UPDATED NOV. 3, 2013 (scroll down)

(If you are new to this blog, you may want to read the posts “In a Nutshell” or go to July 2012 and read “Sending out a Letter.” Both of these posts give a brief description of what happened. As Emma’s mom, I am blogging my experiences with Emma and the things she did/does. This is a child who made up a story about rape, accused a priest of molesting her, and then as her attorney was about to file a lawsuit against the priest and the church, Emma accused her mother of physical abuse to stop the lawsuit because she knew her lies were about to be discovered. Emma is now living in Ohio at the home of her fiance’s grandparents, attending Wright State University http://www.wright.edu/, and talking about getting married to T. Emma claims her mother poisoned her with DDT and that she had to move to Ohio to get away from her mother. She also claims her future mother-in-law lives in fear that Emma’s mother will show up and kill her entire family.

All children lie. All parents know this. When does lying become a problem? One mental health professional told me that it’s a problem when kids lie to hurt others. It can be a problem when it’s become a habit. I think Emma might have developed this habit, but Phill and I didn’t recognize it because we were too trusting. Emma lied about all the normal things kids lie about, doing chores, messes left for mom and dad to find, breaking something, eating all the cookies (candy, or whatever…..) We always thought she lied about small things, and we didn’t look into stories Emma told us that we probably should have. Later, I was to find out that she lied about a lot more than just the little things.

As Emma got older, it got to where she couldn’t be trusted to do many simple chores. I would ask her to do something like putting her clothes away, and unless I told her I was going to go in and check, she would throw the clothes on the floor in her closet rather than put them away, but she would lie and tell me that she had. This happened so often, and Emma would lie so easily, I told her a couple of times that I felt like she could lie as just as soon look at me. At times, I felt like Emma had a problem with lying, but then I’d talk to other parents and felt like these were such small things, that this was normal, right?

Emma also liked to argue. I guess like a lot of kids, she was pretty spoiled and didn’t do a lot of chores, but I tried to give her a few. I always felt kids should have to pitch in, and if nothing else, doing a few chores might make them realize how much mom and dad did around the house. Even with that, when she was really busy with school and had a lot to do, we didn’t make her do her chores. Once in a while we’d have a “family yard day” and have Emma get out and help us with yard work, and if it was something like that, she could be a great help and was willing to work hard, but as for the boring, everyday chores, Emma, like most kids, would get lazy and take shortcuts. When she was supposed to vacuum the kitchen I might come in and watch her and find her lazily swinging the vacuum this way and that and then calling it done. When I would catch her in the act of doing a poor job, I would make her do it over and that would be a battle with lots of crying and yelling, “But I did it!” I would tell her, “Emma, you will spend 40 minutes arguing over a chore that takes you 5 minutes to do!” I thought all this was pretty typical kid stuff and hoped she’d outgrow it, or at least when she grew up and had her own place, appreciate the fact that she really had it pretty easy as a kid.

I’ve wondered how far back Emma’s problem lying goes. Around kindergarten or 1st grade, Emma had problems getting along with a little girl at school. Emma and Erika both wanted to be friends with a little girl named Maddie. I know it’s common for little girls to pair up and they can’t get along in threes. I’ve heard that for years. After some problems at school, Erika’s mom had idea to invite Emma over to their home for a spend-the-night, hoping the two girls would make friends. A little later, we invited Erika over to our house for a spend-the-night. Erika was a cute little girl with older siblings, so maybe that’s why she was a little tougher than Emma, and could stand up for herself fairly well.

Emma Katherine Roey

After Emma spent the night at Erika’s, she told me that Erika’s mother had gone out grocery shopping the evening before, leaving the kids alone at the house. Being somewhat non-confrontational myself, I didn’t want to call up Erika’s mom and ask her this, so I never did, but later, I wondered if Emma made this story up so that I would not let her go to Erika’s home again. Emma and Erika never did make friends, and I thought it was more because of Emma than Erika. When I would see Erika at school, she seemed like she liked Emma, but Emma was never interested in being friends.

Across the street from us, the spring before Kindergarten, a little girl named C. moved in. I was thrilled for Emma to have a playmate right across the street. The girls went to different schools, and with busy schedules, they didn’t see all that much of each other once school started, but Emma and C. got along well. Emma frequently wanted me to play with the two of them. I remember one day around Halloween, they wanted me to play on the trampoline with them and made up a game called, “Witch in the Middle” which was the same as what we called, “Pig in the Middle” or “Keep Away” when I was a kid. I remember relaying the day to Phill and joking about how I didn’t even get to be anything glamorous, I was a witch! Emma often wanted me to play with her and her friends. I didn’t mind being the “fun mom,” but at times thought Emma spent so much time with me that I’d have thought she’d want to play with her friends without me!

Around second grade, Emma decided she had no use for C. C. had a younger cousin that came over frequently, and Emma didn’t get along with her, so this may have been the reason Emma didn’t want to be friends with C. anymore. Emma started telling stories about C. and why she didn’t like her, and to be honest, I don’t really remember most of them, but one struck me as a little odd. Emma made C. out to be boy crazy. I thought little girls really didn’t start noticing boys at that age, but not having a lot of experience with kids that age, I supposed it could be true. Emma told a story about how C. was in love with this boy at school and he had blown his nose in a tissue and put it on C.’s desk, and she brought it home and saved it. (Horrors!) To this day, I don’t know if this story is true or not. At the time, I thought it was a little ridiculous, but it’s not something I was going to bother to look into. I will let you parents of girls tell me what you think about this story. Thinking back to my own second grade, had a boy put a nasty tissue on my desk, I’m sure I would have found it totally disgusting.

(Added Nov 3, 2013)
When Emma was in about 6th grade, we had some friends that Phill and I played cards with about once a month. This couple had two children, a son who was Emma’s age, and a daughter who was a couple years younger than Emma. Because I don’t want to cause this family any pain, I will change the names of the children to Hugh and Hannah. We knew this family through church, and when we decided to start homeschooling Emma, they were very helpful because they’d homeschooled their kids.

Hannah was very much like Emma, bright, assertive, and a leader-type personality. They two girls got along ok, but I wouldn’t say they got along great. I always thought they were too much alike, both liking to be in charge.

Hugh was all boy, energetic, active, sometimes obnoxious. He loved sports. He could be funny and silly, but could also be fairly difficult. Sometimes I thought it was just that he was such an active little boy, but I also thought there was something not quite right. The kids were all in an arts program together, and played ball at the same church program. Emma and Hugh were in the same Sunday school class, and occasionally we did home school activities together. In talking to other people who knew this family, and looking at some of Hugh’s behavior, I suspected that he had Asperger’s Syndrome, but since his parents never talked about his behavior, I figured that either he was not officially diagnosed, or else, they didn’t want their son labeled, and did not act like there was a problem with him. I had studied Autism and Asperger’s in college, and had a couple of friends with autistic children, including Emma’s “other mother” Sandra Brooks McCravy.

Emma complained about Hugh constantly. Since they were in the same class in the arts program, every time she came home, she had some kind of grievance against him. Most of her complaints were fairly minor, and I just assumed they were true, having witnessed how this young man could be. He broke her art project when he hit her backpack, he pushed her, etc., nothing too serious, so I never felt the need to complain to the director of the program.

We’d been getting together with this family fairly regularly for a couple of years, when one night they were at our home for supper. We would usually have supper, and then the kids would go and play for a while and then maybe end up watching a movie while the adults played cards. On this particular evening, Emma and Hannah were playing, and Hugh went out on our sunporch, laid on the sofa and was reading some cartoon books of Emma’s.

Later on, the kids watched a movie, while the adults played cards. I believe the movie that night was Singing in the Rain, and Phill and I got a kick out of seeing the kids enjoy an old classic that we had loved.

The next morning, I asked Emma to straighten up the sun porch, where the kids had been playing, and after a while, she came to me in tears, holding her Tin Tin book. She claimed that Hugh had torn up her book, and upon opening the book, I found almost every page torn precisely in the middle, horizontally, from the outer page to the spine. I questioned Emma about where she found the book, etc., but this was my very smart little girl who loved books! There was no way she would tear up her own book!

When I spoke with Hugh’s mother, she promised to talk to Hugh. Later, at the arts program where we both worked part time, Hugh’s mom wanted me to talk to Hugh, and she stopped Emma between classes and questioned her. When I spoke to Hugh, he could not make eye contact with me, and I took this as a sign of guilt, even though I knew Hugh often times did not make eye contact. That was one of the reason’s I suspected he was Asperger’s.

Emma was very upset that Hugh’s mother questioned her. She claimed that Hugh’s mother was trying to get her to say that she did it. I was a little upset that Hugh’s mother had questioned Emma without getting my permission to do so.

We were at an impasse. I believed Emma and Hugh’s mom believed her son. Hugh’s mom paid for the book, and we rarely spoke after that. Our families no longer got together, and we not longer played cards. All over a $10 book. While I was saddened, Emma was perfectly happy not to get together with this family anymore.

Later on, it gnawed at me the way the book had been torn. Hugh was an active boy, and if her were destructive, I would have thought of him making more of a mess, being more random, and not methodically tearing each page right in the middle which seemed more like a planned behavior. Of course I will probably never know the truth, but this is one story I wanted to share. I am sorry that I didn’t push to get to the bottom of this story, maybe put the two kids in a room together and let them argue it out. To this day, I suspect that I wrongly believed my daughter, and I accused an innocent child of something he probably did not do.