What you don't know, will hurt your family.

I never in a thousand years would have thought I would find myself here.

When I go out in public with my children- I get stopped, asked many questions about ‘how I do it’, baffled upon, praised, and then set on my way.  When we eat out, people stop by our table to comment on what a loving and wonderful family we are and what great kids I have- and I really do have great kids. They have good upbringing. It’s so uplifting to have a complete stranger recognize what a good parent you are from an interaction you have with them in public.

But last Tuesday, this was shattered.

I am a stay at home mother and photographer of five kids ages 9, 8, 6, 5, and 3 and I am 5 months pregnant with our sixth which is going to be a little girl. She was planned and very much wanted, just as we have wanted all of our blessings.

It is spring vacation- all of the kids are stranded inside because of the nasty Oregon weather. Some brave the backyard mud and bring some of it in with them, as kids do. I unfortunately have a migraine this morning so I haven’t yet had a chance to get to last night’s dish pile which sits in the sink along with breakfast plates.  The house is a bit messy from five kids running around playing two and fro for two days and a night straight.

Their rooms have toys on the floor, blankets about- Gracie  who is 8, has decided to bring in a mealworm she rescued from outside and give it a warm place by her bed along with a bunch of dry oatmeal. Abbie is busily searching for night diapers, lost and hidden from embarassment at still needing them at 9, and putting them in random plastic bags I gave her so that she could go on her Church Ski trip.

All is well in my household and the boys finish their cake I allowed them to eat as Eva Bella, my 3 yr old plays chemist with her spaghetti, chinese noodles and milk she was eating at the table- mixing the three together in each separate plate bowl and cup.

It was around 2:00pm and I look out my back door to see a bunch of heads peering over my backyard fence. I realize they don’t understand it is not my front door, and I open my back door to greet them.

“How can I help you?” I ask noticing the police officer and 2 young adults standing by my gate.
“Hi we’re from CPS and we have recently had a report of a few things concerning your children’s welfare, may we come in?”

This, my friends, is the beginning of an ugly and monsterous friendship. This is where the naive meet the street smart and may the best party win.

We are raised, from an early age, to respect authority. If we are not guilty, why should we be afraid to let them in? We aren’t hiding anything! These are our FRIENDS! Let them in so we can settle this matter, talk about it, and they will see all is well and that I’m a good parent and we will all chuckle, shake hands and go on our merry ways!

But these people are not here to exonerate you. These people are not here on your behalf to prove to themselves that it was a mistake or false accusation.
These people are here to GATHER EVIDENCE against you, in any way shape or form that they see FIT. That means that if they don’t like anything about your environment, they can deem you UNSUITABLE as a parent to care for your children and remove them until they do.

Don’t assume that messy kiddo rooms, plastic bags with trash in the process of cleaning, and random clutter about is not enough to take them.
They can say simple things like a folding chair in your three year old’s room is unacceptable. They can say that keeping a hermit crab in a closed enclosure in your kitchen is Unacceptable. They can say that having a ladder in your hallway you had just used earlier to replace a ceiling light, is unacceptable- and deem the home unsuitable and ‘unsanitary’ for kid’s health.

Where is this list of the ‘unacceptable’? I want to have a copy of this list! What? there is no LIST? SO under what guidelines are you serving?

So as you can probably already tell, they interragated me. The accusations: Dog feces all over the home, kids being left home alone, and hazardous living conditions- all reported from some ‘anonymous’ person who most probably never set one foot in the home. They petted my dog, a 1 yr old Jack Russell Terrier. There was no feces on the floor in the home.

They took 480 pictures of everything from the inside of my fridge and cupbards to my bathrooms and toilettes and even the suite case my daughter dropped at their feet in the hallway while showing them what she packed for her trip.

ME: “Thank you Abigail, please put your suite case away now.”
Officer: “No, don’t worry about picking anything up right now, this is not the time to start cleaning.”
ME: “Excuse me, she just dropped her suite case in front of your feet- I would like her to put it away.”
Officer: “Please go downstairs ma’am.”

They interviewed them alone separately and made me pull my children’s pants down to show that they were not being beaten after they reported receiving ‘potches’ for very bad behavior.
When asked if I ever left them alone, the kids reported ‘only once to get us toys from target’. This was a misunderstanding we had after we told them we were going to ‘go play in the toy section at Target’ while going outside to get the mail. Our mailbox is in a community lockbox around the corner of our cul-de-sac, and we routinely go check the mail together leaving Abigail in charge of making sure the kids don’t get into trouble as we walk 5 houses down. All they heard was ‘Target and toys’, therefore concluding to themselves we left them home alone to get them toys from Target.

CPS took this seriously, and repeatedly warned me about lying, saying they go by the kids account.

All of this led them to the notion that the house was not deemed healthy for children living and I was told to find temporary housing for them or they would for three nights and four days.

I was FLOORED.

I live in a 5 bedroom upscale home. We pay $2000 a month in rent which is very high in Portland. We have a beautiful new sectional couch, a new table- nice decorations on the wall, and the extremely verbally aggressive officer told me how unacceptable my home was and how ‘ I was argumentative and defensive and not willing to work’ with them, maybe there was another adult in the household he could talk to instead”.

We had the home cleaned in 2 hours. Picked up, sanitary, the works. The said there was no way we could get the home in a suitable condition before Friday which is why they made the kids go.

Right now, it is 1:25am in the morning of Friday. CPS is due to revisit at some point today, in which they did not specify a time. We are at the whim of their notions of what is acceptable, and my husband and I, our friends are all beaten and worn from over-cleaning every nook and cranny of my 2700sf home to make sure there is not one spec of reason we cannot get our kids back.

I worry about what will come today. The house being spotless and painted- new beds and trash cans- everything neat and orderly as if a hotel- child safety locks on things we never had to lock before- I worry about the neglect issue and how we could possibly defend ourselves against the misinterpretations of our children should that be the remaining issue.

I pray RIGHT THIS MOMENT… that the Lord place a healing shield of protection around our family to prevent anything bad happening to us. I worry about any regulations that will be put onto us… and how we can live as a happy family with the lording eye of a broken government above us.- but pray that the CPS workers will be GENUINE people who want to help children, not take them away to place them with strangers over ridiculous accusations.

Please Lord- Save our family on this day….

My feet hurt and creek, even as I move them to stabalize myself. My lower back is swollen with pain from days of scrubbing fingerprints off of endless walls, cleaning stains out of carpets, and folding clothing. My unborn child kicks me- obliviouse to the chaos around her on the outside world. She is safe within me, while my others are so vulnerable to this broken system…. this system that once a long time ago, worked in their mother’s favor, prosecuting a child molester who was but a teenager himself and his own molester.

We are so taught to trust and trust some more.

We are so , so wrong. Laws and rights are there to PROTECT US- yet they are hidden and tucked away so as parents, we are left to assume what people can and cant do to us. We are afraid of seemingly admitting guilt by the mear invoking of those rights so set forth to protect us, and we roll over as they gut us and steal our children from under us.

My dishwasher’s song gives no comfort to me now, and I dread sleep.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS