Hello,this is my first post,and I am desperate for advice. My 32 year old daughter is an alcoholic and has a 7 month old baby. Lately she has started to drink again,and lies and manipulates family members. The other night,my other adult daughter went to babysit for her so she could attend an AA meeting,and instead she went to a bar and got drunk. What should I do to help my grandbaby? We have already established the boundary that I will not take the baby if she has been drinking,because she just uses this whenever she wants to. She has a safe home to take the baby to if she has been drinking,but doesn't. Usually she drinks after the baby has gone to bed at night. What should I do??

This is hard. If it were just her, I'd say there's nothing you can do until she hits rock bottom and accepts the fact that she needs help, but for the baby's sake you need to act. Report her to child welfare services and start proceedings to remove the child from her custody. Maybe the shock of this will be enough to start her on the path to recovery. More likely she will blame you and plunge deeper into her addiction, but it's likely to happen sometime anyway, so better it should happen in a way that keeps her from harming the baby on her way down. I wish there was an easier way, but dealing with an addict is never easy.

I agree with OG, this is tough and maybe you have to be the one who gets the toughest in order to shock her into reality. But I question this:

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Originally Posted by worriedinLasVegas

I will not take the baby if she has been drinking

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I may be misreading this, and I hope I am. But if not, then you are leaving the baby in her care and custody when she has been drinking.:eek: I should think it would be the other way around. That you would want to take the baby when she has been drinking.

Whatever the case may be, I think she needs a reality check, and it won't be easy, but it is imperative for the safety and wellbeing of the child.

Quote:

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I may be misreading this, and I hope I am. But if not, then you are leaving the baby in her care and custody when she has been drinking.:eek: I should think it would be the other way around. That you would want to take the baby when she has been drinking.

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In the past,if she knows I will take the baby,it facilitates her going to the bar. I had told her that if she has been drinking,then she AND the baby must come over and stay at my house. This has been very emotionally difficult for our whole family. If we keep taking the baby,then it makes it easier for her to drink. I guess the only option is to call child welfare. I haven't talked to her for 4 days now,since the last drinking episode. She will probably tell social services that she is going back to AA and working on getting better. In the past,this has been lies.

It sounds lilke the mother doesn't want to be used as a babysitter-for the purpose of the daughter going out and drinking. I also have a daughter who drivks. Fortunately, there is no baby in the picture yet.

I'm sure she's figured it out in the 7 years since she asked the question.