Finding My Daughter

I don't really have time to create a blog entry because I had to run around doing errands on my lunch hour. However, I can plagiarize myself and hit the main news as I wrote to my friend Brian:

[Alesia didn't come home on the bus yesterday, or call anyone, and I left work and went to her school, searching. Brian met me there, since he lives closer.] I was so irritated with Alesia when I found her. She said she had stayed to finish her project, then hung around to be with her friend [a boy] after he got out of a meeting. I asked her how she was planning to get home and she said "I don’t know." I asked her why she didn’t think to call Mother or me and let us know where she was and got the same response. She has a hard time understanding actions have consequences - plus, factor in teen hormones. I’m not sure about the situation with the boy, but I suspect he has been distracting her from her studies.

I told Alesia as soon as we got in the car "I know in the orphanage nobody cared where you were, but I care, very much! I want to know where you are, 24/7!" When my kids were with their birth moms, nobody cared where they were. They could run around the streets. The orphanages [Alesia’s anyway] let them run around wherever, and they just had to be back by 10 or 11 or they were locked out for the night. Alesia said she almost got locked out one night. Michael did most of his running around when he was with his mom, who stayed drunk so much she had no idea where he was – the orphanage took better care of him. Trying to get my kids to understand that in real families it matters where you are, is a challenge.

I was really angry at the school, but then when I got home I just started crying, and I had to cry for a while. I told Alesia I was close to calling the police, and I was envisioning her kidnapped, raped, dead, all sorts of horrors. She was taken aback to see my crying so hard – I rarely ever cry. I explained about being responsible, and letting people know where she is at all times, because we love her and we do not want anything bad to happen to her. I have told her this before, of course, but with FASD kids you have to explain things many times before they remember them.

At some point, I looked at Michael and said "You aren’t ever going to pull a stunt like this, I hope?" and he shook his head, "No M’am!!"

When Alesia and I got home, around 6, I made her apologize to Michael and Mother, for what she put them through. I told her to apologize to Brian, too.

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So that was the excitement and drama yesterday. My friends at work told me Alesia was just acting like any other teen, and she would pull something like this again, but I hope they are wrong. When I was a teen I only remember staying out past curfew one time, and that was lesson enough for me, because my mother really lit into me when I got home. Of course, I was a chubby, nerdy kid, and never had a boyfriend in high school, so the situation with Alesia is much different.

Comments

[Hallie]

Too much drama if you ask me!!

Thanks for the finslippy recommendation. I checked it out! :)

Hallie

[Amy (Alex's Mommy)]

I had tears in my eyes reading this post! I'm amazed that you made it home before crying but I can imagine that anger/worry really were the main emotions while at the school.

Ok...I'm going to tell you this so that maybe Alesia will know the dangers of hanging around Lakeside after school. I went to Lakeside in the 70's. TWICE we had adult males come on campus right after school, walk the halls, expose themselves, follow girls around, etc. Thankfully football players/coaches were able to catch them but both of these guys were able to cause some fear. After that those of us that stayed after school for after-school activities traveled in packs and always let our parents know where we were.