Child stealing from home and covert CCTV / spy gadgets – any tips?

**** her, She’s made her bed and she can lay in it. Our son was a pleasure up to the age of 7. He’s 33 now. Then his sister was born and by the age of 9 he was a shit of the highest order. I wont go into the saga of crap that he bought into our lives, suffice to say that I doubt that I know half of it. my wife shielded me from a lot of his behaviour.

When he was 14 he placed himself in care. he had a friend in care who egged him on. He never set foot in the house again.

That day we dad social services round for a short visit. I kept them on the doorstep and they soon cleared off. Mrs Z had endless meetings with the SS and she arrive when there’d be 10 or 12 of them in a meeting with her. She’d come home in tears as they simply wouldn’t accept our side of the story. I suggested that she stopped going to the meetings, which she did.

I did throw one of them out of the house early on as she was insistent that no child would make up his story.

Endless lies, twisting events around to look as though he was constantly the victim of hatred. Eventually the truth came out, the sheer volume of bullshit was what undid his lies. Together with the total lack of evidence from doctors, teachers neighbours etc. All of whom he’d involved.

Within days of him leaving the atmosphere at home was greatly improved. My wife was happier as was our daughter.

After 2-3 years the SS asked for him to be allowed back home. I asked them what had changed? They couldn’t say. I said that I wasn’t prepared to have him back unless the issues had been resolved. They never bothered to reply.

I met him at the age of 18 to drive him to Catterick as he’d joined the army. We never spoke throughout the long drive. He’d built bridges with his mum, since torn down of course, but they were getting on well.

We went back to see his passing out parade. Mrs Z watched it. His sister and I went to Seaton Carew for the afternoon. I’m not sure what would have been worse. 😀

I can honestly say that I seldom think about him and have no desire to restore an relationship with him. He’s had no contact with his mother or sister for well over 10 years.

Just because someone is family doesn’t mean that their crap has to be tolerated. Sometimes you’re just better off giving up.

Wow. Thanks all. Plenty of food for thought here.

My gut instinct is along the lines of wwaswas‘s comments – not to engage until she has a genuinely earnest and conciliatory approach.

And, zanelad – sorry to hear that mate; sounds like an utterly awful situation. But I do know the feeling of the home being happier for their absence. “**** her, She’s made her bed and she can lay in it.” Yes. That. Exactly.

deepreddave – kind words, thank you.

Best of luck bodgy, however it turns out.

I just can’t imagine what it would be like if our boys turned out to do something like this.

My gut instinct is along the lines of wwaswas’s comments – not to engage until she has a genuinely earnest and conciliatory approach.

If it feels right …. or leave a door a little ajar as some others said with “I’m here if you ever need me”… perhaps passed by her mother?

TBH.. sounds like a pissed off text she might well already regret and be too stubborn to admit so perhaps you need to be the adult for her as well

Have you asked why you/new missus not her Mum???
I’ve no idea of how/why you split but it does sound like she is blaming you and your wife …

So was the text after five months of silence? Or was there continued contact? Or something that started the exchange?

Bodgy – could it simply be an emotional outburst due to frustration building up after 5 months?
its funny that when people lash out in this way its those who are closest to them who bear the brunt of their outbursts?
as said above has this been after a 5 month silence or have you been in contact with her during this time?
i suppose the only response i would give to that is “when you’re ready to talk in a civilised manner i will be ready to listen to you and do whatever i can to help you”
if she’s decided that this is something she needs to do for herself then let her…just be there to catch her when she falls as any parent would do…but again you need to balance this out with trying to stay at a reasonable distance to be able to let then deal with their demons on their own

Zanelad – thats a really bad situation with your son….must have been heart breaking for you to come to that decision

If it was me, id get back to her with something along the lines of “sorry we’re not seeing eye to eye on this right now but i’m here for you if you ever want to talk or visit”.

she’s hitting out, either as a defensive mechanism for being caught out and trying to divert the attention or she’s in pain and wants others to feel it too. You don’t just hit out at someone if they mean nothing to you, she’d simply ignore you.

if things aren’t going well, keep in touch with her, even if it’s just xmas and b’day cards and a little note every now and again. When she gets older she’ll appreciate that you still love her and want to be a part of her life. it leaves the door open for rebuilding things when she’s come to terms/accepted the situation.

I say this as someone who fell out with a parent for a number of years and didn’t speak to them. Looking back, it was terrible and i’m glad we sorted our differences out and have a great relationship again.

Just remember that feeling when you brought her into the world and how you would always protect her from anything, and be there for when ever she needed you….this is one of those times…be strong, be dad.

Good luck.

+1 for being the adult.

Probably worth checking in with your ex to let her know you’ve had a tricky message from your daughter and to see what the lay of the land is before you respond.

My gut feel is that something else has gone down and you’re getting the backlash from this.

From skimming the thread, I’d ignore this latest development.

FWICS you’ve been nothing less than a perfect parent. It might take her some time to grow up and come round to realise you only have her best interests at heart.

At this point the ball seems to be in her court – she needs to sort herself out and get back to you. Doesn’t mean you can’t send a quarterly text asking if she’d like to go out for lunch / coffee etc, but I wouldn’t go any more regular than that …

A couple of answers to points that have been raised:

There was a little lead in to this over the past week; back in November (before the truth of her actions had come to light) I had bought her a bike, a second hand £100 job that I was doing up for a Christmas present. Then it all kicked off, and it has been sat in the garage since. Over the past 10 days I had received a few texts from Daughter and her mother to the effect of “I want to get my/her bike – I’ll come round at such-and-such hour to collect it”. I ignored the texts, as I simply could not believe the audacity of both Daughter and her mother to brazenly broach the bike as first contact since her thieving was irrefutably revealed and the text telling me not to contact her (as has been chronicled here).

It didn’t feel right to just not respond, so I replied to them both, pointing out (in a neutral tone) that Daughter had up to that point made no attempt to recognise the seriousness of her actions and situation that she had created, nor had she made any attempt to re-engage, rebuild trust or even shown any sign of contrition. And on that basis I wasn’t about to give her a bike that was intended to be a gift just because she was demanding it. (pretty much verbatim)

Then the return message was as above.

Honestly, Ex is totally relishing this situation. On many levels she has ‘won’. And by default that means I have ‘lost’. Daughter is complicit in this and reinforced by her mothers constant drip feed of toxicity.

So. F*** ’em.

I’m not interested in their bitter game.

I really think that I’m going to step away from Daughter, now. She knows that I’m here in the event she wants to start bridge building.

Incidentally, it was a rather tasty sparkly dark purple Dawes Discovery hybrid, that was nearly immaculate and had been sat in a garage since the mid 90’s. Thumbs, cantilever brakes, long stem; I changed the tyres and tubes, pads and stuck some wider mudguards on and it’s lovely. Doomed to be unridden and unloved for a while longer, it seems. I’ll stick it on eBay, probably. Shame really – would have been an ace bike.

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Ah, that does explain the response from her then. In that light her texts read like a stropy teenager.