Ask Me Help Desk - Parental rights

I have a situation that is a bit different than many.

I am a divorced transsexual woman. My ex-wife has custody of my children and lives in another state.

My ex and her family has given a very negative thought about me to my twin 12 almost 13 year old boys.

When I was raising my children we were very close and did many things together. One of the boys was my shadow in everything in life and it was fun. As I had struggled all of my life with my inner feelings, I finally got to the point I could not handle and living in the gender role that society had put me in. My ex and I divorced in the winter of 2005. My boys and I grew further apart and it got to a point that at times if I tried to call them, they refused to talk to me. Sadly they only lived a few blocks away from me.

As time went the distance between us got further and further apart and it made me very sad. At one point I got to see them and mentioned that maybe their life would be better if I was no longer there parent... giving up all of my rights. This caused a lot of emotion and all of us cried over it. But as I saw it because more a matter if I wasn't in their lives anymore, they would not get material things from me. My children are very materialistic.

A few days before my children moved to another state we saw3 each other again. The meeting between us had good moments and many sad moments for me. At one point one of my boys who used to be my shadow started to get close to me again. He wanted me to take him to get some food as he was hungry and I was more than happy to take him. He called his mom and she told him he could not. She had a fear that I would hurt or even kill my children to hurt her which has never been proven and is totally true.

I had not heard from my children in over two months as I did not have a phone number to were she was staying... at her sisters home. Finally I got the right through child services negotiations to call my children. On Friday I called and both sons told me flat out that they did not want to talk to me. I asked why and all they would say was they did not want to talk to me.

I am hurt deeply and I am considering again to give up my parental rights to my ex. I know that come Christmas and birthdays, my children will be expecting gifts and money. Once again a matter of what they can get out of me.

I guess what I need to know, what are my rights? If I give up parental custody, will I still be required to pay support? What benefits does giving up my rights to them offer?

I am sad with the way my children have grown up and even before my divorce my children had no respect for me as my ex would go against everything I said even when we talked about it and agreed not to do this, she did this anyway.

I know my kids are growing up in a bigoted household and are not given the tools they need to cope and make it in life and accept diversity. Both my ex and her sister are very bigoted against hispanics and people who are different.

What can I do?

Forget giving up your rights. While your situation does have some differences from the many here, the basics are the same. Courts are very reluctant to terminate parental rights. If they do, its almost always where there is a step parent waiting to adopt or there is a danger to the children.

In the unlikely event you would be allowed to relinquish, this would not relieve you of financial responsibility.

Your boys are at a very difficult age and your changing gender can be very confusing to them. I hope they are getting good therapy to deal with this. You have already abandoned them to a degree with the divorce and geneder change. Now you want to compound this with terminating your rights? Do you really care about them or do you just want to get out of child support? Looks to me more like the latter.

Don't terminate, don't stop sending birthday and Xmas gifts. Write them letters that affirm your love for them but that tell them you understand how your own life changes affect them.

You should also be discussing this with your therapists for more advice on how to deal with this.

But don't abandon those poor boys more than you already have.

No I do not want to get out of support and no I did not abandon them. When someone deals with Gender Identity Disorder, it comes to apoint that you do everything you can to cover and prove you are not this way. You start getting angery with life in general and the options would have been death for me. Had I kept living a lie of who I was, then I would have added more suffering in the long run to them and ended up being gone totally from there lives.

As for theropy, NO they and there mother opted to not take this course even though I wanted it. I felt thet needed to know the facts from those who know them and this did not happen.

As far as danger, my ex has them and herself believing that I would harm them and I would not in anyway. While I have thought about harming myself, I have been working my way through this with help. I have never tried to harm myself or them and harming them would never happen.

My boys were ten when this transpired and from all the experience I have had with others inmy community, this age and younger tends to be a good time. It is when a child is in their late teens that they learn of a parent that has this issue, that it makes it harder for them to deal with the situation.

I have never abandon the and tried to explain this to them and do things with them, but their mother has them believing other things. As I mentioned inmy original post they had turned against me before the change or even the divorce. If I said no, my ex said yes. It was to the point that if I said No to something, the boys would respond, "We are not asking you" My ex let this happen and it was she that originally brought up the parental rights and I said NO. I have tried for three years to work through this and when one person who is trying is against a very negative one, it tends to bring the negative to a head to fester.

I care deeply for them and wonder that if I was completely out of their life, it would help them grow and give them a chance to learn. As the saying goes "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, it was meant to be.

Until YOU or someone you know goes through GID, you will never understand what this is like.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottGem

Forget giving up your rights. While your situation does have some differences from the many here, the basics are the same. Courts are very reluctant to terminate parental rights. If they do, its almost always where there is a step parent waiting to adopt or there is a danger to the children.

In the unlikely event you would be allowed to relinquish, this would not releive you of financial responsibility.

Your boys are at a very difficult age and your changing gender can be very confusing to them. I hope they are getting good therapy to deal with this. You have already abandoned them to a degree with the divorce and geneder change. now you want to compound this with terminating your rights? Do you really care about them or do you just want to get out of child support? looks to me more like the latter.

Don't terminate, don't stop sending birthday and Xmas gifts. Write them letters that affirm your love for them but that tell them you understand how your own life changes affect them.

You should also be discussing this with your therapists for more advice on how to deal with this.

But don't abandon those poor boys more than you already have.

Actually... he gave you very good advice.

You're focusing on GID.

You should be focusing on your KIDS.

Giving up your parental rights will not stop support, if, as Scott said, you are actually allowed to terminate. All it does is stop giving you any right to how your kids are raised.

If you want access to your kids, get a court order. Take your ex to court, and explain how you think that HER attitudes are a detriment to their emotional and mental health.

Your kids probably already feel as though you abandoned them because it was easier to do so... all you will be doing by stopping gifts and attempts at communication will be affirming to them (and to their mother) what an awful person you are.

As for therapy, I didn't say a specific course. They need to see A therapist. It doesn't have to be one specific to GID, though that would help. But this is not a change that anyone should go through without help.

The conversation with their mother should have gone like this:

You: I know this is tough to take in, but I really think you all should see a counselor. Ther is the course that I can recommend

Her: I don't want to see any counselor of yours

You: Fine, but you and the boys need to talk to someone. Find someone on your own.

I suspect you didn't give her that option.

The boys were just entering adolescence. This is a difficult time. I can see younger kids taking this a lot more easily, but not that age.

While they might benefit from an arms length relationship like I suggested (Birthday and holiday gifts and occassioanl letter), I don't think they will benefit from your relinquishing rights (not that I think you have a chance of getting it approved). As they get older, I think they will come around and realize what you are going through is about YOU, not them.

I did give her the option, my insuarance covered it for them and she nor they wanted to speak about it. I will say they went a couple of times and decided that this person could not help them. This was NOT a Dr of my choice but her choice of someone on my insurance. They decided between the three of them that it was not worth it.l I did offer to even talk to their Dr and give their Dr names of medical professionals that they could use as tools for the Dr to learn to help my children deal with this difficult situation. And most children from the ages of 0 to 12 that have parents that are GID work through this With help from Doctors and parents. But when one parent refuses to help and takes only a negative side and talk badly of a parent, children can and will form a negative view of a parent. If this were a normal situtation it could still be the same with one parent bad mouthing another.

When a child grows up in a family that supports bigotry and hatred, they tend to carry this belief on in life. Just like children from abusive families tend to grow up abusers themselves. Now I am not saying my children will be GID, this is a MEDICAL issue caused from a child in utero with lack of the right chemicals or too much chemicals into the brain as it develops. It has nothing to do with being taught to be GID, but hated is taught and my children already hate hispanics because of my ex and her sister who is a bigot.

I have brought Child Services into this to try and help, this is the way I finally got to even have a phone number for were they live. But I do not have an address at this time and a phone number is a start.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottGem

As for therapy, I didn't say a specific course. They need to see A therapist. it doesn't have to be one specific to GID, though that would help. But this is not a change that anyone should go through without help.

The conversation with their mother should have gone like this:

You: I know this is tough to take in, but I really think you all should see a counselor. Ther is the course that I can recommend

Her: I don't want to see any counselor of yours

You: Fine, but you and the boys need to talk to someone. Find someone on your own.

I suspect you didn't give her that option.

The boys were just entering adolescence. This is a diffcult time. I can see younger kids taking this a lot more easily, but not that age.

While they might benefit from an arms length relationship like I suggested (Birthday and holiday gifts and occassioanl letter), I don't think they will benefit from your relinquishing rights (not that I think you have a chance of getting it approved). As they get older, I think they will come around and realize what you are going through is about YOU, not them.

Ok that does make a difference. But I still think the bottomline is that you need to do everything you can to get them counseling. In the meantime, you need to back off and offer an arms length, no strings relationship like I described.

That's what I have been trying since April of this year when the "I don't want to talk or see you" started. I have tried to communicate and even took a step back to let them come to me. Every time they came to me it was when they wanted something that I owned and if I said No to them, they pulled back. If I gave in, they took what they wanted and pulled back. So far it's been a lose lose situation with them and this is why I asked the question. When you keep getting hit in the head, pretty soon you learn to duck, or stop playing. I've ducked to the point of laying on the ground and feel the balls still hitting me as I can duck no more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ScottGem

Ok that does make a difference. But I still think the bottomline is that you need to do everything you can to get them counseling. In the meantime, you need to back off and offer an arms length, no strings relationship like I described.

You tell them; You are my sons and I still love you, but I'm not going to buy your love. If you truly need something and its within my power I will help. But if you are just playing me to see what you can get you will be disappointed. I will be here if you need me, but only when you need ME, not what you think you can get out of me.

I think you will find a lot more hurt before things get better. But I firmly believe, if you do as I suggested, they WILL get better.