My gut feelings said not to go through with the adoption. My wife talked me into it. Years later she told me she wished she had listened to me. It took me 5 years to realize how slick he was of playing my wife and me against each other. When I voiced it, my wife stopped responding as she had and within days we put him into a mental hospital. During this time he had problems at school and what happened to him was never his fault, according to him. The doctors at the mental hospital realized, after 3 weeks, that he was playing games with them. However, it only took less than 30 minutes for an alcoholic to nail him in a group session the first night at the hospital.

Fortunately our daughter overheard him planning a party over Mother’s Day weekend while were going see my mother out of state. He was going to break into my gun cabinet, have booze (stolen by a person he met at the mental hospital) have porn movies, and invite a couple of the teenage neighbor girls, and you can imagine the rest. We left for my mother’s but left our son and daughter at home. That weekend he got picked up by county officers and the car he was driving was impounded. At this point we showed him the door. We continued to try to help him by paying half his rent as long as he went to a night high school. We even gave him a car. When we learned he had quit school and lied about it, we pulled the plug totally.

We were fortunate that our daughter overheard the call and that our good name was not marred. We tried to everything we could to help him but he wanted to play games, lying when he did not need to lie. Fortunately our kids called a friend we went to church with at 3:30 am on a Sunday morning and she came over and helped them deal with a drunk. It depends on the individual whether hugs or tough love is required. Sometimes you have to use the rod.

May God be with all those affected by the situation. The couple will always wonder what they could have done that would have saved the lives at the school.