Josh and Elisabeth

I occured to me after Torina asked that I might not have mentioned Josh and Elisabeth before in this blog. Well, here's a bit about Josh and Elisabeth. A year after Jerry and I were married we got custody of his neice and nephew through the county because thier mother lost custody via a child protection call for neglect. At the time Elisabeth was 12 and I think Josh was 15. We had always been close to Josh and his brothers since they were little guys. They came over to our house every weekend to hang out with us, and I suppose to escape a bit. Elisabeth didn't really spend much time with us, and I suppose that was just because Jerry was closer to the boys being a "boy" himself.

Needless to say it wasn't a great experience since the whole family was still involved including their mom. Josh has FASD, but we didn't know it at the time. He has a low IQ and comprehension issues. He is smart enough to want the things that everyone wants, but gets frustrated with relationships and has a hard time working and keeping a job. All of these things we helped him deal with.

Elisabeth was a different story. I am pretty sure that she has RAD. She never really warmed to us and just did her own things no matter what we said or did. We had a very hard time with her running away all the time, stealing from us and other people. She even went to her mom's for a weekend and came home sick. We found out later that mom took her to have an abortion, but no one told us anything. She always went to her mom, which is understandable, but her mom would never keep us in the loop and would try and hide things from us. In the end the only way we could be sure where she was at, was by agreeing that she would live with her mom until she was 18. All in All she lived with us for 4ish years.

We still have an alright relationship with Josh. He calls once a week and comes over about that much, but we don't have much contact with Elisabeth. I don't trust her since she stole over 5000.00 worth of Laptops, Cameras, etc from us, with not so much as a sorry or feeling bad about it. Having read about kids with RAD etc, I understand the behavior, but it's hard when they aren't yours, and thier mom is family. I hope that doesn't sound like I mean that if I ADOPTED kids that it would be hard because they aren't mine. Because, in that situation, they would be mine.