Well this is an different sort of problem that we don't usually see here ! I guess you are the father of this child. I think after a bit of settling in time (at the prison), perhaps you could be sure in your own mind, that the mother wants to see the child, and the child wants to see the mother. That they are united in their need to see each other. The child is old enough to understand what is going on. If you ask yourself what are the pros and cons of the visit.... The child sees what happens when you break the law - valuable life lesson about consequences. The visit will let them keep in touch and foster their love and caring for each other. The mother sounds like she is sorry for what she has done, I don't see why she should miss out on family support in her trying time. That shows compassion. 14 year olds can say some pretty mean things, but they don't mean it most of the time. Good luck - a bit of a ramble from me.

Our home was originally an Indian allotment. If were to you dig around, you wouldn't find any arrowheads, but you might find a disc, or part of an old horse drawn rake or maybe even an old plow. (These Indians were farmers, not hunter/gatherers.) The better digging is in the old dumps; lots of swell bottles and old graniteware. Actually, the house had been built on another part of the 160 acres, but sometime in the late 20's, or at least by 1930 the porches were partially dismantled and the whole house was moved to it's present location closer to the road. There's a small building in one corner of the yard that became the Grandpa's tinkering shed. I learned that Indian homes "back in the day" almost always had a similar little structure built as a birthing house. I'm not sure if anyone was born in this one, because by the time the house was moved, the children were well past infancy, but then again, they moved the big house, why wouldn't they have moved the little house too? The surviving sister is over 75, and was too young to remember exactly when the house was moved. All but that one member of the original family is buried out back in the family cemetery, which sits in a clearing in the woods just east of what's left of the old stacked stone foundation. Most of the graves are marked, but there are three of those traditional grave houses that have fallen in that are not. My Grandson and I go (with permission) once a year to trim back limbs, cut down saplings and generally tidy it up a bit. I also know that S.J., the last original family member to have lived in the house, was a confirmed batchelor until he was 65, when he married a local widow. (Better late than never.) They lived together happily until he passed away in 2000, and she moved not far from here back to the house she shared with her first husband on his family's allotment. >At this point, the cheerful background music turns somber and the story develops a somber tone. As I've heard it, a local businessman had some kind of agreement/contract with S.J. to buy the place after he died. I'm guessing it was one of those pay now, take posession later deals that gives an elderly person who is "house poor" money to live on. In the end, it got ugly. The businessman and his wife took the widow to court because she'd been staying in town while her husband was ill. They argued that she had "abandoned" the place, and he was awarded posession. :^( Anyway, that man turned his hand to a little remuddling; removed the french doors, slapped vinyl siding on the house, gutted the bathroom and put in a plastic shower. Anything that was still in the house was hauled out and thrown in the dump; from the looks of it, what didn't break going in was burned. Everything in the yard was mowed down. The only bright side is that other than the bathroom and the french doors, he left the interior alone, and no one cut any of the mature trees in the yard. When he was finished, he "flipped" the place to a gentleman from California who only wanted it because at the time, it was still legal to fight gamecocks in this state, and he planned to raise chickens. Less than 3 years later, chicken fighting was voted out, and he put the place up for sale. That's when we bought it. >cue the happy theme song againWhen I found out that S.J.'s widow was still living, I went to visit, and invited her to come and see the house. She was in her 90's but she had her daughter bring her down and we had a wonderful visit. She was surprised to see two of the roses had survived so much mistreatment and neglect and got a little misty eyed when she talked about planting them all those years ago. That fall, we carefully dug them up transplanted them to her yard; she was just thrilled to have them back all these years later. Then she said "Oh, but now you don't have any roses". I laughed and told her I could plant all the roses I wanted, but that these belonged to her. I have to say that was the most fun I'd had in a long time. They're still blooming at her house, and here I am, 2 & 1/2 years later, blessed with roses everywhere you look...

I found the comment "you can't reason with a child that age" very interesting. Parenting books all tell you to reason with children. Unfortunately these pop psychologists forgot their child development and the FACTS that brain development does not enable reasoning until well into school age!! What Linda is going to learn the hard way, if she doesn't get to the parenting/authority ability to say "enough, go to your room" and have the child comply, when he is 13 this will not be cute. How a relationship plays out when they are young tells much about how it will work when they are older. Look out world another out of control teen is on the way!!

Never heard of it, but all of the actors are top-notch. I may have to put it on my queue. We watched "The Town" last night. Stars Ben Affleck and Jeremy Renner and is about bank robbers in the Charlestown section of Boston. It was good, but my gripe is that you are actually rooting for the bad guys. These guys are murderous thugs, and yet you want them to get away with it. In real life, you would want these guys captured or killed.