Meet Bitty Bop

My Blessed Middle Child

"Oh My wittle bitty got wittle bumps on her wittle cheek". The words I heard come from her dying grandfather when I took her to see him when she was just six weeks old. He lived another week and I wanted her to have something from him so Bitty just stuck with her. I named her when I was 17 and met a girl named liz and always wanted a lizzy. I never got that but what I do have is one special young lady. When she was little and playing she would often come dragging the neighborhood children in the house to patch them up from a fall. I make sure I keep a first aid kit at all times and this natural compassion this child has began to flourish.

Her passion is horses and I have been forced to promise her that "yes hunny" I will get you a horse one day. In my quest of land to make this happen I have found my own little passion for mineature horses and now tease her about getting one but what I would really love is to have a horse farm of mineatures for her to love and care for. They would be much safer than big horses and small enough for her to manage.

My views on Religion

I do not consider myself to be religious but I am very spiritual. I learned a long time ago that worry was indeed a lack of faith. I try not to worry and let things happen and am not over dramatic about the small stuff. Growing up we felt pulled in many directions as religious recruiters were always wanting us to attend their church and had little respect for the fact we already attended a church.



I wanted to make sure that my daughters were at least exposed so in their early years I was baptised and although I was doing it to have a fresh start in life as it turned out, more people where thanking me for joining the church than for dedicating my life for God. I was very confused and questioned what had happened. I never went back to that church and wondered through life taking care of my family. I then got my girls in another church and for 2 years was there each time the doors were open. I was later dissapointed to learn that the pastor had no idea who I was because I spent so much time in the childrens ministry. I noticed that during the time I was tything on a regular basis the pastor was more friendly than when I was not tything but he had no clue who I was, or that I had one child in the nursery and 2 in youth services.



I feel my job is to expose my daughters to as much as I can religion included but I have not had a very good experience with religious people so I tend to life my life with a personal walk and understanding with the god I have come to know and love. I know he exist as I have experienced my own miracles in life. The birth of my daughters all Miracles and I often wonder what I done to deserve such special little girls in my world. I have always been admired by others at my ability to tend to their needs and make sure they have the things they need. The credit was never mine. I remember times when I had two children in diapers and no diapers left and without telling anyone having friends show up with diapers right when I needed them the most. I have come home from work to find boxes of toys and clothes on the porch. I have always felt there was someone, somewhere looking out for my family. During their younger years I worked as a waitress and would start about 3 months before Christmas stopping off at the late night Walmart and spending a 20 dollar bill from the tips I had received that day. Christmas was plentiful.



People would ask me, Tammy how do you do it? My answer always the same, feed them, keep them clean and they grow. The love was without question and I always made sure I took time in school and spent a lot of time with them as I had been a single mother for about two years then went back to work when they were one and two years old. It's very difficult to work and have to find someone to care for your children.

Small Victory for My Family

I am excited after getting my hands on this book of resources I was able to call around asking for more parenting class referrals and found that many others recommended the STEP parenting class and the end result was it was approved by my case worker and I will be taking it soon. So excited... Next I have to get her to approve the therapist I am going to see. Yes I must under go treatment for being abused as a child. Personally I don't think anything is wrong with me but anytime you endure any kind of tragedy, every ones first answer is to send you for therapy. I consider this blog therapy since in my opinion all you do is go talk through your problems. Today I have no problems upsetting me and in fact am feeling very good.

I have added some new resources to the bottom of this blog. If you are in need of things like furniture there are some links below of groups people use to post stuff they wish to give away. There are some really nice things sometimes so take a look. If you have something you wish to give away, join these groups and post those items for others in the community to make use of.

One more victory.. The case plan has been filed. I got notice in the mail today that an order has been filed to approve the case plan since my telling my worker that I would not hand over any financial records till I have a court order to do so. I am currently seeking a financial advisor and someone who can help me get my financial affairs in order. I am learning that although I have lived life, I have yet to do the paperwork of my life.

I have huge stacks of important papers tormenting me. I am in need of an accountant so if this is your thing and you have some time to help get these things in some kind of order I don't mind paying for services.

How foolish they are...

I will be posting the stories of my other 2 children over the next few days, but today I thought I would enlighten folks on just how dumb I feel the state is.

For the past 3 years my daughters have been in relative care with my sister. During this time I have had unlimited unsupervised visitation with them. I have had them almost every weekend and spent so much time during the summer. Been to school functions and have taken advantage of every opportunity given to me to spend with my daughters, shopping, taking them for make overs, taking them to lunch and trying to be their mother under the most difficult circumstances.

Right now visitation is restricted again to 2 hours a month due to the vicious allegations from Christina Deann Pino who decided after she could not get me fired from my job, or get me kicked out of my apartment and after harassing my co workers and my neighbors made another attack on my children. This only hurts my family and the State of Florida allows themselves to be used as weapons against Florida's children. HEY Christina thanks you dumb loser. I hope you die a painful death one day for this one. Anyhow I just had to say that because I would personally like to kill her myself but a life of prison would do my kids no good so all I can do is hope for the worst to happen to her.

For those of you who would hate me for saying this, walk a mile in my shoes and have the State take your kids and you will feel the same rage I do over how easy it is for someone to make accusations against your parenting, forcing you to have to prove yourself to people who get up and work a 9 to 5 for the purpose of paying their own bills and more often than not don't even have kids of their own. They don't have a real understanding of just how tough life is without strangers coming into your world to say that you are just not good enough to be a mother. It would indeed make you angry. If you get too angry they recommend you go to counseling. If you are not angry enough, then you clearly do not care for your kids and must prove that you do. Where is the middle ground? I am angry enough to wish her a horrible life but I am not angry enough to destroy my life by ending hers.

You have to play the game, learn what they want to hear you say and then say it. They want to hear you take responsibility for anther's actions against my family and accept that it's my fault this all has happened. This really makes me laugh because I often ask myself, when will the State take responsibility for all the children who have died by their hand, and all the families destroyed by their hand. When will they stop playing god with the lives of innocent people? They want me to take responsibility but when are they going to do the same thing?

I have decided to dedicate my life to helping others so my fight won't be in vain. What I learn I will indeed share on this blog. During my time with the state I have found so many people trying to connect with others going through the same thing they are but often find these groups get a few hundred people in them and then fizzle out. I want to make a group that people can join and hopefully will result in uniting people who will stand against the state to make change happen.

Due to this the state decided my kids only should see me 2 hours a month and their entire summer was blown to hell as it was spent doing nothing and being bored, not to mention my oldest daughter was not permitted to have a Sweet 16 birthday party and nobody cares. This makes me angry because she DESERVES to have a sweet 16 party. For now we just play the game and use 600+ minuets a month of mobile to mobile talking to them on the phone. It's rather funny when my daughter calls me up to ask me things like, "mom how do you make garlic toast"? and "mom what should I eat today"? It seems she is now a borderline diabetic and has no idea what she is allowed to have. Some days they call me up and are fighting and I have to make them put the phone on speaker phone and break up the fight and get them settled down. That also makes me laugh because here now my kids spend every single day alone, and without the caregiver due to her working and this is ok? Yet with me they were supervised 24 hours a day and never left alone to fend for themselves.

This week our phone chats have been good, no fights between the girls but my sister and I went at it head to head. I always felt she was a pretty good person but now seem to have uncovered something I was not aware of. She is a compulsive liar and I confronted her on this yesterday and she claims to be in therapy for it. She actually had nerve to ask me why I felt her and my mother were out to get me and claimed I was paranoid but in fact I am anything but. When I confronted her about her little stunt of telling her own child, my niece not to call me when she went into labor, she actually tried to claim that it was her child who said that and not her. Naturally this is just another lie and when I asked my niece about this she confirmed it was her mother who was so worried about my having a relationship with her expecting grand baby that she would be concerning herself with who her child calls when she goes into labor.

I heard about this before the baby was born and I told the person who told me, which was naturally one of my own children who overhead this, that I hoped my niece did not call her own mother for that. Little did I know at the time, the exact moment I said that my niece was in labor and sure enough thought so little of her own mother, the woman who has my kids that she did not call her till the baby was several hours old. Needless to say I was overjoyed and gloated but when my sister called me so upset over it I offered up some false sympathy while enjoying her pain. I guess that makes me a sadist but as far as I am concerned she totally deserved it. What really upset me about this was that my niece was not going to allow her own mother to give her a baby shower but because I interfered and managed to convince my niece to allow her mother to give her a shower, my sister was able to have the baby shower and the way she shows her appreciation for this is to try to convince my niece not to contact me when she went into labor. My niece had her baby back in June and I have no plans to ever see this baby because it's not worth the stress and drama that that child is going to have to live with. If you ask me the state needs to step in now and spend every single day in chat child's life while grown people fight over it and rip the poor boy apart. I love my niece but this is once child who does not stand a chance with so much hate in that family.

My sister is also very racist and I once had kids who respected all races, and now one is calling Mexicans "beaners" and blacks "niggers" which really pisses me off. If I say anything to my sister about this, her reaction is to punish my kids and take her frustrations out on them so I learn to keep my mouth shut as much as possible to keep my kids from being mentally abused by her vindictive ways. She has told my oldest daughter that she hated her and when my daughter asked her what she could do to change that, my sister tells my daughter " get your head out of your mothers ass". I guess I am the bad one here but I would never abandon my children and I would never choose a man over my own children. My sister has done just this.

Since these new allegations the State tried to actually recommended sexual predator classes and only after I told them that if they put me in a class room with sexual predators that someone would die that they changed their mind about this kind of class for me. What are they thinking trying to take a woman who was sexually abused her whole childhood and putting her in a class with abusers? The allegations were that I had my children in adult chat rooms talking to men in these rooms which was false as it can be. These allegations have no merit and have not been proven and I will take a lie detector test to prove I have never and would never do such things. I was sexually abused myself from the time I was 3 till I was 15 and then later turned in my abuser to the police. My case was the first sexual abuse case to hit the paper in the town I grew up in. I can only hope that resulted in more people coming out and taking a stand. I have spent the past 13 years of my life single to keep men as far away from my kids as I can. I feel like I gave up my own happiness out of fear that something would happen to my daughters so I would never allow anything like this to happen. My case worker later decides that I must take a parenting class that runs an hour and a half a week over a span of twenty weeks at the cost of twenty dollars per week taking $400 from my pocket. I think this is insulting and parents in need should never have to fork out this kind of money to anyone for classes.

When I was in court while sitting in the hall watching their little TV with all the information on it there were some ads that came up and being the resourceful person I am, I saved some numbers to use later and this day I decide to use these numbers in my search more parenting classes as my goal is to take as many as I can to make sure they can not say that I have not complied with this part of my case plan. Overkill is my goal.

After some time and several referrals that lead to other referrals, I find one that seems to be perfect. I am going to post the information here for anyone who wishes to use this info. The class is under $40 dollars and you must also pay an additional $15 dollars for the work book that comes with the class. It's done in 2 weeks 3.5 hours per day for 3 days each week. This clearly sounds like something I am interested in for a few reasons. One is it's not going to take me 5 months to complete. It will also not be costing me $400 dollars out of my pocket that's better spent on my kids. Best I can gather this is the STEP parenting class. Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) you can get the handbook below by clicking the image and going to amazon to purchase it. Even if you do not take the class, you can indeed benefit from purchasing this book.

If you wish to find out more about this class, you may contact the following person for additional information.

Hillsbourogh Department of Children's Services
Joann Pressy @ 813-246-3807 Ext 128

If you have young children you may wish to check this book out by the same author.

I hope to post additional information as soon as I have it about other classes that comply with court ordered parenting classes.

Now at this stage my case worker is not happy about my taking the class of my choice and insist it must be approved by her. I however disagree since the one she has approved I have already taken back in 2003 and won't be taking that class again unless it benefits me. My case worker has asked that I send her information about the class so she can approve it and this is just not going to happen. As it stands their case plan has not been approved and they don't even have a hearing in place to get it approved but are planning to request a hearing for the case plan at the judicial review in October.

The way I see things is if they can't get the case plan approved then they don't have the right to tell me that I must report to them what and when I am doing things. Until they get this case plan approved I am under no obligation to notify them of my activities, therefore I have decided that because I want my children back, I will indeed do the case plan and wait till they can get it approved before I start handing them over any documents they request. Some would say I am wrong in this but if the case plan has not been approved by the courts, how can they start demanding my financial statements and work schedule and other very important documents that I don't feel they should have access to. When I have a court order to hand these documents over, only then will I comply.

In the meantime I am on a mission to make resources more available to those of us who are struggling to find them. I am a little tired of the state sending me on wild goose chases to get information we all know they have . I am tired of the stall tactics and won't be playing by the rules when it comes to getting the information that I need. I personally do not feel they should remove children without giving them very extensive information and resources they need, but their way is to dish these things out one by one making sure they let weeks pass in between referrals. I have decided to take as many parenting classes as I can between now and the hearing in October and set out to find them. I started back with square one and began calling the same people I got the original referral for only this time decided it best to lie about my intentions feeling they would be more willing to help me and it was very effective. I told them I was a member of several groups of women who have gone through some tough times in life and had a very hard time finding resources to help them with their problems. I was then refereed to one of the case workers who actually works on my case. I recognised her voice the second she answered the phone but since her and I had never spoke on the phone I softened my voice and began my story and asked her if she had a book of resources that would benefit the women I was here to help. She was very fast to ask me if I have an open case plan and since my case plan has not been activated by a judge I did not lie when I told her no I did not. Then she stated that if I did have an active case plan they would have to refer me to the resources and again I stated that I did not have a case plan so she let her guard down and told me that they have a resource guide they use to refer their clients from. I asked her if there was any way possible for me to get a copy of this guide and she gave me a number to call for a copy. Feeling a bit excited I call the number and make my request but as usual this was just an answering line and I was given yet another number to call. I call this number and after a 10 min discussion I am told that there are in fact 2 guides. One big as a phone book and the other smaller just for hillsbourogh county and she ask me which one I want. I then tell her I want both so tomorrow I am going to pick up this resource that seems to be available to so few people.

I am going to update you on this information and where you can get it for yourself as soon as I make sure I have my hands on it.

Wish me luck, I have a feeling if they find out who I am, or why I want this guide they won't hand it over to me so fingers crossed, for tomorrow I am going to town.

My daughter Jessica

AGE~ 16

Employment~ Currently employed making 12 dollars per hour

Dreams~ To one day become a crime scene investigator

Jessica has read every harry potter book several times and is almost done with the last book. I am sure, knowing my daughter as I do when she is done with the last book she will read them all in sequence starting with the first book and finishing with the last. If there is ever a game show of Harry Potter trivia there is no doubt Jessica would come out the winner.

Jessica worked as school patrol for several years, and has spent her time helping others. She volunteered with handicap children in her school and loves animals. She plays the trumpet and was given a Superior rating by judges who were impressed with her. She scored a perfect 6.0 on the Florida writes test and was one of the very few kids in her school to do this. She understands the importance of a good education as I began speaking of this very thing when she was just three years old. My oldest daughter has been my rock in a very difficult time and her support and love for me, her sisters and others often makes me wonder how I managed to get so lucky to be blessed with her in my life. This beautiful, creative, talented, caring, compassionate, loving, respectful, genuine, remarkable and unique young woman is so very special to me and so many others that I want to share her with you.

Jessica should you ever see this post, I want you to know how much I appreciate who you have become and I ask that you never let anyone change you as I have allowed people to change me. I am sorry for allowing this system to take 4 years of your life.
Remember what I keep telling you Jessica.

The best revenge is your success

Keep your nose in those books and that head on your shoulders use this experience to make change for others.

I knew when I was just 12 what your name would be, Jessica after my cousin who was called by her nick name Jessie. I loved that nickname and wished I had a nick name but what nick name goes with Tammy? I had no idea but I would sit back and wonder long before her birth who this little girl would be. Today I look at her and her spirit is so gentle, her concern and compassion for others far surpasses my hopes for her. Her thoughtful ways and her love for her me and others make me proud to say Jessica is my daughter. She is my child, she will go far in this life. She will not become bitter and she will shine just as bright tomorrow as she shines today. Today she lives with my sister and her husband. They are not the nicest people and in fact have done much to try to ruin my relationship with my daughters. Slandering me and telling her that they wished I was dead and out of her life. I was fooled into thinking that my sister actually cared for me. I have loved her my whole life and never in a million years had someone told me that my sister would be saying some of the things she is saying about me today would I ever have believed it. According to her I am the worst thing my daughters could ask for in a mother. I am this despicable manipulating vicious person who is not worthy to be their. My beautiful Jessica smart beyond her years trust in my love for her and holds her contempt for her aunt deep inside of her.

The real truth is that my sister's own child who is now 21 and just had a baby thinks so little of her mother that even though she lives less than ten miles from her mother, she did not call her own mother to tell her that she was going into labor with my sisters first grand child. None of this matters to the state, they do not see the emotional abuse that the children must endure each day. When my sisters husband had open heart surgery they came home and told my daughters it was their fault that he had to have surgery, nevermind the fact that the man is obese, diabetic and an x drug user and dealer who done time for his crime and is a felon who has never had children of his own. Nevermind that it was because of this man that my sister kicked her own daughter out and told her to go live with her grandmother not long after she had been raped at knife point at the innocent age of 13. Any woman who would abandon her own child for a man is not worthy to be called mother and yet this woman has my daughters and and I can do is tell my daughter to not disrespect or provoke her. I tell my daughter that if she would send her own flesh and blood away she will indeed send my child away.

At all cost don't disrespect your aunt is what I tell her, for the threats she gets very often of being separated from her sisters and sent back to the state is real and used to manipulate and control her. I am no fool and have made sure that she has a list of contact numbers of people I have asked to do whatever it takes to get her should she call. I will make it no secret that my concern is for my child and should anything happen and should my sister go through with her threats that my daughter will not spend a single day in foster care.

These are the writings of a mad woman, a mother in fear for the lives of her children and I assure anyone who reads this that there is a plan in place and I have so many people who love my family they will do what it takes to help me protect them.

Right now I must play the game, wait it out and dance all because they say so. I do it to maintain contact with my daughters, I do it to protect them, and I do it because I want my family returned to me so I can get the hell out of this god forsaken state because no way in hell will my grand children be raised here simply because this state has forsaken me on so many levels. Hear my story before you judge me. I am only mad in the eyes of others, I should be mad, I should be downright insane, I should be all the things they wish I was. I should have turned to alcohol and drugs years ago and often I feel I should be dead because I am a survivor of horrific child abuse and mollestation that could have been prevented. No I do not feel the world is out to get me, I am just angry that they judge me, yet do not know me. They condemn me without a trial. They throw me into a system with attorneys who advise me not to fight. They break your spirit, dictate what you must do to become a mother and I am fed up. This beautiful girl has the right to have access to her parents and in this case since her father has passed away I am all she has, who can love her more than her own mother? Who will care more than the woman who god trusted to care for her? If god has faith in me, then I must have faith in myself. I do not intend to mislead for I am not a religious woman but I do have a very close spiritual relationship with god. I however do not attend any church for I live on faith that trusting in him will give my family the happy ending that we so very much deserve.

This state was to be the home of generations to come but now my plans are to make sure that the State of Florida does not forsake my grandchildren has it has forsaken myself and my children.

I dedicate this blog to my late husband, the father of all my children

Samuel Doyle Toole

1959-2000