After the judge received the petition filed on behalf of Theo’s grandmother, her request for kinship custody was granted. Theo moved in with his grandmother and her live-in boyfriend on March 8, 2022, approximately two months after the adjudication hearing. We had Theo with us full-time for three and a half months leading up to this moment, so it was not easy to let him go. Actually, we were sick about it, but, once again, we had no say. We tried our best to have good relations with Grandma because we didn’t want Theo completely out of our lives. The thought of that was unbearable.
She was good at staying in communication with us in the beginning and allowing us to spend time with Theo. Of course, he wanted to be with Denyse whenever he could. He was quite a handful for his grandmother because all he did was cry for Denyse. Denyse would go over to try and settle him down, but it was worse when she tried to leave him. I gave Grandma credit at the time because she seemed to accept that it was important for Theo to get to spend time with Denyse, so she was pretty liberal with allowing her to take him, which was a win for me as well.
We had Theo around 75% of the time when he was legally in the grandmother’s care. She permitted us to spend time with him, and he stayed with us on a regular basis. We loved having him, plus we wanted to give his grandma breaks. He truly became the light of our world. We just wanted him to be well-cared for, loved, nurtured, and safe. We also wanted him to be exposed to God, the people of God, and the ways of God. We wanted better for him than his family was able to provide for various reasons; some of those were self-imposed, while some were active mental illnesses and addictions. Generational curses played into their lives significantly, and there was a high probability of that being perpetuated in Theo’s life. That scared the bejeebers out of us. We didn’t want Theo to become the byproduct of his family curses; it just wouldn’t have been fair. We were doing our best to keep that from happening by staying in his life, by being active participants in his life.
We had to learn not to pick apart the arrangement with his grandmother because she didn’t do things the way we did, and she didn’t live the same way. Our upbringings and personal standards for living were very different than hers, so this was quite difficult for us. The things that bothered us weren’t that big of a deal, and they definitely weren’t grounds for CPS to remove a child from the home, so we went with it. However, when Theo was with us, he never wore the same pair of pajamas two nights in a row, and he was bathed every night and put into clean street clothes every day. Staying in his pajamas all day was not an option. His environment with us was clean, peaceful, and structured.
It bothered us that he lived in a smoke-filled apartment that wasn’t very clean, and that he hung out all day on a king-sized bed in the only bedroom they had, where everybody, including friends and family who came over from the outside, gathered to watch TV or talk. There was no structure, and whenever we picked him up for a visit, he didn’t smell the best and wasn’t as clean as we wanted him to be. Even though we didn’t prefer it to be this way, it didn’t constitute abuse or neglect. Were we being judgmental? Were our expectations too high? After all, he was with his family, and that was a plus, right?
Denyse told Theo’s grandma the same thing she told his bio-mom: if you run into trouble or just need a break, I will take him for a while. We missed him terribly when he was away from us. We even came back early from a vacation so we could have an extra day with him. It was horrible taking him back to her and her boyfriend because he would cry and run after Denyse when she walked away, screaming at the door; he didn’t want her to leave him. I thought I would die in those moments. What were we doing? Why were we putting ourselves through this? We would just sit in the truck and try to compose ourselves, thinking we were doing the right thing by staying connected to Theo and his bio-family even though it was hard on us.
We weren’t going to wash our hands of Theo and walk away from him, but we weren’t blood family. After all, we were 57 years old, not thinking that raising a child at this stage was part of God’s plan for the rest of our lives; Denyse had already done that, and her son was independent and thriving. We would rationalize the situation and eventually drive off, but we were both miserable without him. We had both developed a very deep love for Theo. I loved him more than I had ever loved a child in my life – the kind of love that is so deep it hurts.
The disposition hearing for Theo was scheduled for April 7, 2022, three months after the adjudication hearing. The disposition hearing is where the judge assesses the child’s living situation and requires the parents to complete a case plan. The bio-father refused to be a part of the case plan. He said his plate was already full and he absolutely wouldn’t sign off on anything that CPS was involved in. He wasn’t willing to do one thing for Theo. That broke my heart for Theo. He didn’t deserve that; he didn’t deserve any of this.
The case plan was really no big deal; it just provided a clear and specific guide for the caseworker and the family to work on together to improve behaviors and conditions present in order to improve safety, decrease risk, and improve family functioning; it’s all in the best interest of the child. CPS gives the parents the tools they need and access to all the programs and assistance they want. They truly try to help improve their situation and reunite them with their children, but the parents must work the plan and meet the goals, with no exceptions.
Since the father had refused to participate in Theo’s case plan, it was only his mother who signed on, but it was a lackluster attempt, and she fell short time after time, specifically in the number of clean drug screenings she was required to produce. She had every excuse in the book for when she tested dirty or didn’t show up for randoms. She repeatedly wiggled her way out of immediate consequences that could have been invoked. Bio-mom is a master manipulator, and bio-dad has limited mental capacity, hence the difficulty of working with them.
In Ohio, a parent typically has 6-12 months from the date of the disposition hearing to complete their case plan and achieve reunification. By law, a permanency hearing must be held no later than 12 months after the child is first removed from the home. The family court is required to review the progress of the case plan and usually makes a final decision on the child’s placement within a year. If the parents have not made substantial progress by this time, CPS may move to terminate parental rights.
However, if a parent is actively working on their plan but needs more time to complete the case goals, the court has the discretion to grant up to two 6-month extensions. Under Ohio law, the absolute maximum time frame a child can remain in temporary custody to allow parents to finish a case plan is 2 years. As expected, bio-mom filed for extensions to work on her care plan, and they were granted. She dragged the process out as long as she could. At one month short of two years, she faked it, hoping to make it. We all knew that she wasn’t doing the work that she said she was doing, but our hands were tied. Her dilly-dallying made the entire process emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually draining. It was exhausting.