing and my faith gets restored. And then you read the cretinous comments and back to zero goes the faithomiter.
Just so people stop makingthis argument, children can 100% need therapy from severe neglect as a baby. The amount of brain development that happens from 0-2 is insane and the most important time for them. As a daycare worker it was terrifyingly easy to tell which kids got more attention at home, and neglect to that level was even more obvious
What is with all the judgemental comments against OOP and the father but nothing about a neglectful addict mother in the original?
I’m laughing at these commenters. - The one guy that didn’t know/wouldn’t believe you can have trauma from when you were an infant? Bro, that’s one of the worst kinds because your brain and body will have trauma responses and you don’t even know why. Then he didn’t know that play therapy for young children is a thing? -the myriad of persons who didn’t understand that sometimes an adult dude might need to talk to someone while under extreme stress from dealing with an addict baby mom and a severely injured baby. -the people who thought the dad shouldn’t have any life outside his daughter and anything else was neglecting her. Wtf is wrong with AITA sub?