How we lived...

Jeff would come home from work, scoop up J in his arms and immediately carry him upstairs to the bedroom to play - ignoring the other children including our second child together 'little J'. (For some reason the lot of us have yet to fathom, Jeff never bonded or desired to bond with little J. He was lumped into the 'ignore' pile with the older children.) The rest of the evening was spent playing in that room with the door close and no one allowed in. Not the other children, who wanted to see Dad, nor myself. In fact, I was forbidden from being present when Jeff was with J because he might want me to hold him and that was unacceptable. Jeff fed him, bathed him and put him down every night while I was relegated to the downstairs. Often when Jeff was chewing out the older children or I for some imagined or fabricated offense, he would be holding J in his arms. Of course this sent a very clear message to my little boy's subconscious - that it was Dad and he against all of us.

During this time Jeff projected a near constant barrage of criticism and anger toward my older children. They would be forced to face the wall for two hours at a time, sit on chairs in the middle of the room for two to three hours and they missed countless dinners. My oldest was grown (I adopted her at age 12 - that's why the minimal age difference) but the other four were 12, 10, 8 and 7. For two years they endured treatment designed to pick away at their core beings. You can imagine these young children at the dinner table with my obsessive - compulsive ex: "If that fork touches your teeth one more time..." "I said don't move in your seat!" " You didn't finish swallowing before you started speaking!" Always ending with removal from the dinner table and an early bedtime. We ate at 5:00 and they were usually sent away by 5:20. Not every child, every night, but five out of seven nights at least one was dismissed. Jeff was relentless in his literal pursuit of them as well. If they asked a question or made a comment that he thought was in any way 'mouthy' he would actually follow them from room to room upstairs and downstairs berating them until they cried. I had to physically place myself in between them on many occasions in an attempt to halt the onslaught. One time my 8 yr old was so frantic he curled up in a ball with the blanket over his head in the basement while Scott yelled and yelled. I wrapped my arms around him and screamed to Scott to stop and go away. At this point it had been over an hour and a half so he quit and went back upstairs.

It was time to go.