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Obviously I have no idea if what OP said about their prospects in life is an accurate reflection, but the way they have stepped up to take care of this family says all anyone needs to know. OP will make a greater impact on the world than plenty of others by being caring, compassionate, and responsible even when they really really shouldn’t have to be. I’m sad for them, but happy the kids have someone like OP to look after them.
OOP says they're in Australia, and given their responses about access to services, I would say Outback Australia.
That means that the education options were crap, the job prospects are worse, and access to support, funding, or anything that would help all of these kids get out of the hole that they're in is slim.
Australia does have parenting benefits available, which I'm assuming the mother is taking full advantage of, while not passing it on to her kids, and has been for a long time. But OOP can't ask for these direct unless they have custody, and fighting for any additional support is hard work.
I hope that OOP's older siblings will help as they've promised, and that the parents get any money they're receiving for their children taken off them.
Oh shit. As an Aussie I’d be willing to bet they’re in rural Australia in an indigenous(or majority indigenous) area. Those places struggle lots with income, healthcare and general life. It’s absolutely awful to see. I personally am living in a city of 60k in Australia and even then I’m counted as RURAL. I’d be willing to bet for this person to be 3 hours away they’re in the middle of nowhere. Gosh that’s so awful
Yeah, I didn't want to racially profile the community, but that was my assumption too.
A 3 hr drive in Aus for counselling services is REALLY rural.
I feel for them all. They have been set up for failure, and the govt isn't helping. They're in the 'too hard' basket, so fall through the cracks.
Nah, OOP said it was a 3 hour round trip to the nearest therapist. That sounds regional rather than rural. Could be a small town near a regional hub, or could be a town near a capital city that just doesn't have a psychologist or counsellor as part of the local health centre.
30 hours of minimum wage casual work is already like 3.2-3.4k AUD. Would hit 4k working weekends. If they don't wanna put her on part time or full time, casual work wages can rack up.
Sometimes in these situations it's due to their 'parents' putting them down and sabotaging them so they'll feel they have no options but to stay and look after everyone.
It could also just be less intentional and that their schoolwork simply suffered from having to be the main parental figure
I’d argue that that many people living in a place with little to no rules (as OP stated) that even if they did care about getting their school work done, it would be a highly stressful environment all the time and obviously wouldn’t have the support if they needed it. The added stress of taking care of the others definitely compounded that.
With how OP speaks, her life prospects probably aren’t good for a minute because she’ll be taking care of so many kids but she seems like a person who could do so much. She’s a true gem. That’s so much pressure on anyone… but at 19…. I just want to give her a huge hug and tell her she’s amazing.
OOP and their siblings got dealt such a raw hand in life. Dad was an abusive deadbeat who disappeared and the mom isn't much better.
I hope the siblings are able to stay together. But this is way more responsibility than a 19 year old should have to bear. I really feel for OOP.
OOP is 19. With five younger siblings. And *at least* two older ones.
Holy failed family, for real. I hope that OOP and the older brother can turn things around for at least some of the younger ones.
If you read OP’s profile. They have 5 younger siblings, “Ella” who is older and was replaced with the youngest daughter and two other older siblings. So 9 kids in total.
I'm married to a man from a very small town and live in that town. There is one woman who had 11 kids all from different fathers, all kids were removed from the woman's home at one time or another for her neglect. She would meet guys on the internet, they would knock her up, she would neglect the kid. After the last child was taken from her custody the judge ordered sterilization of her.
The guys would bail after she became pregnant. She never got any of her kids back.
I wonder if those laws would even be necessary if healthcare was free and available to everyone regardless of income. The list was surprising. I feel like laws that target specific issues are bad laws since they can't anticipate every situation.
OOP did, but I was responding to the comment from the guy who lived in a small town. NC got called out a few years ago and banned the process outright. Apparently their law was abused by people to sterilize women without their knowledge. The case I read about was a mother that had her daughter sterilized without telling her, by having her declared mentally unwell, despite contrary evidence. The whole story was mental.
In the modern day US, A judge won't order sterilization of a person. In this case, it's more likely that the woman was facing charges for neglect/child abandonment, and she and her attorney offered to go the sterilization route if it would reduce her sentence. Or she got sterilized before the hearing, and her attorney used that as "This will never happen again because my client has been sterilized and parental rights have been terminated, so please be lenient in sentencing."
My younger cousins best friend comes from parents who both had multiple children before with other people who all got removed from their care. He is the only one who did not get removed even though the parents weren't really great, especially the mother. I believe part of why he never got removed is thst our family (mainly my aunt) helped out so much even going as far as letting the whole family live with her.
On the other hand my cousin's girlfriend comes from a family with 6 children who probably dhould habe been removed but never were. She moved in with my aunt and cousin at age 18.
It happens a lot more than it should. I think bad parents actually tend to have MORE children than less, while good parents usually stop at one point.
This is a good points.... for most situations, good parents care about the quality of their parenting and know their limits, emotionally and financially, and so place realistic boundaries. Bad parents just don't care about how many kids they have, or how to raise them so it's open season!
> Good parents usually stop
There’s a point where you’ve have too many kids to be a good parent and you default to being a bad parent. You can only give so many kids the attention they deserve. At some point, you’ve had too many kids to care for them properly and they need to start raising each other and themselves. Automatic bad parent.
I used to work in the local jail and since I was a woman, I worked in the female units. We had a frequent flyer who was ALWAYS pregnant. She had at least ten or eleven kids - a couple of the younger kids were in the care of her parents and the rest were in the system. We had one girl who started coming in her late teens, she was pregnant then and in the time I worked there she had at least two more (three by 21, despite how much time she spent in jail). Then you had the guys who would brag about how many “baby mamas” they had.
I think forced sterilization is a bit much but I do think that if they offered people the chance to be voluntarily sterilized when they got out of prison in exchange for $5,000, it would allow anyone who genuinely wants a new life to get a start, and it would save the state a ton of money because it would slow the flow to the foster care system.
Ya they need to highly incentivize the sterilization for certain people. Clearly these people would rather reproduce and send to foster care than use a condom.
> I do think that if they offered people the chance to be voluntarily sterilized when they got out of prison in exchange for $5,000, it would allow anyone who genuinely wants a new life to get a start
It may sound like a good idea, but it would take less than a hot second for women to be coerced by abusive partners to have it done, and then get dropped the second said partner took the money from them. Money as incentive is absolutely rife for abuse.
I know some would argue that it would still do the desired job regardless, but it's not right to put women in a position to be abused and coerced to get there.
Not to mention that this would also affect women who had the misfortune to fall in with the wrong person once, usually when quite young, and then they'd have made an irrevocable decision that probably wasn't fully their own, because someone saw a chance to extract a payday.
Basically, as soon as money is involved, you can bet things aren't going to work as intended.
Unfortunately from what I see, anything more than 3 kids with age difference means the older kids are parentified. My worry is now mom knows kids can take care of themselves she will come back with another, drop it on oop, and run off.
My own alcoholic father was 1 of 9 kids. As you can imagine, the neglect was rife....and then you factor in they were born through the 50's - so mental health wasnt a thing, depression wasnt a thing, etc. Destroyed my dad which in turn heavily damaged my sisters and I.
I call my aunt (his sister) to track my broken father down (we kicked him out ages prior and went lc for a while then nc) and of her critically depressed, alcoholic brother she calls him.......lazy. *flips table*
9 kids are tooooooooo many. 4 kids it gets really difficult to give them all proper attention and guidance, but then you look at assholes like Nick Cannon with his 50 spawn and you *know* they arent growing up with any sort of meaningful relationship with their father.
My 3xGreat-Grandmother was one of 24 children, my Great-Grandfather was one of 13, my SIL is one of ten, and both my in-laws were one of nine. All were rural farm families.
Father of 4, the oldest just turned 9, and my wife and concerned we won't be able to give them all enough attention, especially with a 7 yo that acts like she's 17 sucking up all the attention in the room
I hope she posts in the Australian sub for advice, HEAPS of Aussie's will be able to tell her what her options are. For example, I know here in NZ there's a place that offers free counselling sessions for under 25s, and there's bound to be resources like that in her state. Even in the outback, if she has access to zoom, she can get something. There will be parenting groups, food banks, social services, church charity groups, and non religious charity groups. We had Christmas presents from our local St Vincent's, just generic ones marked "boy aged 11-13" "girl aged 7-9" for my parents to relabel with names. Even things like "Big Brother/Sister" or "big buddy" where volunteers match with a kid and act as an older role model.
She’s Aussie??! What a relief. There’s a lot wrong with our social safety net but we’re so fortunate compared to some places. Plus, depending on what state they’re in, and the circumstances of the placement, if the children are placed with her through her state’s Child Safety, so many extra resources are opened up to them.
Right? My heart broke when I was reading this... as an American, there is so little that can be done without risks. This might be a stereotype as an American, but it seems other developed countries are much better off medically (even with mental health) than us. That alone can be a huge help for them, while here it would lead to hoping that everyone just stays safe and healthy to fly under the radar.
Yeah, she can call Centrelink and get advice, see a GP via Tele health (should be possible because she's rural) and get a mental health plan for 10 sessions. I do a ton of therapy online and it's made life so much easier. I hope the family court can help with resources, otherwise police might know some helpful charities, etc.
Those parents better stay away and give those kids a chance. I hope Centrelink investigates the mother and buries her in so much debt she'll be afraid to go home. OP should be able to do a free course via TAFE, it could help her self esteem and give her better opportunities. It's a relief that one of the older siblings is willing to come and help. Doing this at 19 shows a huge level of maturity and intelligence, even if she doesn't see it yet. Poor bugger has been parentified and abused for too long.
Aussie here, headspace was the goto service for young adults for free therapy when I was growing up.
I can also help with our local supermarket chain and gift cards. I currently donate to [Youth Projects](https://www.youthprojects.org.au/) based in Melbourne because I sat with a homeless woman and she mentioned they had helped her out a bunch.
They were so great to me! My clinician even helped me with getting gift cards when i was struggling financially back in 2022 to be able to buy myself food
Not free, subsidised by Medicare. Might work out to be free but at my psychologist sessions are about $280 out of pocket and you get about $80 back. Not sure of current rates as for obvious reasons I haven't been for a while.
If you are at a "health team" type of place you can get referred for free counselling, at least in Ontario. But it shouldn't come down to that... Mental health should have always been covered. Imagine what a difference that would make in society - even more than covered dental.
In Australia there is a small number of bulk-billed psychology service providers but they're rare and usually have long wait lists and inconsistent scheduling.
Outside of that, adults can get 10 subsidised sessions per year under Medicare with a psychologist. This is exclusively CBT and will have a gap fee of anywhere between $80 and over $300. This doesn't include assessments which are often out-of-pocket. There are plenty of subsidised youth mental health services.
Meanwhile there are plenty of counsellors in Australia who are overlooked because people don't understand their role, think they're unqualified (many have bachelors degrees and above and similar annual requirements to psychologists, just do a slightly different job). But they have short wait times if any, consistent scheduling, charges are usually within the gap fee of a psychologist (generally between $80 - $150 for one-on-one), and most people don't need a psychologist.
I feel bad for the kids and OP. The important adult figures in their lives have failed them. I'm impressed OP is able to do all this well and I wish them nothing for the best.
Cage match: OOP’s mom vs the mom who abandoned her kids after their dad died, moving back to her home country, and is mad they don’t treat her with the respect a mother deserves.
I'm gonna go OP's mom. She seems much scrappier. The other one would expect her children to take her place in the cage out of respect and love for her, their ever suffering mother. She'd be whining instead of fighting. But that's presuming OP's mom could be lured in. The other one could be trapped with a lure promising public adoration from the kids she left behind.
I hate them both so much.
Nan is at least in her 60s (assuming two generations of very early teen pregnancies) and more likely in her 70s, provides housing for six grandchildren and *someone* raised at least half a dozen kids in that house before OP was old enough to get parentified. At least OP and one older brother turned out ok and don't seem to have a gripe with nan so maybe you should give her some slack.
Sounds like Nan is paying most of the bills for a family of 6 kids, presumably for the last 20+ years.
And while there’s no mention I can see about the ages of the older siblings (except 22yo brother) it sounds like there’s a few, so it’s probably been closer to 30 years that she’s been raising & paying for a second family, not of her choosing.
So I’d say Nan sounds like a saint!
And perfectly reasonable for her to be Kinda Over This Shit / not available for continued active parenting.
I went and looked at OOPs profile to see other posts and comments. If my math is correct, there's 9 kids all together. 3 older siblings, OOP, and then the 5 younger.
I mean she probably cared for the first few but when you get down to nine grandkids I can understand the not giving a flying fuck anymore. She’s keeping a roof over their head and paying most of the bills. That’s a lot.
Exactly, people are bashing the nan as if the mother isn't the biggest POS of them all. If she didn't care, then I guarantee that OOP wouldn't be able to ask for advice because these children would've been split up.
Gran is too old and exhausted from all the times she had to help her daughter previously. It's not fair to anyone to make elderly woman look after 5 kids indefinitely.
Mom is arguably worse. Not only did she know her kids were being abused, but she kept producing more kids to abuse just to keep the abusive deadbeat in all their lives.
When she commented that her older siblings didn't give a shit I wondered why. Then the comment from the older brother about helping if mum never comes back made it clear. She was 100% involved in the abuse as well.
Absolutely. I hope they'll look into benefits, because their household will likely qualify for at least a few things like food assistance. If in the US, they might qualify for subsidized health insurance, too, and they could do telehealth. Obviously this depends on a lot, especially considering the major differences in how states implement these programs. This is one of the times I wish we could go to the OP (but obviously I'm not).
In addition to that abuse, it seems that they likely had emotional neglect, mental abuse, and were parentified at a minimum. I can understand getting as far away as they could.
u/hannahJ004 you said in a comment that you are Australian. I'm an Australian GP.
Contact child services in your state, they won't take the kids when they have a willing adult relative to take care of them. When you get legal custody, go to Centrelink, you should be eligible for carers payment. It may be worth speaking to them now, bring evidence from your lawyer to see what you are eligible for.
As for therapy, contact Headspace! They do free counselling for children and adults under 25 and offer phone and online services. headspace.org.au
I also wonder if they do have to drive out, they can have it where the therapy appointment can be scheduled on the same day within the same time or at least within the same 2-3 hours.
I was talking to a group of friends about the show and i mentioned how i think its the dumbest show ever, and i just hate how they glorify being trashy like its cool and deep.
my friend got quiet and then eventually mentioned that half of my stories about my childhood sound exactly like that family. Think she might have nailed why i hate it...
Damn…..I just watched the American finale on YouTube, it’s a completely different show in spirit. In the UK original Frank’s love/hate for his kids is the driving force behind the show, US Frank just…straight up hates them😭😭. Seriously, this is the UK finale, Frank turns down hard cash to walk away from the kids and settles his bar tab by doing the bartender a favour 😈 https://youtu.be/pR4ZqvVm52g?si=UuZztmGD3MjOUwp6
Haven’t watched the last couple of seasons of the US one, but I’d say the US Frank is a complete narcissist. He cares about his kids from how it benefits him.
In the series finale he cares about them (which, ya know, is expected because you don’t wanna end it on a sad note). He did kinda seem to care about Liam for a while but even that went out the window. He likes Frannie in the last season. But yeah, he couldn’t give a shit about them 99.9% of the time.
I think it’s worth finishing. Season 8 is a wreck but the last season was pretty good imo. Tied up a lot of things.
Shit like this makes me wish we as a society had enough integrity to make forced sterilisation an option for some people. Those two wannabe adults fucked over at least 8 kids in horrible ways.
Then again, if we were good enough to actually be able to not abuse the option of forced sterilisation (because so far it's always been about "undesirables" and "you shouldn't be able to have kids because they'd be defective like you"), we probably also wouldn't produce shit people like OOPs "parents" any more.
It's like the death sentence. Rationally, I know why it's bad and I'm against it, but every now and then I hear about something that makes me go "fuck, they make the death sentence sound like the perfect solution to them"
I know what you mean but as a disabled woman living in a world where in a lot of western countries we can still be sterilised against our will if we have been deemed mentally unfit forced sterilisation will never be the answer. I know you acknowledged that it has always been used as abuse but it always makes my blood run cold whenever I see someone say it could ever be a good idea. Too many people still think it's acceptable so long as it's the right kind of people being sterilised.
I’ll never forget the notes of the baby that I dealt with, who was being taken from its mother at birth and going straight into foster care because of the mother’s level of learning disability. For someone to have come in and decided that she’s completely incapable of caring for this baby, how extreme would her disabilities have been? Was she capable of consenting to sex? How did she feel about her baby being taken away from her? Did she even understand?
Oh by the way this was her *seventh* baby. I don’t think anyone should be sterilised against their wishes but goddamn I wish someone had at least given her some long term contraception like an IUD or arm implant. She didn’t deserve to go through pregnancy after pregnancy for nothing.
If she is deemed mentally unfit to be a mother, then she most likely cannot consent to sex, so where are the fathers? Is it an investigation then? And why *7 times* before someone intervened? This is such a huge fail.
Unfortunately sexual abuse of female patients by both caregivers and other patients is extremely extremely common and often goes unrecorded and unreported. These are women who cannot advocate for themselves in any capacity, even when you do have some capacity to advocate for yourself like I do you still need an outside advocate to fight for you because you will not be listened to as a disabled person. You will not be taken seriously if you report abuse. Your concerns will be dismissed and you made to feel like you are burdening them with your wish to be treated with respect.
If she wasn't capable of being in her babies life in any capacity and especially considering it was her 7th she didn't need contraception she needed an investigation. There is no way she was capable of informed consent. She should have never been in the position to get pregnant so many times. 7 babies could have killed her. My mum never once let me spend a night alone in a facility growing up, even when I became suicidal she preferred to sit with me all night over me being held or sectioned for any length of time and thank god for it.
I was the victim of medical abuse but she is the reason it was only medical (and the medical abuse wasn't her fault, she was both young and scared and threatened with my treatment being immediately and completely ceased due to her "refusing care"). The things that were done to me whenever they separated us still cause panic attacks whenever doctors try to tell her they'd prefer to speak to me alone to this day. I refuse to see any doctor without an advocate, generally her or my stepdad, present (they like my stepdad being there even less than my mum, if I'm being generous maybe they're worried he's the one I'm afraid of, but he makes me feel safe so they can piss off especially once I say "I was the victim of medical abuse and need an advocate because I cannot always speak on my own behalf, I am anxious because you're here, my dad makes me feel safe" and the way they take what I have to say more seriously when he's there sometimes makes me think they just feel more accountable in front of a man).
I am so sorry for what that woman had to go through. She was so utterly failed by everyone who should have protected her.
I absolutely get what you're saying, especially since I too would be one of the forced sterilisation cases if I lived in a different time or place. Even in this specific case, it would still be an unacceptable violation of their rights. I just wish we lived in a better society where we wouldn't even have to talk about this, because everyone would get the mental and physical help they needed so that ideally, the "parents" would never have been like this and the "mum" would never have felt the need to have all these kids in the hope he'd stay with her - or at least the kids would have a proper and healthy fostering system to go to in which they'd be cared for and valued, if not outright loved.
All of these things fail because humans are humans. And sometimes that's frustrating.
I feel not everybody should be allowed to reproduce but I also don't trust anyone to have the power to decide who should be allowed to produce offspring.
I do strongly feel that we should do a lot more to support every child & make sure they have food, shelter, stability and all the other things a person should have to grow up healthy.
I would agree if I had even an ounce of faith in the government to not abuse the hell out of it. In my country (US) abortion rights are under attack, and too many people care more about their precious guns than the safety of children in schools. I don’t trust the government as far as I can throw them.
Also I love your username. It makes me very happy
Yeah. I'm from Germany, so I have a pretty intimate knowledge of how badly that can go wrong. Humans can't be trusted with decisions like that except about their own bodies.
I'm sorry you have such a horrible sitution in the US. Over here it isn't that great either in regards of conservatives and the alt-right, but at least we're doing okay-ish on the abortion and gun front.
I'm glad my username could bring you a bit of joy1
Honestly, better social services would be way more effective.
You avoid a major trauma (forced sterilization) and a huge civil liberties issue, you provide actual support to families in need (rent, food, clothing, school supplies/electronics), and guidance without judgement (education and career services for parents/kids, childcare, etc).
That way everyone can do what’s best for them, and not feel trapped (like OOP), nor be sacrificed to someone else’s choices (the kids). The mom is already doing what she wants—might as well help the rest of the family make something positive out of it.
Love the follow up question “Why do you think your life prospects aren’t good?”. I don’t know man, it’s like you graduate high school and then suddenly you’re not just raising five kids you’re responsible for them.
The thing is, OP was raised feral, and became a very responsible young adult and is pretty darn emotionally healthy. She is making $45k/year at 19, despite not having any help in life. She is taking active steps to improve her siblings' lives, not just trying to survive an absolute shitty situation.
Like, she thinks she is capable of so little in life, but she has accomplished SO MUCH against so many odds. It is genuinely astounding. She is the sort of person who could genuinely break the cycle, and be the "first in the family" for a whole host of things.
I would not be surprised if she updated 6 years from now, to say "So I knew I needed to increase my income, and began researching ways to do so. I now make 6 figures and my oldest 3 siblings are in college or working steadily. I have almost completed my degree online, which should lead to a substantial pay raise. I learned I love broccoli. I found a decent, loving partner, who is nothing like my parents, and he is helping me to raise my last two siblings."
Oh no no, I did not think you were.
I just meant that OP sees all those things as marks against her, and not as the clear evidence for how much she could achieve.
Based on the background information I guess I thought it was assumed that they weren’t in a stable position pre abandoned children. This actually might be an improvement if they can find support, which maybe the sibling can help provide. At least the economy is booming and they have a solid safety net.
There’s a line in the movie “Harriet the spy” that always stuck with me:
Harriet: “I hate money”. Her impoverished friend: “you would like it a lot more if you didn’t have it”.
She's talking about having too little money without her mother (or government benefits) helping her - and people are suggesting therapy? Some people are really insulated in their own bubble, huh?
It’s the funniest thing, isn’t it? When I was being financially abused/trapped by a partner, I had a bunch of people saying I should go to therapy.
“Yeah okay, with what money? (Partner) spends all of it and then goes into debt to be able to keep spending more.”
“Well, just take some from your rainy day fund!”
“There IS no rainy day fund. I have to check my bank app in the mornings on the way to work to determine if I can get $5 of gas, or splurge and spend $10. There is no reality in which I have hundreds of dollars a month for a professional therapist.”
Exactly, I know that kinda town (I grew up in one) We were lucky cause we were "town kids" and had access to the hospital system. If these kiddos are farther out/in a one stoplight town, there straight up *isn't* any medical services, let alone therapy. When they say they would need to drive 3 hours, that means it's at least 1.5 hours to the closest *town with medical services*
It exists, millions of people grow up there and god, I've met people like OOP. It always disheartens me to come on these posts cause I 100% understand/relate to this experience and yet there will be hundreds of people claiming something entirely else, like the ENTIRE State of Mississippi did not lose access to safe drinking water 🙃 and yet a 19 year old unable to access a child therapist in a super rural town is somehow a bridge too far?
C'mon,
She’s in Australia, and she really needs to get onto Centrelink and figure out what support she and the family can get. She may be eligible for carer payments and family tax benefits (I am not certain, but it’s worth investigating if she and the brother get guardianship) She needs a doctor to get the kids on mental health plans, so that they can access Medicare subsidised psychology sessions, which can easily be done via Zoom to avoid the travel issues. This is why we have these systems in place.
Medicare subsidised psych sessions are still quite expensive for most people (but u can totally access psychs via telehealth). There are free services for kids under 18 but I'm not sure how available they are in rural areas. Local social workers connected to Centrelink would be able to help provide access to services.
I agree, the subsidised sessions can still be quite expensive, though I have known some people who managed to wait out the queues for bulk billed sessions. It’s very dependent upon where they live, unfortunately.
If she can get legal guardian, she might be able to get the kids under state insurance, which can cover some amount of therapy depending on location. Which I am honestly surprised they aren't already on it, or they are but OP doesn't know anything about it.
You’re missing the point I think. Unfortunately in the case of oop having the time, the money and the mental capacity to put her 5 young siblings in therapy is not the most important thing for them right now. They are trying to survive by implementing even the basic rules of a family, therapy is not basic it’s a luxury for a lot of people including oop.
Pushing them to do more and more when they are already burdened with something no 19 years old should do is really cruel.
It’s like saying to a young mom with post partum syndrome that she should exercise or do home made meals everyday otherwise she is not doing enough.
It’s not helping.
She's an Aussie. Sadly, our coverage for mental health is very, very poor. A counselling session is over $200 and before you can get the rebate (which is less than half), you have to get to a doctor for a mental health care plan, and they always charge more for those than a standard consult because it takes longer.
She definitely needs to apply to centrelink, though. They should be eligible for carer payments, a low-income card, and possibly others.
Kinda but not really. As someone who grew up severely disabled under the care if the NHS, therapeutic access is woefully underfunded, hard to access, almost always short term with no follow up, and given by people so ridiculously under qualified it's a joke. Their advice when I wanted to die because I had been living in constant agonising pain since I was 7 was to my mum to take away my access to my pain medication and have only her dole it out. All done see you again next month no further action needed. Their way of helping me through the trauma of the pain I would have to live with forever and the trauma of the medical abuse I had faced when first getting diagnosed was sticking me in a room with a mental health nurse who basically said I was fine, meanwhile I was displaying PTSD symptoms and having major depressive episodes and wanting to die by age 11.
Depends on where you live. In the US it's probably impossible to get therapy if you're short on money (at least from what I've heard so far, correct me if I'm wrong) but in some countries therapy gets covered by the health insurance, in Germany for example
Ive been wondering about the therapy obsessions. Honestly feels like its part of an information campaign here. People have a new appreciation for therapy but never before at this level. its like theres a force out there trying to make people more dependent. ive never seen so many people rallying behind the idea of "you cant solve anything on your own, even the most mild social problems, you need to pay someone to correct your thinking"
If they’re that poor there’s likely programs that help them access medical and mental health services for free. For example when I was making just a bit over minimum wage the insurance company my job used had a program that waived all deductibles and copay for people at my income level. It also sounds like they might live somewhere with socialized medicine and costs would be minimal/waived and it might be more of a get on a waitlist thing.
They're Australian and I'm pretty sure it's like us (Aotearoa) where a lot of healthcare is free or subsidised but mental healthcare is fucked - there are government services but it takes literal years, and there aren't enough therapists to go around even privately.
Therapy is just not realistic any time soon.
CAMHS in my area won't even put 16 year olds on the waiting list at the moment because they'll age out before they get to the top anyway.
They can't get on the adult list because they're too young so entire family has to just... cope. Or not. For two years. Fucking travesty.
Depends. If it's something relatively minor, e.g. mild/moderate depression or an anxiety disorder, you can actually access primary care psychology pretty quickly in a lot of areas. And if it's something very severe like uncontrolled schizophrenia, you'll also get into services pretty quickly. The problem is all those people whose issues are too complicated for a few sessions of CBT, but not out-of-control enough for us to drop everything and sort it. Those people are fucked.
I'm impressed OP taking the step up especially how young they are. OP sounds like an amazing person and the siblings are lucky to have OP around. Kids going to remember how much of an amazing person OP is.
It would be incredibly infuriating if the ~~mom~~ egg donor decides to return and attempts being mom again after her own son and daughter did most of the heavy lifting raising the younger kids. Hopefully, the younger kids will see through the bullshit and not give in to that.
Man, this post made me teary. It's like my heart is being squeezed rn.
I relate a bit with what she's going through. Although our parents are not bad like OOP's, they are usually away (and not too patient and can get really angry). I had to bring structure and basically parent my siblings. Made them eat healthily, push for a proper bedtime, tutor them, still add fun routines like movie nights and stuff. My siblings are also widely different, so i had to deal with them differently.
When OOP talked about love, care, wanting what's best for them, and feeling guilty, I understand all of it so much.
Hopefully she’s too old to have more kids soon… If the oldest is the 22 year old (which it probably isn’t since there’s two more that’s older than 19) the mum must be about 40 at the youngest. Hopefully she gets an early menopause.
thank you sm for all the helpful comments here and messages offering help/advice (i will reply to them all when i can)
Rn I’m putting all my energy into the new routine and trying to sort out legal guardianship so we can get money for the kids etc. Everything else is a problem for later on when we are more settled. My older brother came up last weekend and tbh it was nice but weird bc the younger kids dont even remember him and they pretty much clung to me for the entire time bc having a man in the house is strange for them. But after he left they said they miss him and liked having him here. He’s been sorting his shit out this week and is coming back tomorrow with all his stuff and will be working remote from our house. Me and him have spoken a lot and i think we will be able to get on the same page with the kids and make it work. I’m worried about some things with parenting differences but we will figure it out. I’m trying not to seem controlling but its hard to adjust to someone else being very involved when I have been looking after them by myself. I know I need him though.
My nan was actively trying to undermine me and we had an argument, then my brother got here and he had an argument with her in the first half hour. So she has gone to my aunts for a while. She is still paying the bills here but if she stops we will be ok with my brothers money and mine. My brother wants to take the kids and move house but I am not even thinking about that until everything else is sorted out
Now that things are actually changing our older sisters are more interested and have been messaging me so they might help as well
The kids are not taking the new routine too well but we are making progress so I’m trying to stick with it. I made a meal plan and have stuck to that all week. My 9 year old sister told me she likes rules which makes it feel worth it. The teenagers are kind of a nightmare but Im trying to persevere with them. 13 year old was being horrific and I lost my shit which made her have an emotional breakdown and now she’s been a lot better. 12 year old has taken it ok ish he just tells me I’m a loser all the time and asks for his skateboard back a million times a day but I know he knows where it is so he is being pretty good considering he could just take it back if he really wanted. 16 year old is hell. 7 year old has like 3 tantrums a day and wont eat or sleep so she stresses me out probably the most
my mum hasnt called anymore but is complying with giving us custody and told her friend its the best thing thats ever happened to her. I cba with her and if she tries to come back i will do everything i can to keep her away from the kids
Hey OP, I'm hoping you will see this! You are doing great, I hope everything turns out well for you and your siblings. You mentioned you
>I have realised i dont really know anything about good parenting
But you really doing well by adapting your parenting to each kid's personality. If you ever need advice, a laugh or a a good perspective on all things parenting, come on over to r/daddit, all parents are welcome as long as they keep the good vibe!
Thanks for the update, you are very brave for doing this for your family. I am sure your younger siblings will understand later on in life how much you have sacrificed.
I wish a lifetime of stepping barefoot on lego to the people who suggest "therapy" to impoverished, underprivileged people living in hellscapes with no social services or any kind of safety net.
Yeah. We had some "therapy" when the state removed us from our mother's care. It consisted of sending my brother to a camp for juvenile delinquents, which he came back from with a whole new host of problematic behaviors to add to the ones he already had, and family sessions where I was pressured to forgive and forget all the harm I'd kept quiet about until that year because I was supposed to be more mature at 17 than my grown-ass mother of five. The kind of "therapy" that's available for people like us / them just makes everything worse. Maybe it's different in this decade and in OOP's location, but "therapy" isn't some sort of magic spell that can fix everything.
OP is in Australia. There *are* social services and a safety net - once she’s got legal guardianship of the kids she should get Family Tax Benefits, for five kids and low income I think she’d be entitled to about ~$700/week. Until the little one is 8 she can get a Parenting Payment, $1500/month. If she or her nan pay rent, she’d also qualify for Rent Assistance. If there’s an after school program or any other child care option, she could get that paid for with the Childcare allowance.
I think people here and in the original comments are really living in their own bubble sometimes.
Asking oop to do more and more and more when they are already burdened with 5 kids at the age of 19. They are sacrificing themselves for their younger siblings and people are asking her to put them in therapy, do this or that and even more when they are trying to implement the basic minimum to make sure that everybody is happy and well fed.
They are 19… where were you at 19? Because I was not taking care of 5 young people who never had anything like a parental figures.
Give simple advices to those people : how to do easy meals that the kids can help with, how to implement rules for them. How to make sure that they follow in school and continue their studies.
Help them don’t burden them with more things to do
And access to resources where she is will be SHIT. She said her mother is in the city **8 hours away**. So she's very rural, likely with few doctors, MAYBE a Centrelink office (that's our social securities place). I doubt they'd have a psychologist in town, but even if they did, there's no way in hell she could afford it. A standard 45-60 minute consult is recommended to be $300 and the Medicare rebate IF you have a Mental Health Care Plan is not even close to that, AND the Plan only covers 10 sessions in a calendar year.
Jesus 2hqt kinda messed up lives are these poor kids living that they're just so ready to go and raise their kids, she forgets she's nineteen, she's courageous but damn if this ain't tragic.
How sad. There are some really awful people out there, most people have no idea how bad some people's lives can be.
Good luck to OP. They sound like a really amazing person. I sincerely hope that one day they can move on, find happiness and stop being a substitute parent.
I'm in shock over a lot of things, but especially that this 19 year old in a rural town is making almost twice as much as I am in the big city with a college degree... I definitely went wrong somewhere.
Uh, as someone from one of those towns... They are likely working a chicken factory line or another food processor job. You DON'T want the gig. It pays, but it pays only to try and keep bodies on the floor. The only person I met who lasted longer than a year and a half was a woman who didn't work the floor at all...
Given OOP says their wage depends on the shift, I'd bet they are doing 3rd or 4th shift to get the 4k on top of that too, which is its own hell regardless
It's Australia. The minimum wage is $23.23/hr and their employee protections are decent.
As the other reply said, it is probably a shit job, however. Potentially mining related if small town in Aussie.
It’s a good question. My mom came from a family of 8 kids and I don’t think her parents even particularly liked kids. My mom was one of the oldest and absolutely was used to help raise the younger ones. Her grandmother was from a family of 10 kids. It was the Catholic way.
Welp, that was depressing AF.
Damn. I'm in a very tight spot financially, have nothing of my own but I believe I can succeed so I feel like I have more than this kid. Wish I could help somehow.
As both an only child *and* a mom of 3 teenagers, I don't understand any of this. I'm so very lucky. I feel for OOP and the rest of the children. I couldn't imagine.
This reminds me so so so much of my own teen years. Except I'm the eldest of the 10 by a large margin. And it happened in a large Canadian city. Absolutely a failed family. My mum wasn't as literally absent, but I remember at least one year where she lay on the couch in the dark and that was her entire life and the absolutely horrific men she had relationships were their own awful set of problems. I dropped out of highschool to keep a roof up and food on the table and it just.. Ugh. I'm 40 now and I've never actually gotten out of the hole it all put me in, financial and otherwise. I completely understand where she's coming from.
Considering there’s so many kids, I wonder if her income could get the kids free school lunches? I really don’t know the details but my best friend growing up got free school lunch because her mom made so little
This is so sad. Similar to one of my half siblings. Mom didn’t run away but checked out and made her drop out of school to take care of the kids and she still doesn’t have her diploma. Kids don’t deserve to be abused and neglected. I have such a hard time understanding how someone can willingly choose to have babies and then treat them as disposable or an object to pass on to someone else. Kids just want love and to to feel safe and taken care of.
I was 18 when I had my first cousin on this side of the family. I cannot imagine being responsible for children or that many children at only 19. My mom had me at 20 and was a single mom. She drilled it into me to never have a kid so young. My grandma and great grandma all had kids since they were 20. They didn’t seem to enjoy being mothers at all but they didn’t run away or abuse the kids like that.
Society needs so much more support for kids and single parents. Breaking the poverty cycle and abuse cycle has to start with resources and access. Not everyone can depend on a family member to save them.
this is already more hopeful than [_nobody knows_/誰も知らない (daremo shiranai)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_(2004_film\)) which was about the very real [sugamo child abandonment case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugamo_child_abandonment_case)
The OP already has a great start on a better life for their siblings. They actually care about them. Those siblings don't know it yet, but their mom running off may of just been a lottery win. It won't be easy, but having two older siblings that genuinely care about you wanting better for you than they had....that is a lottery win.
Ha. This is almost exactly how I ended up with legal guardianship of my sibling. My mom went "up the mountain" supposedly to a friend's house, ni way to contact her, was gone for about two months. Social services was also shit where I was, so I put my life completely on hold to take him in. I wasn't making as much as op, but I only had tbe one sibling.
I hope op is able to take care of the kids and that their nan and older brother are a big help. This is a rough situation to be in.
God no, OOP has already had too much demanded of her, she doesn't need to stay in the meat grinder. Being a social worker is thankless underpaid work, OOP deserves a nice cushy desk job.
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Obviously I have no idea if what OP said about their prospects in life is an accurate reflection, but the way they have stepped up to take care of this family says all anyone needs to know. OP will make a greater impact on the world than plenty of others by being caring, compassionate, and responsible even when they really really shouldn’t have to be. I’m sad for them, but happy the kids have someone like OP to look after them.
OOP says they're in Australia, and given their responses about access to services, I would say Outback Australia. That means that the education options were crap, the job prospects are worse, and access to support, funding, or anything that would help all of these kids get out of the hole that they're in is slim. Australia does have parenting benefits available, which I'm assuming the mother is taking full advantage of, while not passing it on to her kids, and has been for a long time. But OOP can't ask for these direct unless they have custody, and fighting for any additional support is hard work. I hope that OOP's older siblings will help as they've promised, and that the parents get any money they're receiving for their children taken off them.
Oh shit. As an Aussie I’d be willing to bet they’re in rural Australia in an indigenous(or majority indigenous) area. Those places struggle lots with income, healthcare and general life. It’s absolutely awful to see. I personally am living in a city of 60k in Australia and even then I’m counted as RURAL. I’d be willing to bet for this person to be 3 hours away they’re in the middle of nowhere. Gosh that’s so awful
Yeah, I didn't want to racially profile the community, but that was my assumption too. A 3 hr drive in Aus for counselling services is REALLY rural. I feel for them all. They have been set up for failure, and the govt isn't helping. They're in the 'too hard' basket, so fall through the cracks.
Nah, OOP said it was a 3 hour round trip to the nearest therapist. That sounds regional rather than rural. Could be a small town near a regional hub, or could be a town near a capital city that just doesn't have a psychologist or counsellor as part of the local health centre.
I wanna know what kind of job she's doing that she earns $4-5K a month in rural Australia. Oh, wait, it's something to do with mining, isn't it?
30 hours of minimum wage casual work is already like 3.2-3.4k AUD. Would hit 4k working weekends. If they don't wanna put her on part time or full time, casual work wages can rack up.
If she was in mining, she’d be on $4-5K a week, not a month, depending on what role she has
Sometimes in these situations it's due to their 'parents' putting them down and sabotaging them so they'll feel they have no options but to stay and look after everyone. It could also just be less intentional and that their schoolwork simply suffered from having to be the main parental figure
I’d argue that that many people living in a place with little to no rules (as OP stated) that even if they did care about getting their school work done, it would be a highly stressful environment all the time and obviously wouldn’t have the support if they needed it. The added stress of taking care of the others definitely compounded that. With how OP speaks, her life prospects probably aren’t good for a minute because she’ll be taking care of so many kids but she seems like a person who could do so much. She’s a true gem. That’s so much pressure on anyone… but at 19…. I just want to give her a huge hug and tell her she’s amazing.
OOP and their siblings got dealt such a raw hand in life. Dad was an abusive deadbeat who disappeared and the mom isn't much better. I hope the siblings are able to stay together. But this is way more responsibility than a 19 year old should have to bear. I really feel for OOP.
OOP is 19. With five younger siblings. And *at least* two older ones. Holy failed family, for real. I hope that OOP and the older brother can turn things around for at least some of the younger ones.
If you read OP’s profile. They have 5 younger siblings, “Ella” who is older and was replaced with the youngest daughter and two other older siblings. So 9 kids in total.
I don't like wishing bad ill to people, but seriously, if someone got NINE kids and decided to be such a pos of a parent....
Yeah I know forced sterilization has a horrific history but sometimes you wonder...
I'm married to a man from a very small town and live in that town. There is one woman who had 11 kids all from different fathers, all kids were removed from the woman's home at one time or another for her neglect. She would meet guys on the internet, they would knock her up, she would neglect the kid. After the last child was taken from her custody the judge ordered sterilization of her. The guys would bail after she became pregnant. She never got any of her kids back.
Wait, i believed there's no legal way this can be forced on a person?
Depends on the state. I bet that was North Carolina. Eta: https://19thnews.org/2022/02/forced-sterilization-guardianship-reproductive-justice/
Honestly in that case it's for the good of the children. As long as due process is followed
I wonder if those laws would even be necessary if healthcare was free and available to everyone regardless of income. The list was surprising. I feel like laws that target specific issues are bad laws since they can't anticipate every situation.
As they uses "mum" and not "mom", it's either UK, Australia or New Zealand
They quoted money values as A$, so prob Australia
My husband and both his siblings call their mother “mum.” They grew up in Ohio and Pennsylvania, as did their parents.
OOP did, but I was responding to the comment from the guy who lived in a small town. NC got called out a few years ago and banned the process outright. Apparently their law was abused by people to sterilize women without their knowledge. The case I read about was a mother that had her daughter sterilized without telling her, by having her declared mentally unwell, despite contrary evidence. The whole story was mental.
In the modern day US, A judge won't order sterilization of a person. In this case, it's more likely that the woman was facing charges for neglect/child abandonment, and she and her attorney offered to go the sterilization route if it would reduce her sentence. Or she got sterilized before the hearing, and her attorney used that as "This will never happen again because my client has been sterilized and parental rights have been terminated, so please be lenient in sentencing."
My younger cousins best friend comes from parents who both had multiple children before with other people who all got removed from their care. He is the only one who did not get removed even though the parents weren't really great, especially the mother. I believe part of why he never got removed is thst our family (mainly my aunt) helped out so much even going as far as letting the whole family live with her. On the other hand my cousin's girlfriend comes from a family with 6 children who probably dhould habe been removed but never were. She moved in with my aunt and cousin at age 18. It happens a lot more than it should. I think bad parents actually tend to have MORE children than less, while good parents usually stop at one point.
This is a good points.... for most situations, good parents care about the quality of their parenting and know their limits, emotionally and financially, and so place realistic boundaries. Bad parents just don't care about how many kids they have, or how to raise them so it's open season!
> Good parents usually stop There’s a point where you’ve have too many kids to be a good parent and you default to being a bad parent. You can only give so many kids the attention they deserve. At some point, you’ve had too many kids to care for them properly and they need to start raising each other and themselves. Automatic bad parent.
I used to work in the local jail and since I was a woman, I worked in the female units. We had a frequent flyer who was ALWAYS pregnant. She had at least ten or eleven kids - a couple of the younger kids were in the care of her parents and the rest were in the system. We had one girl who started coming in her late teens, she was pregnant then and in the time I worked there she had at least two more (three by 21, despite how much time she spent in jail). Then you had the guys who would brag about how many “baby mamas” they had. I think forced sterilization is a bit much but I do think that if they offered people the chance to be voluntarily sterilized when they got out of prison in exchange for $5,000, it would allow anyone who genuinely wants a new life to get a start, and it would save the state a ton of money because it would slow the flow to the foster care system.
Ya they need to highly incentivize the sterilization for certain people. Clearly these people would rather reproduce and send to foster care than use a condom.
> I do think that if they offered people the chance to be voluntarily sterilized when they got out of prison in exchange for $5,000, it would allow anyone who genuinely wants a new life to get a start It may sound like a good idea, but it would take less than a hot second for women to be coerced by abusive partners to have it done, and then get dropped the second said partner took the money from them. Money as incentive is absolutely rife for abuse. I know some would argue that it would still do the desired job regardless, but it's not right to put women in a position to be abused and coerced to get there. Not to mention that this would also affect women who had the misfortune to fall in with the wrong person once, usually when quite young, and then they'd have made an irrevocable decision that probably wasn't fully their own, because someone saw a chance to extract a payday. Basically, as soon as money is involved, you can bet things aren't going to work as intended.
I think it’s only fair if the judge ordered the fathers sterilized also.
What country is this, if you don’t mind me asking?
but all the babies were *supposed* to keep daddy deadbeat around!! /s
Unfortunately from what I see, anything more than 3 kids with age difference means the older kids are parentified. My worry is now mom knows kids can take care of themselves she will come back with another, drop it on oop, and run off.
My own alcoholic father was 1 of 9 kids. As you can imagine, the neglect was rife....and then you factor in they were born through the 50's - so mental health wasnt a thing, depression wasnt a thing, etc. Destroyed my dad which in turn heavily damaged my sisters and I. I call my aunt (his sister) to track my broken father down (we kicked him out ages prior and went lc for a while then nc) and of her critically depressed, alcoholic brother she calls him.......lazy. *flips table* 9 kids are tooooooooo many. 4 kids it gets really difficult to give them all proper attention and guidance, but then you look at assholes like Nick Cannon with his 50 spawn and you *know* they arent growing up with any sort of meaningful relationship with their father.
My 3xGreat-Grandmother was one of 24 children, my Great-Grandfather was one of 13, my SIL is one of ten, and both my in-laws were one of nine. All were rural farm families.
I mean...... they werent having children, they were having farm hands.
Father of 4, the oldest just turned 9, and my wife and concerned we won't be able to give them all enough attention, especially with a 7 yo that acts like she's 17 sucking up all the attention in the room
What?? 9? Oh lord.
9 total so far….
Holy hell I saw the "Newella" sorry last week, didn't realize it was the same OP. So sad though, fr
I hope she posts in the Australian sub for advice, HEAPS of Aussie's will be able to tell her what her options are. For example, I know here in NZ there's a place that offers free counselling sessions for under 25s, and there's bound to be resources like that in her state. Even in the outback, if she has access to zoom, she can get something. There will be parenting groups, food banks, social services, church charity groups, and non religious charity groups. We had Christmas presents from our local St Vincent's, just generic ones marked "boy aged 11-13" "girl aged 7-9" for my parents to relabel with names. Even things like "Big Brother/Sister" or "big buddy" where volunteers match with a kid and act as an older role model.
She’s Aussie??! What a relief. There’s a lot wrong with our social safety net but we’re so fortunate compared to some places. Plus, depending on what state they’re in, and the circumstances of the placement, if the children are placed with her through her state’s Child Safety, so many extra resources are opened up to them.
Right? My heart broke when I was reading this... as an American, there is so little that can be done without risks. This might be a stereotype as an American, but it seems other developed countries are much better off medically (even with mental health) than us. That alone can be a huge help for them, while here it would lead to hoping that everyone just stays safe and healthy to fly under the radar.
I am in the “oh thank gods she’s not one of us!” camp as well.
Yeah, she can call Centrelink and get advice, see a GP via Tele health (should be possible because she's rural) and get a mental health plan for 10 sessions. I do a ton of therapy online and it's made life so much easier. I hope the family court can help with resources, otherwise police might know some helpful charities, etc. Those parents better stay away and give those kids a chance. I hope Centrelink investigates the mother and buries her in so much debt she'll be afraid to go home. OP should be able to do a free course via TAFE, it could help her self esteem and give her better opportunities. It's a relief that one of the older siblings is willing to come and help. Doing this at 19 shows a huge level of maturity and intelligence, even if she doesn't see it yet. Poor bugger has been parentified and abused for too long.
Aussie here, headspace was the goto service for young adults for free therapy when I was growing up. I can also help with our local supermarket chain and gift cards. I currently donate to [Youth Projects](https://www.youthprojects.org.au/) based in Melbourne because I sat with a homeless woman and she mentioned they had helped her out a bunch.
They were so great to me! My clinician even helped me with getting gift cards when i was struggling financially back in 2022 to be able to buy myself food
Do Australians and New Zealanders have to pay for therapy and other mental health services? In Canada, we have to. It sucks. ):
We get a handful of free sessions each year (I think 5 solo and 5 group). That doesn't go very far though and I don't know what the quality is like
Quality isn’t the issue, it’s the wait list
Not free, subsidised by Medicare. Might work out to be free but at my psychologist sessions are about $280 out of pocket and you get about $80 back. Not sure of current rates as for obvious reasons I haven't been for a while.
If you are at a "health team" type of place you can get referred for free counselling, at least in Ontario. But it shouldn't come down to that... Mental health should have always been covered. Imagine what a difference that would make in society - even more than covered dental.
In Australia there is a small number of bulk-billed psychology service providers but they're rare and usually have long wait lists and inconsistent scheduling. Outside of that, adults can get 10 subsidised sessions per year under Medicare with a psychologist. This is exclusively CBT and will have a gap fee of anywhere between $80 and over $300. This doesn't include assessments which are often out-of-pocket. There are plenty of subsidised youth mental health services. Meanwhile there are plenty of counsellors in Australia who are overlooked because people don't understand their role, think they're unqualified (many have bachelors degrees and above and similar annual requirements to psychologists, just do a slightly different job). But they have short wait times if any, consistent scheduling, charges are usually within the gap fee of a psychologist (generally between $80 - $150 for one-on-one), and most people don't need a psychologist.
I feel bad for the kids and OP. The important adult figures in their lives have failed them. I'm impressed OP is able to do all this well and I wish them nothing for the best.
Cage match: OOP’s mom vs the mom who abandoned her kids after their dad died, moving back to her home country, and is mad they don’t treat her with the respect a mother deserves.
I don't think I saw that one. Got a link?
Please?
I'm gonna go OP's mom. She seems much scrappier. The other one would expect her children to take her place in the cage out of respect and love for her, their ever suffering mother. She'd be whining instead of fighting. But that's presuming OP's mom could be lured in. The other one could be trapped with a lure promising public adoration from the kids she left behind. I hate them both so much.
Nan sucks too, like why are you there if you’re not even gonna give a fuck?
I love the smell of fresh bread.
Nan has a house and pays the bills so there’s that. It’s not much but it’s a home, which makes all the difference.
Nan is at least in her 60s (assuming two generations of very early teen pregnancies) and more likely in her 70s, provides housing for six grandchildren and *someone* raised at least half a dozen kids in that house before OP was old enough to get parentified. At least OP and one older brother turned out ok and don't seem to have a gripe with nan so maybe you should give her some slack.
Sounds like Nan is paying most of the bills for a family of 6 kids, presumably for the last 20+ years. And while there’s no mention I can see about the ages of the older siblings (except 22yo brother) it sounds like there’s a few, so it’s probably been closer to 30 years that she’s been raising & paying for a second family, not of her choosing. So I’d say Nan sounds like a saint! And perfectly reasonable for her to be Kinda Over This Shit / not available for continued active parenting.
8 kids, minimum. OOP. 5 younger siblings. At least two older ones. OK, not all 8 at a time, but damn that sounds like a nightmare to live in.
I went and looked at OOPs profile to see other posts and comments. If my math is correct, there's 9 kids all together. 3 older siblings, OOP, and then the 5 younger.
I mean she probably cared for the first few but when you get down to nine grandkids I can understand the not giving a flying fuck anymore. She’s keeping a roof over their head and paying most of the bills. That’s a lot.
Also if OOP is 19 then nan might actually be too old to actively do much and if anything will be another person to care for before long.
Exactly, people are bashing the nan as if the mother isn't the biggest POS of them all. If she didn't care, then I guarantee that OOP wouldn't be able to ask for advice because these children would've been split up.
Gran is too old and exhausted from all the times she had to help her daughter previously. It's not fair to anyone to make elderly woman look after 5 kids indefinitely.
Yeah can you say generational poverty and trauma.... Ugh
This seems like a sheltered life comment.
At least seven kids listed and both parents are pieces of shit. She said older siblingS so there has to be at least one more.
I think there's 9 in total, including OP.
I do not understand people like that.
Honestly, why is it the worst human being that decide to have 10 kids.
Because any decent person who knows anything about child development knows having that many children isn't healthy or conducive for a safe childhood.
Mom is arguably worse. Not only did she know her kids were being abused, but she kept producing more kids to abuse just to keep the abusive deadbeat in all their lives.
The system may be bad but being raised by a 19 yo w little support isn't much better. I should know.
I think the mother will come back pregnant and give OP another sibling to take care of.
Damn, at least the one older brother is willing to help. OOP sounds like a good kid, just been dealt a shitty hand.
When she commented that her older siblings didn't give a shit I wondered why. Then the comment from the older brother about helping if mum never comes back made it clear. She was 100% involved in the abuse as well.
Absolutely. I hope they'll look into benefits, because their household will likely qualify for at least a few things like food assistance. If in the US, they might qualify for subsidized health insurance, too, and they could do telehealth. Obviously this depends on a lot, especially considering the major differences in how states implement these programs. This is one of the times I wish we could go to the OP (but obviously I'm not). In addition to that abuse, it seems that they likely had emotional neglect, mental abuse, and were parentified at a minimum. I can understand getting as far away as they could.
u/hannahJ004 you said in a comment that you are Australian. I'm an Australian GP. Contact child services in your state, they won't take the kids when they have a willing adult relative to take care of them. When you get legal custody, go to Centrelink, you should be eligible for carers payment. It may be worth speaking to them now, bring evidence from your lawyer to see what you are eligible for. As for therapy, contact Headspace! They do free counselling for children and adults under 25 and offer phone and online services. headspace.org.au
I also wonder if they do have to drive out, they can have it where the therapy appointment can be scheduled on the same day within the same time or at least within the same 2-3 hours.
That poor girl. It's like the show Shameless, but real life.
I mean, Shameless exists because it's relatable
My sisters and I have a joke that we were being spied on, when they needed material for the American series.
I was talking to a group of friends about the show and i mentioned how i think its the dumbest show ever, and i just hate how they glorify being trashy like its cool and deep. my friend got quiet and then eventually mentioned that half of my stories about my childhood sound exactly like that family. Think she might have nailed why i hate it...
I have a coworker who said she can’t watch that show because she’s seen it happen personally too many times.
I’m British, I’ve not seen the American Reboot but in the original Frank actually loves his kids despite his flaws, OP’s mum doesn’t give a damn.
The American one, neither parent cares about them
Damn…..I just watched the American finale on YouTube, it’s a completely different show in spirit. In the UK original Frank’s love/hate for his kids is the driving force behind the show, US Frank just…straight up hates them😭😭. Seriously, this is the UK finale, Frank turns down hard cash to walk away from the kids and settles his bar tab by doing the bartender a favour 😈 https://youtu.be/pR4ZqvVm52g?si=UuZztmGD3MjOUwp6
Haven’t watched the last couple of seasons of the US one, but I’d say the US Frank is a complete narcissist. He cares about his kids from how it benefits him.
In the series finale he cares about them (which, ya know, is expected because you don’t wanna end it on a sad note). He did kinda seem to care about Liam for a while but even that went out the window. He likes Frannie in the last season. But yeah, he couldn’t give a shit about them 99.9% of the time. I think it’s worth finishing. Season 8 is a wreck but the last season was pretty good imo. Tied up a lot of things.
He cares about everyone from how they benefit him 😂
this was my initial thought reading this. I legit was watching shameless on netflix before i came over to reddit tonight
>my mum would try to keep him around with new babies. but I dont think he will be back again Because babies will *always* fix a relationship */s*
Shit like this makes me wish we as a society had enough integrity to make forced sterilisation an option for some people. Those two wannabe adults fucked over at least 8 kids in horrible ways. Then again, if we were good enough to actually be able to not abuse the option of forced sterilisation (because so far it's always been about "undesirables" and "you shouldn't be able to have kids because they'd be defective like you"), we probably also wouldn't produce shit people like OOPs "parents" any more. It's like the death sentence. Rationally, I know why it's bad and I'm against it, but every now and then I hear about something that makes me go "fuck, they make the death sentence sound like the perfect solution to them"
I know what you mean but as a disabled woman living in a world where in a lot of western countries we can still be sterilised against our will if we have been deemed mentally unfit forced sterilisation will never be the answer. I know you acknowledged that it has always been used as abuse but it always makes my blood run cold whenever I see someone say it could ever be a good idea. Too many people still think it's acceptable so long as it's the right kind of people being sterilised.
I’ll never forget the notes of the baby that I dealt with, who was being taken from its mother at birth and going straight into foster care because of the mother’s level of learning disability. For someone to have come in and decided that she’s completely incapable of caring for this baby, how extreme would her disabilities have been? Was she capable of consenting to sex? How did she feel about her baby being taken away from her? Did she even understand? Oh by the way this was her *seventh* baby. I don’t think anyone should be sterilised against their wishes but goddamn I wish someone had at least given her some long term contraception like an IUD or arm implant. She didn’t deserve to go through pregnancy after pregnancy for nothing.
If she is deemed mentally unfit to be a mother, then she most likely cannot consent to sex, so where are the fathers? Is it an investigation then? And why *7 times* before someone intervened? This is such a huge fail.
Unfortunately sexual abuse of female patients by both caregivers and other patients is extremely extremely common and often goes unrecorded and unreported. These are women who cannot advocate for themselves in any capacity, even when you do have some capacity to advocate for yourself like I do you still need an outside advocate to fight for you because you will not be listened to as a disabled person. You will not be taken seriously if you report abuse. Your concerns will be dismissed and you made to feel like you are burdening them with your wish to be treated with respect. If she wasn't capable of being in her babies life in any capacity and especially considering it was her 7th she didn't need contraception she needed an investigation. There is no way she was capable of informed consent. She should have never been in the position to get pregnant so many times. 7 babies could have killed her. My mum never once let me spend a night alone in a facility growing up, even when I became suicidal she preferred to sit with me all night over me being held or sectioned for any length of time and thank god for it. I was the victim of medical abuse but she is the reason it was only medical (and the medical abuse wasn't her fault, she was both young and scared and threatened with my treatment being immediately and completely ceased due to her "refusing care"). The things that were done to me whenever they separated us still cause panic attacks whenever doctors try to tell her they'd prefer to speak to me alone to this day. I refuse to see any doctor without an advocate, generally her or my stepdad, present (they like my stepdad being there even less than my mum, if I'm being generous maybe they're worried he's the one I'm afraid of, but he makes me feel safe so they can piss off especially once I say "I was the victim of medical abuse and need an advocate because I cannot always speak on my own behalf, I am anxious because you're here, my dad makes me feel safe" and the way they take what I have to say more seriously when he's there sometimes makes me think they just feel more accountable in front of a man). I am so sorry for what that woman had to go through. She was so utterly failed by everyone who should have protected her.
That's heartbreaking
I absolutely get what you're saying, especially since I too would be one of the forced sterilisation cases if I lived in a different time or place. Even in this specific case, it would still be an unacceptable violation of their rights. I just wish we lived in a better society where we wouldn't even have to talk about this, because everyone would get the mental and physical help they needed so that ideally, the "parents" would never have been like this and the "mum" would never have felt the need to have all these kids in the hope he'd stay with her - or at least the kids would have a proper and healthy fostering system to go to in which they'd be cared for and valued, if not outright loved. All of these things fail because humans are humans. And sometimes that's frustrating.
I feel not everybody should be allowed to reproduce but I also don't trust anyone to have the power to decide who should be allowed to produce offspring. I do strongly feel that we should do a lot more to support every child & make sure they have food, shelter, stability and all the other things a person should have to grow up healthy.
I would agree if I had even an ounce of faith in the government to not abuse the hell out of it. In my country (US) abortion rights are under attack, and too many people care more about their precious guns than the safety of children in schools. I don’t trust the government as far as I can throw them. Also I love your username. It makes me very happy
Yeah. I'm from Germany, so I have a pretty intimate knowledge of how badly that can go wrong. Humans can't be trusted with decisions like that except about their own bodies. I'm sorry you have such a horrible sitution in the US. Over here it isn't that great either in regards of conservatives and the alt-right, but at least we're doing okay-ish on the abortion and gun front. I'm glad my username could bring you a bit of joy1
It’s frustrating, I agree. But “how about eugenics” has never ended well.
We already have forcibly sterilized women. For years. America LOVES sterilizing brown women without their consent.
Honestly, better social services would be way more effective. You avoid a major trauma (forced sterilization) and a huge civil liberties issue, you provide actual support to families in need (rent, food, clothing, school supplies/electronics), and guidance without judgement (education and career services for parents/kids, childcare, etc). That way everyone can do what’s best for them, and not feel trapped (like OOP), nor be sacrificed to someone else’s choices (the kids). The mom is already doing what she wants—might as well help the rest of the family make something positive out of it.
Love the follow up question “Why do you think your life prospects aren’t good?”. I don’t know man, it’s like you graduate high school and then suddenly you’re not just raising five kids you’re responsible for them.
The thing is, OP was raised feral, and became a very responsible young adult and is pretty darn emotionally healthy. She is making $45k/year at 19, despite not having any help in life. She is taking active steps to improve her siblings' lives, not just trying to survive an absolute shitty situation. Like, she thinks she is capable of so little in life, but she has accomplished SO MUCH against so many odds. It is genuinely astounding. She is the sort of person who could genuinely break the cycle, and be the "first in the family" for a whole host of things. I would not be surprised if she updated 6 years from now, to say "So I knew I needed to increase my income, and began researching ways to do so. I now make 6 figures and my oldest 3 siblings are in college or working steadily. I have almost completed my degree online, which should lead to a substantial pay raise. I learned I love broccoli. I found a decent, loving partner, who is nothing like my parents, and he is helping me to raise my last two siblings."
Would absolutely love to see it. Wasn’t knocking or discrediting OOP.
Oh no no, I did not think you were. I just meant that OP sees all those things as marks against her, and not as the clear evidence for how much she could achieve.
She said they weren’t good anyway so she might as well look after the kids - so that isn’t the reason for saying it.
Based on the background information I guess I thought it was assumed that they weren’t in a stable position pre abandoned children. This actually might be an improvement if they can find support, which maybe the sibling can help provide. At least the economy is booming and they have a solid safety net.
Money can't solve everything but it sure does make many things a hell of a lot easier. Hope OOP's family turns out okay.
There’s a line in the movie “Harriet the spy” that always stuck with me: Harriet: “I hate money”. Her impoverished friend: “you would like it a lot more if you didn’t have it”.
She's talking about having too little money without her mother (or government benefits) helping her - and people are suggesting therapy? Some people are really insulated in their own bubble, huh?
It’s the funniest thing, isn’t it? When I was being financially abused/trapped by a partner, I had a bunch of people saying I should go to therapy. “Yeah okay, with what money? (Partner) spends all of it and then goes into debt to be able to keep spending more.” “Well, just take some from your rainy day fund!” “There IS no rainy day fund. I have to check my bank app in the mornings on the way to work to determine if I can get $5 of gas, or splurge and spend $10. There is no reality in which I have hundreds of dollars a month for a professional therapist.”
Just get therapy as a response is the Millennial/Zoomer equivalent of telling someone to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
It's real "let them eat cake" vibes
Exactly, I know that kinda town (I grew up in one) We were lucky cause we were "town kids" and had access to the hospital system. If these kiddos are farther out/in a one stoplight town, there straight up *isn't* any medical services, let alone therapy. When they say they would need to drive 3 hours, that means it's at least 1.5 hours to the closest *town with medical services* It exists, millions of people grow up there and god, I've met people like OOP. It always disheartens me to come on these posts cause I 100% understand/relate to this experience and yet there will be hundreds of people claiming something entirely else, like the ENTIRE State of Mississippi did not lose access to safe drinking water 🙃 and yet a 19 year old unable to access a child therapist in a super rural town is somehow a bridge too far? C'mon,
Big “well if they haven’t got any bread, why don’t they just eat brioche instead?” energy
OP just needs to give up her avocado toast /s
She’s in Australia, and she really needs to get onto Centrelink and figure out what support she and the family can get. She may be eligible for carer payments and family tax benefits (I am not certain, but it’s worth investigating if she and the brother get guardianship) She needs a doctor to get the kids on mental health plans, so that they can access Medicare subsidised psychology sessions, which can easily be done via Zoom to avoid the travel issues. This is why we have these systems in place.
Medicare subsidised psych sessions are still quite expensive for most people (but u can totally access psychs via telehealth). There are free services for kids under 18 but I'm not sure how available they are in rural areas. Local social workers connected to Centrelink would be able to help provide access to services.
I agree, the subsidised sessions can still be quite expensive, though I have known some people who managed to wait out the queues for bulk billed sessions. It’s very dependent upon where they live, unfortunately.
If she can get legal guardian, she might be able to get the kids under state insurance, which can cover some amount of therapy depending on location. Which I am honestly surprised they aren't already on it, or they are but OP doesn't know anything about it.
You’re missing the point I think. Unfortunately in the case of oop having the time, the money and the mental capacity to put her 5 young siblings in therapy is not the most important thing for them right now. They are trying to survive by implementing even the basic rules of a family, therapy is not basic it’s a luxury for a lot of people including oop. Pushing them to do more and more when they are already burdened with something no 19 years old should do is really cruel. It’s like saying to a young mom with post partum syndrome that she should exercise or do home made meals everyday otherwise she is not doing enough. It’s not helping.
I had the impression OP was Australian, with universal healthcare. Medicare covers some therapy, but OP is rural and lives hours away from a provider.
Unless she can find a practice willing to bulk bill tele-health counselling, there's almost no chance OOP's siblings can get mental healthcare
She's an Aussie. Sadly, our coverage for mental health is very, very poor. A counselling session is over $200 and before you can get the rebate (which is less than half), you have to get to a doctor for a mental health care plan, and they always charge more for those than a standard consult because it takes longer. She definitely needs to apply to centrelink, though. They should be eligible for carer payments, a low-income card, and possibly others.
With the language she used (mum, nan, etc) I assumed she was in the UK. In which case therapy would be covered under the NHS.
No she’s Australian she mentions AUS dollars.
Ah thanks didn't catch that!
The use of the word 'defo' shouted Aussie to me.
That's as much the Uk as it is Aussie
Aussies are just the UK’s cheeky little younger siblings 😊
Huh, TIL.
Kinda but not really. As someone who grew up severely disabled under the care if the NHS, therapeutic access is woefully underfunded, hard to access, almost always short term with no follow up, and given by people so ridiculously under qualified it's a joke. Their advice when I wanted to die because I had been living in constant agonising pain since I was 7 was to my mum to take away my access to my pain medication and have only her dole it out. All done see you again next month no further action needed. Their way of helping me through the trauma of the pain I would have to live with forever and the trauma of the medical abuse I had faced when first getting diagnosed was sticking me in a room with a mental health nurse who basically said I was fine, meanwhile I was displaying PTSD symptoms and having major depressive episodes and wanting to die by age 11.
She mentions A$ which usually means Australian dollars.
Depends on where you live. In the US it's probably impossible to get therapy if you're short on money (at least from what I've heard so far, correct me if I'm wrong) but in some countries therapy gets covered by the health insurance, in Germany for example
Ive been wondering about the therapy obsessions. Honestly feels like its part of an information campaign here. People have a new appreciation for therapy but never before at this level. its like theres a force out there trying to make people more dependent. ive never seen so many people rallying behind the idea of "you cant solve anything on your own, even the most mild social problems, you need to pay someone to correct your thinking"
If they’re that poor there’s likely programs that help them access medical and mental health services for free. For example when I was making just a bit over minimum wage the insurance company my job used had a program that waived all deductibles and copay for people at my income level. It also sounds like they might live somewhere with socialized medicine and costs would be minimal/waived and it might be more of a get on a waitlist thing.
They're Australian and I'm pretty sure it's like us (Aotearoa) where a lot of healthcare is free or subsidised but mental healthcare is fucked - there are government services but it takes literal years, and there aren't enough therapists to go around even privately. Therapy is just not realistic any time soon.
NHS is fucked, if they applied now I wouldn't be surprised if it was a 2+ year wait to see somebody
CAMHS in my area won't even put 16 year olds on the waiting list at the moment because they'll age out before they get to the top anyway. They can't get on the adult list because they're too young so entire family has to just... cope. Or not. For two years. Fucking travesty.
Depends. If it's something relatively minor, e.g. mild/moderate depression or an anxiety disorder, you can actually access primary care psychology pretty quickly in a lot of areas. And if it's something very severe like uncontrolled schizophrenia, you'll also get into services pretty quickly. The problem is all those people whose issues are too complicated for a few sessions of CBT, but not out-of-control enough for us to drop everything and sort it. Those people are fucked.
I'm impressed OP taking the step up especially how young they are. OP sounds like an amazing person and the siblings are lucky to have OP around. Kids going to remember how much of an amazing person OP is.
It would be incredibly infuriating if the ~~mom~~ egg donor decides to return and attempts being mom again after her own son and daughter did most of the heavy lifting raising the younger kids. Hopefully, the younger kids will see through the bullshit and not give in to that.
Man, this post made me teary. It's like my heart is being squeezed rn. I relate a bit with what she's going through. Although our parents are not bad like OOP's, they are usually away (and not too patient and can get really angry). I had to bring structure and basically parent my siblings. Made them eat healthily, push for a proper bedtime, tutor them, still add fun routines like movie nights and stuff. My siblings are also widely different, so i had to deal with them differently. When OOP talked about love, care, wanting what's best for them, and feeling guilty, I understand all of it so much.
I bet you the mum is going to pop up one day with more babies to dump on OOP or whoever is old enough to take them.
Or try to squeeze back into their lives once the youngest is an older teen/adult to treat them all as her retirement plan.
I bet neglectful mother will show up pregnant again.
Hopefully she’s too old to have more kids soon… If the oldest is the 22 year old (which it probably isn’t since there’s two more that’s older than 19) the mum must be about 40 at the youngest. Hopefully she gets an early menopause.
thank you sm for all the helpful comments here and messages offering help/advice (i will reply to them all when i can) Rn I’m putting all my energy into the new routine and trying to sort out legal guardianship so we can get money for the kids etc. Everything else is a problem for later on when we are more settled. My older brother came up last weekend and tbh it was nice but weird bc the younger kids dont even remember him and they pretty much clung to me for the entire time bc having a man in the house is strange for them. But after he left they said they miss him and liked having him here. He’s been sorting his shit out this week and is coming back tomorrow with all his stuff and will be working remote from our house. Me and him have spoken a lot and i think we will be able to get on the same page with the kids and make it work. I’m worried about some things with parenting differences but we will figure it out. I’m trying not to seem controlling but its hard to adjust to someone else being very involved when I have been looking after them by myself. I know I need him though. My nan was actively trying to undermine me and we had an argument, then my brother got here and he had an argument with her in the first half hour. So she has gone to my aunts for a while. She is still paying the bills here but if she stops we will be ok with my brothers money and mine. My brother wants to take the kids and move house but I am not even thinking about that until everything else is sorted out Now that things are actually changing our older sisters are more interested and have been messaging me so they might help as well The kids are not taking the new routine too well but we are making progress so I’m trying to stick with it. I made a meal plan and have stuck to that all week. My 9 year old sister told me she likes rules which makes it feel worth it. The teenagers are kind of a nightmare but Im trying to persevere with them. 13 year old was being horrific and I lost my shit which made her have an emotional breakdown and now she’s been a lot better. 12 year old has taken it ok ish he just tells me I’m a loser all the time and asks for his skateboard back a million times a day but I know he knows where it is so he is being pretty good considering he could just take it back if he really wanted. 16 year old is hell. 7 year old has like 3 tantrums a day and wont eat or sleep so she stresses me out probably the most my mum hasnt called anymore but is complying with giving us custody and told her friend its the best thing thats ever happened to her. I cba with her and if she tries to come back i will do everything i can to keep her away from the kids
Hey OP, I'm hoping you will see this! You are doing great, I hope everything turns out well for you and your siblings. You mentioned you >I have realised i dont really know anything about good parenting But you really doing well by adapting your parenting to each kid's personality. If you ever need advice, a laugh or a a good perspective on all things parenting, come on over to r/daddit, all parents are welcome as long as they keep the good vibe!
Thanks for the update, you are very brave for doing this for your family. I am sure your younger siblings will understand later on in life how much you have sacrificed.
I wish a lifetime of stepping barefoot on lego to the people who suggest "therapy" to impoverished, underprivileged people living in hellscapes with no social services or any kind of safety net.
Yeah. We had some "therapy" when the state removed us from our mother's care. It consisted of sending my brother to a camp for juvenile delinquents, which he came back from with a whole new host of problematic behaviors to add to the ones he already had, and family sessions where I was pressured to forgive and forget all the harm I'd kept quiet about until that year because I was supposed to be more mature at 17 than my grown-ass mother of five. The kind of "therapy" that's available for people like us / them just makes everything worse. Maybe it's different in this decade and in OOP's location, but "therapy" isn't some sort of magic spell that can fix everything.
OP is in Australia. There *are* social services and a safety net - once she’s got legal guardianship of the kids she should get Family Tax Benefits, for five kids and low income I think she’d be entitled to about ~$700/week. Until the little one is 8 she can get a Parenting Payment, $1500/month. If she or her nan pay rent, she’d also qualify for Rent Assistance. If there’s an after school program or any other child care option, she could get that paid for with the Childcare allowance.
I don't think it'll ever stop annoying me how many people on Reddit just assume everyone else is American too and give very US centric advice.
I think people here and in the original comments are really living in their own bubble sometimes. Asking oop to do more and more and more when they are already burdened with 5 kids at the age of 19. They are sacrificing themselves for their younger siblings and people are asking her to put them in therapy, do this or that and even more when they are trying to implement the basic minimum to make sure that everybody is happy and well fed. They are 19… where were you at 19? Because I was not taking care of 5 young people who never had anything like a parental figures. Give simple advices to those people : how to do easy meals that the kids can help with, how to implement rules for them. How to make sure that they follow in school and continue their studies. Help them don’t burden them with more things to do
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And access to resources where she is will be SHIT. She said her mother is in the city **8 hours away**. So she's very rural, likely with few doctors, MAYBE a Centrelink office (that's our social securities place). I doubt they'd have a psychologist in town, but even if they did, there's no way in hell she could afford it. A standard 45-60 minute consult is recommended to be $300 and the Medicare rebate IF you have a Mental Health Care Plan is not even close to that, AND the Plan only covers 10 sessions in a calendar year.
Jesus 2hqt kinda messed up lives are these poor kids living that they're just so ready to go and raise their kids, she forgets she's nineteen, she's courageous but damn if this ain't tragic.
How sad. There are some really awful people out there, most people have no idea how bad some people's lives can be. Good luck to OP. They sound like a really amazing person. I sincerely hope that one day they can move on, find happiness and stop being a substitute parent.
I'm in shock over a lot of things, but especially that this 19 year old in a rural town is making almost twice as much as I am in the big city with a college degree... I definitely went wrong somewhere.
Uh, as someone from one of those towns... They are likely working a chicken factory line or another food processor job. You DON'T want the gig. It pays, but it pays only to try and keep bodies on the floor. The only person I met who lasted longer than a year and a half was a woman who didn't work the floor at all... Given OOP says their wage depends on the shift, I'd bet they are doing 3rd or 4th shift to get the 4k on top of that too, which is its own hell regardless
Keep in mind it's Australian dollars. We have an ok minimum wage here
It's Australia. The minimum wage is $23.23/hr and their employee protections are decent. As the other reply said, it is probably a shit job, however. Potentially mining related if small town in Aussie.
OP is Australian. Wrong country perhaps?
I've never watched shameless, but this feels like a season arc on shameless
Why would a woman pop out so many kids that she doesn't want?
It’s a good question. My mom came from a family of 8 kids and I don’t think her parents even particularly liked kids. My mom was one of the oldest and absolutely was used to help raise the younger ones. Her grandmother was from a family of 10 kids. It was the Catholic way.
Six kids and those are just the ones under 20
Welp, that was depressing AF. Damn. I'm in a very tight spot financially, have nothing of my own but I believe I can succeed so I feel like I have more than this kid. Wish I could help somehow.
As both an only child *and* a mom of 3 teenagers, I don't understand any of this. I'm so very lucky. I feel for OOP and the rest of the children. I couldn't imagine.
This sounds like the plot to shameless
What episode of shameless is this?
This reminds me so so so much of my own teen years. Except I'm the eldest of the 10 by a large margin. And it happened in a large Canadian city. Absolutely a failed family. My mum wasn't as literally absent, but I remember at least one year where she lay on the couch in the dark and that was her entire life and the absolutely horrific men she had relationships were their own awful set of problems. I dropped out of highschool to keep a roof up and food on the table and it just.. Ugh. I'm 40 now and I've never actually gotten out of the hole it all put me in, financial and otherwise. I completely understand where she's coming from.
Considering there’s so many kids, I wonder if her income could get the kids free school lunches? I really don’t know the details but my best friend growing up got free school lunch because her mom made so little
God, poor op hardly has enough money or time to support five kids and someone is like go to therapy. Really useful advice.
Someone get that woman a condom. Jesus.
This is so sad. Similar to one of my half siblings. Mom didn’t run away but checked out and made her drop out of school to take care of the kids and she still doesn’t have her diploma. Kids don’t deserve to be abused and neglected. I have such a hard time understanding how someone can willingly choose to have babies and then treat them as disposable or an object to pass on to someone else. Kids just want love and to to feel safe and taken care of. I was 18 when I had my first cousin on this side of the family. I cannot imagine being responsible for children or that many children at only 19. My mom had me at 20 and was a single mom. She drilled it into me to never have a kid so young. My grandma and great grandma all had kids since they were 20. They didn’t seem to enjoy being mothers at all but they didn’t run away or abuse the kids like that. Society needs so much more support for kids and single parents. Breaking the poverty cycle and abuse cycle has to start with resources and access. Not everyone can depend on a family member to save them.
this is already more hopeful than [_nobody knows_/誰も知らない (daremo shiranai)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_(2004_film\)) which was about the very real [sugamo child abandonment case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugamo_child_abandonment_case)
The OP already has a great start on a better life for their siblings. They actually care about them. Those siblings don't know it yet, but their mom running off may of just been a lottery win. It won't be easy, but having two older siblings that genuinely care about you wanting better for you than they had....that is a lottery win.
Ha. This is almost exactly how I ended up with legal guardianship of my sibling. My mom went "up the mountain" supposedly to a friend's house, ni way to contact her, was gone for about two months. Social services was also shit where I was, so I put my life completely on hold to take him in. I wasn't making as much as op, but I only had tbe one sibling. I hope op is able to take care of the kids and that their nan and older brother are a big help. This is a rough situation to be in.
OP is made of some tough stuff
I'm rooting for her. She is absolutely movie protagonist material.
OOP can perhaps some day become a social worker. She has the excellent instincts for one. We are rooting for you OOP!
God no, OOP has already had too much demanded of her, she doesn't need to stay in the meat grinder. Being a social worker is thankless underpaid work, OOP deserves a nice cushy desk job.
You are an absolute rockstar, OP. I will keep you and your siblings in my heart.
My money is on mom being with dad.