I am re-posting my story here of what happened to us a few weeks ago. Since then a few people have spoken to me about it and I have to say (what I already knew): there are some great people here and this community on steemit is truly amazing.
At first I thought I'd just write the update on this but I feel it's important to read the whole story.
The update will follow, and it isn't pretty...
Art by: zfshadowsoldier.deviantart.com
How a mistake turns into something really ugly
My daughter Skye was hanging out with some of her friends when she called me from her friend’s phone and asked if she could stay the night at her (other) friend Lilly’s house. She’d dropped her own phone and cracked the screen, and the battery was flat.
They’ve known each other since they were 2 years old and her mother and I are friends since that time too. Her younger two children and my two are friends since birth. We even followed them to Ireland 10 months after they moved here. So whenever Skye calls me to ask this, it is never a problem. I asked if this was OK with Lilly’s mom, and this was a positive. I used to always check with her mother but since Skye is almost 16, I felt that this time, I should give her my trust. I was wrong. She lied.
She had never asked and when she got to their house, they weren’t home.
To make a long story short: instead she went to my friend Brian’s house, who lives in that area.
He told us he’d always leave the backdoor open just in case Skye needed to get out of an unwanted situation, even if he wasn’t home. I thought it was a good idea, since she has a lot of friends there and we live about half an hour from the town. It’s a tiny village, so nothing really ever happens, but you just never know.
So that’s where she went but ironically Brian was at our house at the time.
He’s pretty much part of our furniture for the last 3 years.
She went in to charge her phone, in the hope she could still work it.
Her plan was to walk back to Lilly’s house after this to see if they were in yet.
Instead she fell asleep.
She didn’t wake up till 6 in the morning, while all this time I thought she was at Lilly’s house.
Because she couldn’t get her phone to work, she made her way back into the town to call me at the gas station. I woke up to a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize at 7 am.
At first I let it ring out, thinking who on earth would call me at this hour.
After I got up, I decided to ring the number back to find out who it was.
It was only 15 minutes later, but at this stage the people at the station had already called the police.
I met them to collect Skye and already knew they would call the social services about this.
This was 5 weeks ago.
Yesterday, a social worker called to get directions to our house. It was urgent that they visited NOW.
My remark that this didn’t seem very urgent as 5 weeks went by weren’t appreciated and her tone changed from stern to right-out nasty. I had to give her directions right away, but since we just moved here, I had to think about it for a bit. Something that she must have seen as me trying to stall her.
I managed to give the directions, and from that time to when they got here I thought they must have been at the bottom of our road.
Two women walked in, one holding a notebook and a pen that never stopped and one quite young one who did the talking.
As soon as they came into the house, she turned her nose up for the cat sleeping on the kitchen counter.
It was dangerous because cats spread germs! Yeah, because I never heard of food health and safety and don’t know how to clean and use a cutting board…
She made me throw the cat and her kittens out and told me that she didn’t want to see them in the house at a next visit or else…
Mice or rats probably weren’t an issue then in rural Ireland, but I kept this to myself.
The dog had to be muzzled next time too ‘just to prevent her from biting and having to be put down’.
My dog Dakota didn’t like these people, so I just put her outside to prevent any problems.
They then continued with a house check. They were positive about our well stocked fridge, probably thought I starve the kids to death.
In an earlier post I wrote about our move and that we’re only just done fixing up the other house.
I wasn’t going to pay more double rent than the six weeks I already had, so meanwhile I used my room as storage so we could unpack bit by bit.
Of course they had to remark about that too.
Where did I sleep? On the couch, so the kids could sleep in their beds.
Not good. You can just never win with these people.
Skye’s bed in coming next weekend, so she’s sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
Frowned upon.
They really didn’t care that I was basically doing all the moving and most of the work here and the old house on my own, with four kids in tow and that our car and the small trailer could only hold so much.
The distance between the new and old house is about 50 miles and the bed has to come from another location all together. If I only had a magic wand.
Then they cornered me and told me they had to talk to each of the kids in private.
I didn’t quite agree with two adults speaking to one child, and asked if someone could be present.
That was a negative. Because the kids had to be able to talk freely...(and they had to be able to put words in their mouths…).
Later a friend told me that her ex was present during the same at their house and that wasn’t a problem.
So they lied.
Skye later told me that they asked if she thought they were there to take them away.
When she answered yes, they told her not to worry, because they weren’t quite there yet.
Who on earth says that to a child? 15, almost 16 yes, but a child nevertheless.
Of course, the subject education came up.
We unschool so this is hard to explain, even for me sometimes.
So when they asked Sinatra (9) and Keanu (7) I can only imagine what their answer was.
“What do you do all day?”
“Uhh, whatever we want. Play, cook, play with the animals, draw, paint, play again.”
So after this, they came to talk to me and told me the kids needed more structure and I should send them to school (mind you: catholic school, there’s nothing else here).
I should send Aryan (3) to creche, because he needs to play with kids his age.
They all need to play with kids their age.
Homeschool meetings and sports they play weren’t good enough, because it wasn’t local.
And they needed friends locally.
That I have no problem driving them wherever we need to go for a play date or an outing, and that this would probably be the case here too, didn’t seem to matter.
Where we used to live, there weren’t any kids around, so I always had to drive at least 15 minutes to their nearest friends.
Sinatra plays Gaelic football in our old town and I gladly drive there every week.
But they’d rather have me rip her away from the friends she has there to make friends locally. It doesn’t even make sense.
When I didn’t budge, they tried to play another card. I needed time to myself.
If the kids went to school, and the baby to creche, I’d have those hours to myself.
Yeah, because dropping the kids off at 9, then drive home, collect Aryan at 12, drive home for his afternoon nap and then back into town to collect the others at 3 followed by at least an hour of homework, sounds really relaxing to me. They didn’t really care that I made the choice to homeschool them and that I gladly handed in my own ‘me’ time so we could spend our hours together instead of having them brainwashed into becoming slaves in the system.
All in all, their visit was quite threatening. I didn’t sleep. I feel sick and anxious.
They are still getting in touch with our family doctor (who’s seen us once in 4 years) and they’re probably going to hear about my stance on vaccines. I am dreading the response to that.
So no matter how much we love living in Ireland, I feel like the walls are closing in on us and so is big brother. I need an exit strategy and most of all: a place where we can be safe, at least for a while.
I am not sure what to do next yet, but at least visiting Portugal in November will be good to see what’s possible. I might have to do something quicker than that. I really don’t know right now.
Uncertain times…
I hate this feeling.
