Starting from Scratch

My experience working with families began the day I got out of high school when I started working with eight lawyers.  At the same time, I began college at night majoring in Psychology and English hoping to become an Elementary Education teacher. However, my work in family law took over my interest and I became a legal apprentice.  For over twenty years I worked with attorneys in family law handling divorces, child custody, estate planning, along with cases involving personal injury and even criminal law. 
In 2007, I began working with Dr. Jayne Major and took her Breakthrough Parenting Instructor course three times and completed her ten hour parenting classes twice.  I was interested because there was a high conflict case involving a mother that had drug addiction problems and a single dad who was fighting for custody and visitation.  We wound up going to court and the father got custody of the four-year old child and the mother got monitored visits in a facility until the child turned eighteen.  
I have also trained as a Supervised Visitation Monitor to handle a case for a mother who was bi-polar and had physically and emotionally abused her fourteen-year old son, threatening him with a knife and a gun.  After a year, I went to court to help obtain a restraining order against her for three years. 
As a parenting instructor, I have gone to court with several parents to help them with their case to protect their child.  One father came home from out of the country to find his wife who had threatened their ten-year old son with a knife and was in a foster home.  I helped him get custody of his son and start his divorce.  One of my clients had a two-year old son whose mother was alcoholic and bipolar.  She had been taking their two-year old child to her boyfriend’s house who had just gotten out of prison for domestic violence.  We worked together to get him custody and start his divorce. So hence my starting point...and I never know who I will be able to help next.