We sent my eldest daughter to live in Toronto when she was 16-1/2. She was going through some issues that my husband and I were not qualified to deal with. She has an anxiety disorder, was extremely depressed, and was cutting.
She was always a little 'off' as a child. Looking back into her nursery and preschool report cards, the teacher always had things to say about her like, "she is not meeting her social growth", "tends to be reclusive and shy", and "needs to work on relationships". We just thought she was a shy little girl, but these tendencies turned into something much bigger as she grew.
Some call this phase 'EMO'. She wore all black, wanted to die her hair purple, slept alot. When I was growing up, it was called depression. We took her to psychologists, tried to get her the medication she needed, but nothing seemed to help. When she began to skip school regularly, and fell from an honor roll student in an advanced placement program to failing, we had to make the decision best for her.
My sister-in-law is a psychologist, nutritionist and many other things I can't even remember. She has spent alot of time in university classrooms. She was the one person that we knew could help our daughter work through the issues professionally, on a daily basis, and under the guise of a family member.
Our daughter was understandibly angry for about six months. And the fact that she was pregnant when she left - unbeknownst to us - only made things worse. She was about 6 weeks pregnant when we put her on the plane that Saturday morning. A phone call from my sister-in-law a month later indicated that she hadn't had her menstrual period since she got there. We asked her to take her for a test.
She had an abortion. At 16. She was 12 weeks pregnant. It happened so quickly that we weren't able to get out there to be with her when it was done. I'm sure she feels like we let her down, and even though she's an adult now, we never have really spoken about it.
When my father-in-law died this year, I went out for the week of the funeral. I was sitting in my in-law's living room, when one of my sister-in-law's friends turned to me and said, "well, it's so nice that she has another mother now." (of my daughter). If I were any where else, other than that very living room where all the mourners were sitting, I would have ripped every wiry black hair out of her head with my bare hands.
I very politely responded, "She only has one mother, remember that. She is very lucky to have an aunt who cared enough for her to help us out when we needed her, and alot of families would never go to the extent she has to help us, but she only has - and will ever have - one mother". It was like a kick in the gut that said, "you're an incompetent mother, and should never have had children".
But seeing her now, at almost 19, she has grown into an almost-confident, beautiful young woman, who (I think) knows her family loves her, and missed her during the last two years she was away. She didn't get this way just in the last two years, I tell myself. The rearing we did when she was growing up, before she was 16 must have laid some sort of a foundation for who she is today.
We'll see where that black haired malicious woman is when I'm proudly walking my daughter down the aisle when she is married, or where she is when I'm holding my grandchildren on my lap. Incompetent is a very strong word. People should learn to label that lightly.
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