I took today off to be at two meetings for Enoch. Each was scheduled for an hour and each took over 2 hours. At the first meeting we went to Matt’s Place and meet with a counselor named Shirlene. I love the fact that she soon identified that what Enoch needed was to have the home environment and our overwhelming problems fixed. She then spent the time helping us identify potential avenues for help. She emphasized that a major factor that would need to be addressed was Laura’s involvement. We came away feeling hopeful and overwhelmed.
The second meeting was with the school district and that confirmed some of the same ideas but otherwise was simply something we had to do for Enoch and Noah because of their behavior at school.
Perhaps this was all timely in light of the fact that Dolly emailed last night to say she wouldn’t keep working for us. She was afraid that she couldn’t keep the kids safe.
Laura went to Becca’s afterward to talk things over. After much discussion between Laura and I when she got home we settled on sending Enoch, Ezra and Emma to stay with David and Becca where they would homeschool them. At the same time we would send Alyssa and Noah to live with Grandma Colette and remain at their current school. Savannah, Mariah and Isaac would stay here so that I can focus time with Isaac. We will also have plans for daily contact with the kids not living with us and weekly events where the whole family gets together to ensure that the relationships don’t rust while the individuals are being behaviorally upgraded.
There are many side benefits to this arrangement, but one is that Mom won’t have to practically quit work for months before she retires and another is that Laura will have discrete groups of kids to go interact with regularly. She’ll likely spend more time with them loving away than she has been with them under our roof.
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