Be careful. Remember it’s not the daughter’s phone, it’s her biological mother’s. I’m not exactly sure but I think it’s illegal to install a tracing device on another person’s phone without their consent. :rolleyes:
It only works on certain compatible smart phones.
I don’t think we will need to go that far with the cell phone. Her bio-mom is known for not paying her bills and she complained to us just a few months ago that she couldn’t get a cell plan (in her name after she separated from her husband) because she had defaulted on all the major carriers over the years, so no one would give her a plan without some astronomical deposit that she doesn’t have. [We got the tale of woe because she is required to keep us updated with all current phone numbers and addresses.] Because of this, my guess is the phone is either a pay-as-you go phone or an added line on one of her (bio-mom’s) many “boyfriend’s” plans. (The number traces back to ATT&T, bio-mom’s most recent phone number is through Sprint.) Either way I don’t see the bill getting paid any time soon (just knowing bio-mom; she doesn’t pay her child support either…) and we know it is at least 2 months old, so I can almost count on disconnection within the next month or so, with or without our involvement.
The bigger concern is keeping our daughter from acquiring a new one and keeping her to age-appropriate communication when she does. I also know now that the next hiding place be it for cell phones, or anything else she is not supposed to have will be more creative, so I’d rather not give her the opportunity to hide anything for a while. Her Dad has instituted a backpack/purse search before school and when she gets home again (starting next week when she’s back in school) and her jackets are kept (and are to stay) in the hallway closet so that pockets can be searched as needed. Thanks to some good advice I got, I am also keeping my eye on the backyard, outside window sills and bushes where things can be hidden (or dropped from a window) to be retrieved later. I am sure she is going to be hating life for a while, but she isn’t going to get anything past us again. [Side funny story: one of the things we found while searching her room was a disciplinary notice from school that was supposed to be signed by us. Apparently she got a lunchtime detention for texting at school, and when the teacher who caught her told her to stop she said “let me finish this first…” which escalated the infraction to after school detention which she didn’t serve. So we have more cell phone follies and now an unserved detention that will have to be dealt with at school as well.]
**
needscoffee**, I like that idea. We are sending her away for one week in June, and we have the registration forms we were considering for a camp (run by a church, meant for “troublesome” teens but also looks like a lot of fun) that will be the last week of June and first week of July. We are also looking at classes (fun ones) and programs to keep her busy over the summer. We are obligated by the custody orders right now to stay (or at least keep her) within the school district right now, but hopefully that will go away if bio-mom loses her visitation. Even just a semester away from home might do her some good…that is something we will definitely keep in mind!
Thanks, everyone, for the responses and suggestions. I need all the help I can get right now, and your (virtual) support is doing wonders. So much I wouldn’t have even considered, but now I can make sure I follow up on. 
The therapist session is tomorrow…this will be only the second time she has seen this therapist (it’s only been a little over 2 weeks since she was discharged from the psych hospital- it feels like months though!- and she only sees the therapist once a week) so I feel kind of bad laying this on the therapist too so early on, but I am glad things are going rather quickly so that we can get them resolved quickly as well, and hopefully get her (my daughter) back on the right track.
As an update on the Predator portion…even though I was told he was taken in on a parole violation, his own FB page has been active today (and two more “in a relationship with…” and back to “single” statuses just today!) so I am not sure if he is back out, if the PD was just placating me by saying that in the first place or if someone else is using the account as well. I don’t like it in any case and since I have access to my daughter’s FB account and she doesn’t at the moment, I went ahead and blocked him from her account. Maybe if he is around, if he cannot reach her by phone or Facebook, he will just stop (which he might already have done…no new messages for a while on the internet at least) and then my daughter might see that he never really “loved” her or cared about her at all if he just (from her perspective) stopped talking to her for no reason.
Does she have any underlying pyschological issues? What about stuff like social issues?
A lot of girls with issues (when something like this happens) think " I had no real friends/no real love. This is a gift from heaven!" They can be so dysfunctional that any attention seems healthy or good.
She had a breakdown last month, which put her into the psych hospital for almost 2 weeks. Before that I would have said no underlying issues, and we hadn’t seen any symptoms of it at all. What spurred that incident was her getting into trouble for pills I found in her room (prescription; she claimed they were from bio-mom’s house, but bio-mom denies). Over the course of treatment at the hospital she claimed some social issues, but we have witnessed none. She is popular, lots of friends, (was) always happy and laughing, etc. The psychiatrist and therapists there said they thought she was making things up though (and do not believe her to have any social problems at all) and they believe her biggest psychological issue is that which has been instigated by her bio-mom (who has been at it all of our daughter’s life) leaving her with loyalty issues and being “torn” between her parents. He bio-mom for example, makes her refute her love for her father and me during visitation, then claims that if daughter calls us her “parents” it means she doesn’t love her (bio-mom) and she gets in trouble, or if she calls our house “home” she gets in trouble, etc. Her mother has often told her that she (bio-mom) will kill herself if daughter loves us or daughter is happy at home.
Bio-Mom did attempt suicide and told daughter she did it because daughter wanted to spend the night with a friend (sleepover) on a visitation day. Bio-Mom claimed to daughter that proved she didn’t love her enough so she should just kill herself (which she almost did). I could go on and on…but the whole bio-mom/daughter relationship is just toxic and I believe the therapists when they say that daughter needs to get away from that and it will resolve most if not all of her psychological problems.
However, since she does have loyalty issues and is conflicted because of that, I would think that could cause her to seek out (or glom onto) an unhealthy relationship for similar reasons.
Not that you need another thing to worry about, but I might suggest you call the cell phone carrier and just double check that it’s not in your daughter’s name. I’m not suggesting that she went to the store herself and got it, but I’d just want to make sure that bio-mom didn’t put sign a contract in daughter’s name. No reason in ruining daughter’s credit too.
My older sister was very troubled when she was in her mid-teens and eventually it led to a suicide attempt.
My parents made the difficult decision to send her to stay with a Pastor and his family in Texas. Part of the stay was at a Christian camp in Glorietta.
She came back a very different person. I am not going to say it solved everything, because it did not, but it did put her closer to the right path.
I will add though, that she already had positive experience with religion and Christian faith before this.
How is it that bio-mom still has visitation rights when contact with her has clearly been harmful to you daughter? Is there anyway you can go back to court to amend the custody agreement with help from the psychiatrist?
Man, this thread makes me glad I have a dog instead. Best wishes to you, Mitze. We’re all here if you need us!
I’m having the same types of issues with my nephew right now, but nephew seeing a counselor has been helping a lot lately. The counselor knows that nephew’s mom is never going to change her destructive behavior and his job has been to slowly make nephew realize this fact, which he has, but he still has his moments… especially when the mom has been telling him that she’s going to get him back (Which she is not. She has done nothing to demonstrate to us that she is cleaning up her life). Through many therapy sessions, he is coming to realize that he can still love his mother, but understand that she has major issues that she refuses to change. Basically its a “Hate the actions, but love the person, and adjust your expectations accordingly” approach. Our problem now is that nephew is still having a hard time reconsiling his love of his mother from his knowledge that mom will never get him back and never get better. Its going to take a long time for him to heal.
If your therapist is any good, this is probably the path he/she is going to take with your daughter. It will take a long time, but things will get better as long as you stay with it.
Because sometimes the system just sucks out loud. My wife works for Children’s Aid, and she’s seen this a number of times. Someone who otherwise would hardly even be allowed near children gets custody of one just because they managed to squirt it out.
MitzeKatze, for whatever it’s worth, I had my wife read this thread and she’s very impressed with you. Well, for the first page or two she was yelling “just go to the damn cops!”, but now she’s impressed. As am I. Hope everything turns out for the best.
Just wanted to add that you should not feel bad at all about laying this on the therapist. This is exactly what the therapist is there for. I completely understand the feeling of not wanting to burden others with your problems - I initially acted that way toward therapists myself, and it only hinders their ability to help. You’ve got to remember that this is the the therapist’s job, and the sooner everything is out in the open, the better. You wouldn’t be shy about telling your doctor about a broken bone just because it was your first visit with them, so don’t be shy about sharing your family issues with your therapist.
At one point during the family saga with my troubled sister, my Mom sent her to live with my aunt and her family. The couple was much older ( there was a 25 yr spread in age between my Mom and her sister) and the husband was a pastor. They also lived in a very rural area.
She was a little calmer when she came back but it wasn’t the end of the trouble. I remember it mostly as a respite for the rest of the family.
Be VERY careful about the church camp for troubled kids. My church camp experience was that the adult supervisors were trying very hard NOT to be authority figures and we got away with lots of sex alcohol and drug related misbehavior…and why I have no doubt that she and the other troubled teens will have a great time but it may not be…totally wholesome.
Lastly, if you decide to have the girls share a room you should extend some extra privileges to the oldest…she will be losing some privacy here and she may feel that she is being punished for her sister’s behavior.
Another thought with the “troubled teen” camp: are you sure you want to put her in a concentrated area of kids with problems who might pass on better strategies for hiding things from you?
First poisonous snakes in the window wells, now this. Are you speaking from firsthand experience? 
:innocent whistling:
I was actually an obscenely well behaved child, all things considered.
Pretty much, this…
It’s a long story, but heck I am already up to how many pages?
The custody issues and subsequent battles have been going on since birth (husband divorced bio-mom when daughter was an infant). Husband got residential custody at the time because bio-mom is a nut-job (I believe that is the medical term ;)) but they shared joint legal custody. That proved to be too much responsibility for bio-mom and all kinds of heinous things were done as well as the initial indoctrination of the kids against Dad (daughter has an older biological brother, but he is 19 now and no longer subject to the custody or visitation orders. I don’t know the last time he spoke with bio-mom). Dad took her back to court for contempt and custodial interference on several occasions which eventually got her legal custody taken away, and her visitation rights suspended.
After a few months she fought to re-gain visitation and was awarded supervised visitation easing back into “regular” visitation. She chose not to take advantage of that and just fought for unsupervised. That took another year or two but she eventually got it and the schedules were adjusted over the years (husband was military and we never lived close enough for a normal schedule to work) to accommodate distance. She sometimes used all of her visitation and sometimes didn’t see or speak to the kids for months at a time. During that time her visitation was suspended once or twice more (for not using it) but was given back when she asked the judge for it.
Then when my husband retired from the military she decided to file for full (and sole legal) custody which was essentially laughed at given her history, but the judge is a PITA who cannot see past her being “mommy” and is willing to give her every possible chance to redeem herself. So…the orders were written that we would move here (something we offered during a settlement conference, but now regret) and that she would still have no legal custody but would have the standard visitation (every other weekend and one dinner visit per week). Because the judge felt sorry for her (my guess) he decided that after a period of time we should work toward a 50/50 time split (only because we live close enough to each other to make that work if this were a “normal” parenting arrangement). Bio-mom still has only sporadically used her visitation though, some months she uses it all and wants more, sometimes she skips it because something (or someone) more fun came up, and after a few years she just got to the point that judge wanted us to start increasing the time (after x number of weeks without missing a visit, the dinner visit was supposed to become an overnight) and he had it set to go to 50/50 this summer. Then all this happened and daughter’s therapists said she should sever all contact with bio-mom.
The first thing we did upon hearing that was to act on it (while daughter was still in the hospital) and got the psychiatrists and two of the therapists to write affidavits in support which we used to file for an emergency hearing asking for bio-mom’s visitation to be removed or alternately to be supervised (with me or Dad as supervisor). The judge wouldn’t even read the affidavits because we have actions pending (status conferences re: the increasing visitation schedule) and he didn’t think it was enough for an emergency hearing. So that’s where we stand right now. Bio-Mom is supposed to be getting her own psych evals and home studies done before the hearing on the visitation becoming 50/50 and we won’t have a date until she notifies the court that has been done. The judge ruled on our emergency motion that everything should stay as it is now until the full hearing whenever that may end up being.
So my opinion is that the judge just sucks and doesn’t understand the severity or the situation, or just doesn’t care.
We have thought about that. That’s why we are still just considering it. The camp looks like an awful lot of fun (but then again would their brochures make it look bad?) but the teaming her up with others (who may be able to give her tips) is something that definitely concerns us. This particular camp has a good reputation and we tangentially know the operators, but even the best intentions…
This is probably something we will discuss with the therapist as well. Speaking of that, I have to go get ready for that appointment, so I will be back later this afternoon with even more updates.
And thanks everyone for all the responses.I was going to try to answer each one, but that was too much for me. If I have left anything out I am sorry and will fill it in later, but just so y’all know I am not ignoring anyone.
… Or judge is sleeping with bio-mom!!
Just out of curiosity, since I have no experience with custody issues and such, am I correct in understanding that it’s been just the one judge handling this all along? Is that how things typically go? On the one hand, given the nature of the situation, I’m sure it’s helpful to have someone who’s already familiar with your family’s history, so you don’t have to rehash the issues each time you have a hearing. But on the other hand, if you get stuck with a judge who’s not taking things as seriously as you feel is warranted, you have no recourse. Is there any sort of appeals process if you’re not satisfied with a judgement (or the judge)?
Summer camp can be absolutely wonderful, but I’d encourage you to look for camps that don’t have an agenda beyond helping teens grow and try new things. Unless it’s run by YOUR church, you should be very, very wary of that sort of camp.
You’re doing all the right things, here. Good luck to you.
You know, if it can somehow come out that mum is somehow encouraging the behavior, encouraging her to find risky relationships and enabling them [and I do not see why any tween needs a cell phone to be perfectly honest. If anything, one of the phones that is programmed for 911 and HOME only at most. I know that the predominance now is for no landlines and all cells in a household, but kids need supervision.] maybe the judge will reconsider this bullshit of her womb units request for custody.
One would hope that the Judge will consider a pedophile dangerous and see a need for stability, which I can not see coming from shared custody. Any way of proving the womb unit is off her meds?