Are the kids safe?
 

My AH wife just got out of 11 days of in patient treatment. She was driving in the car with our 2 youngest and was in a minor accident. I find out she was not drinking, but taking benzos. This led to a hospital stay where she was tested for everything from MS to brain problems. After cat scans, mri's, the tox report came back and she almost admitted it...

Anyway, she's out, and clean, she says. Forever clean, only time will tell. I have my doubts. My question is, are my kids safe? Should I let her drive the kids? Should I leave the younger kids home alone with her when the older ones have events? If not now, how long do you wait before you allow her to have that kind of responsibility? How do you say even though you are clean now and trying to stay that way, maybe, you are unfit?

Who watches the kids when I go to a meeting? She does now. We cant afford much more child care, thats already $1300/mo. Her parents are as bad or worse. My dad is not local. My mom works, has a mom in nursing home. She does a lot, but is only 1 woman.

Any input welcome.

Thanks,

If it's in question, I would err on the side of safety. Can you find a meeting that has child care? There are several in my town, so I'm just wondering if that might be an option.

Child care swapping has worked well for me, too. I watch someone else's kids, say on their T-Th meetings, and they watch mine for the M-W ones. Would that work?

Been there done that. IMHO you're children are not safe.

Cyranoak

It's obvious that you want reassurance about this because it's tough and expensive for you to find alternative care, but I am sorry, I don't believe your kids are safe. I had a couple of experiences where I left the kids with my ex-AH and he promised they would all be fine and I came home to find him passed out on the floor while my kids were watching TV totally unsupervised. He kept saying he was done abusing alcohol but he just couldn't stop doing it. I think I would need to see like six months sobriety before I felt a little bit more comfortable.