Taking to the Reddit community, a woman wanted to know if she had been in the wrong for contacting Child Services after the mother of six dropped them on her doorstep and said she would be back by Sunday.
OP explained that the mother of the children had an uncanny skill for talking the neighbors into babysitting for her and although she was the type who would say no to taking care of someone else’s children, she was also tricked into babysitting them in the past.
“Yesterday she came knocking on my door again. So I pretended I wasn’t home. She continued to knock harder and I thought she would yank the letterbox right off. So, I went to answer. She quickly said a few sentences that I didn’t quite understand and that she would be back on Sunday,” OP wrote in her post. “She has 6 children ranging from 6 months to 7 years old. I told her I couldn’t and she said the black cab was waiting for her. I tried to grab her hand to stop her from leaving, and I said I was unable to and she ran off and got in the cab.”
OP was suddenly left with the children whom she invited inside her home. Not knowing what to do, she texted the mother writing she expected her to be back in the next 40 minutes in order to pick her children up or she would be forced to call Children’s Services. When she didn’t answer the text, OP tried to call her and told her the same thing. The mother, however, said she was already out of town and she couldn’t possibly return in such a short amount of time.
She also said that if OP couldn’t take care of them, she could drop them to this other neighbor, Jenifer, who was 68 years old and with a fragile health.
“I repeated that if she wasn’t here in 10 she could pick them up at the local council if they decided she was a fit enough mother. She said a few bad words and told me I would never. So I did as in the moment it felt like she was baiting me. After phoning Child Services I sent her a text that it was done. She phoned me back and said she was halfway to Blackpool and that she would murder me if it was true. So I sent her a video when Child Services picked them up. The police were there too as they said they often tag along for collecting abandoned children in case something criminal has happened and they asked a lot of questions about the mother,” OP wrote.
Now although OP was convinced she did the right thing, her husband, who used to be in foster care as a young child, was fuming at her because of her action. He accused her of separating the mother from her children and that she didn’t give the mother enough time to come and pick up her kids before alerting the Child Services.
He said she shouldn’t have taken the children in in the first place, but she should have put them inside the cab or leave them at Jennifer’s as instructed by their mom.
“He told me anything that happens to those children in care is on my head and then he told me of things he himself experienced and what he knew of others in care had experienced,” OP wrote and added: “I haven’t slept all that much and my husband left for work without speaking to me. I wonder if I should go back to Child Services and say I overreacted or that it was a misunderstanding and find a way to make it up to the children and get them out of there. I had no idea foster care was that bad,” she ended her story.
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