I know that alot of kids have it alot worse, but I have decided I cannot be part of a family that treats children this way and not do anything about it. Let me back up.

BM has put the final nail in her coffin for me. She is the custodial parent of my 3 SD's and we see them EOWe. Last weekend we was our scheduled visitation but she decided that she would take them to her parents house instead, who live 2.5 hours away from us. DH, being the nonconfrontational, not wanting to ruffle BM's feathers, overall scared of BM, person he is told her that was fine. Fast forward to this weekend, the kids miss their dad. Of course. They guilt him into picking them up for the day on Sunday. So off he goes to pick them up. When he has been gone for about 3 hours (BM lives about 1 hour away), I call him to find out what's the hold up. Apparently BM dropped the SD's off AGAIN with her parents. On her weekend. Which is where they were the weekend before we had them last. This means that BM has not spent a weekend with her kids in at least 6 weeks (which is when I started counting).

On top of that, the kids keep having lice outbreaks. I understand those suckers are hard to get rid of, but not only will she pretend to not notice that they have it and continue to send them to school, when she finally does treat it, she doesn't do it properly (i.e., wash all the bedding and clothing in hot water, pick out the nits, bag up all the stuffed animals and pillows), so it keeps coming back over and over. I had lice once when I was about 6. My mother was mortified and would spend hours upon hours combing through my hair making sure I was cleared.

On top of this, SD told DH that she feels "neglected" by BM and that her maternal grandmother and nanny agrees with her. That BM comes home from work late (she's a teacher) then drinks until she passes out.

To me it sounds like she doesn't even want to be a mother and it breaks my heart. No child should ever feel unwanted by their parent. You would think it would be easy then to get custody since she doesn't want them anyway, but she is a greedy BM that would rather cut off her own arm then give up that hefty child support check.

The only way we can get custody of these kids would be if they decided to come live with us. I don't want to split up the sisters and one of them is basically already on board. SD11 is very loyal to her mother though. Would it be terrible of me to start planting seeds in their heads (I wish you guys lived with us all the time; It would be cool if you were here enough to play sports on a team, etc). Or if maybe their is another tactic we should utilize. I already know that this isn't enough to get a court to turn over custody.

I know that this is the ultimate definition of PAS'ing but I really do believe they would be better off with us. I don't want them to hate their mother or anything, but I really think that she is not being the best mother she can be and needs help (she is manic depressive and has bi-polar disorder). And before you think that us taking away her children would send her down a spiral, keep in mind last school year she lived with her parents during the summer and enrolled her kids in a school in their district, then got a job (and an apartment) an hour away and left her kids to live with their grandparents for the entire school year.