Full Opinion

In the Court of Appeals Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth ___________________________ No. 02-26-00186-CV ___________________________ IN THE INTEREST OF M.T., H.T., R.T., K.T., AND G.T., CHILDREN On Appeal from the 322nd District Court Tarrant County, Texas Trial Court No. 322-732902-23 Before Bassel, Womack, and Wallach, JJ. Memorandum Opinion by Justice Wallach MEMORANDUM OPINION Mother,1 acting pro se, raises eight issues in this appeal from a jury’s findings that her parent–child relationships with five of her six children should be terminated in this suit affecting the parent–child relationship (SAPCR) filed by the children’s Father.2 Because we overrule her dispositive issues, we affirm. Sufficiency Issues3 For a trial court to terminate a parent–child relationship, the party seeking termination must prove at least one predicate-conduct ground and that termination is in the child’s best interest. Tex. Fam. Code § 161.001(b)(1), (2); In re Z.N., 602 S.W.3d 541, 545 (Tex. 2020). Here, the jury found as predicate-conduct grounds that Mother had (1) endangered her children according to Family Code Section 161.001(b)(1)(D) and (E) and (2) used a controlled substance in a manner that endangered the health or safety of the children and either failed to complete a court-ordered substance abuse treatment program or, after completion of a court-ordered substance abuse treatment program, continued to abuse a controlled substance. The jury also found that 1 To protect the identities of the children in this case, we refer to the parties by relationship and to the children by fictitious names. See Tex. Fam. Code § 109.002(d). 2 By the time of trial, David, the oldest, was already eighteen and not a subject of the SAPCR. 3 We dispense with a background-facts discussion because we set forth those facts in our discussion of the evidence’s sufficiency to support the jury’s findings. 2 terminating the children’s parent–child relationships with Mother was in their best interest. Mother challenges these findings in her first, second, and fifth issues. Standard of Review To determine whether the evidence is legally sufficient to support a Section 161.001(b) finding, we look at all the evidence in the light most favorable to the challenged finding to determine whether a factfinder could reasonably form a firm conviction or belief that the finding is true. In re R.R.A., 687 S.W.3d 269, 276 (Tex. 2024). In reviewing factual sufficiency of the same finding, we perform “an exacting review of the entire record,” In re A.B., 437 S.W.3d 498, 500 (Tex. 2014), to determine whether a factfinder could reasonably form a firm conviction or belief that the Department proved the finding, In re C.H., 89 S.W.3d 17, 28 (Tex. 2002). We may not substitute our judgment for the factfinder’s “when considering the credibility of the evidence presented.” R.R.A., 687 S.W.3d at 276. However, we also may not disregard undisputed facts that do not support the finding. In re J.W., 645 S.W.3d 726, 741 (Tex. 2022). Applicable Law–Endangerment Subsections (D) and (E) of Family Code Section 161.001(b)(1) are the endangerment predicate-conduct grounds. Subsection (D) authorizes termination when a parent has knowingly placed or knowingly allowed the child to remain in conditions or surroundings that endanger the child’s physical or emotional well-being. Tex. Fam. Code § 161.001(b)(1)(D). To terminate a parent’s rights under Subsection 3 (E), the court must find by clear and convincing evidence that the parent has engaged in conduct or knowingly placed the child with persons who engaged in conduct that endangers the child’s physical or emotional well-being. Id. § 161.001(b)(1)(E). To endanger means to expose a child to loss or injury or to jeopardize a child. R.R.A., 687 S.W.3d at 277. Endangerment involves “more than a threat of metaphysical injury or the possible ill effects of a less-than-ideal family environment, [but] it is not necessary that the conduct be directed at the child or that the child actually suffers injury.” Tex. Dep’t of Hum. Servs. v. Boyd, 727 S.W.2d 531, 533 (Tex. 1987). “A finding of endangerment is supported ‘if the evidence . . . shows a course of conduct which has the effect of endangering the physical or emotional well-being of the child.’” In re C.E., 687 S.W.3d 304, 310 (Tex. 2024) (quoting Boyd, 727 S.W.2d at 534). The primary distinction between subsections (D) and (E) is the source of the endangerment to the child. In re J.D.B., 435 S.W.3d 452, 463–64 (Tex. App.—Dallas 2014, no pet.) (citing Castaneda v. Tex. Dep’t of Protective & Regulatory Servs., 148 S.W.3d 509, 522 (Tex. App.––El Paso 2004, pet. denied)). Subsection (D) addresses the child’s surroundings and environment while subsection (E) addresses parental misconduct. Id. at 463. Under subsection (E), the relevant inquiry is whether evidence exists that the endangerment of the child’s physical or emotional well-being was the direct result of the parent’s conduct, including acts, omissions, or failures to act. In re E.M., 4 494 S.W.3d 209, 222 (Tex. App.—Waco 2015, pet. denied). “Evidence of illegal drug use or alcohol abuse by a parent is often cited as conduct which will support an affirmative finding that the parent has engaged in a course of conduct which has the effect of endangering the child.” In re E.A.A., No. 12-26-00088-CV, 2026 WL 2122874, at *5 (Tex. App.—Tyler July 22, 2026, no pet. h.) (mem. op. on reh’g); In re J.T.G., 121 S.W.3d 117, 125–26 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2003, no pet.) (“Drug addiction and its effect on a parent’s life and ability to parent may establish an endangering course of conduct as well.”). In addition, generally, “conduct that subjects a child to a life of uncertainty and instability endangers the physical and emotional well-being of a child.” In re R.W., 129 S.W.3d 732, 739 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2004, pet. denied). Applicable Facts–Endangerment Trial in this case began at the end of January 2026 and continued into February. It was undisputed that Mother has a history of drug and alcohol abuse. It was also undisputed that Mother had been sober from February 2025 until the trial. According to Mother, this was her longest period of sobriety since her October 2020 divorce from Father. Before that, her longest period of sobriety since the divorce had been six months. Mother and Father’s agreed divorce decree gave Mother visitation with the children every other weekend provided that she continued to have clean hair-follicle 5 drug tests.4 Mother’s first visit was delayed because she was not able to provide a clean test; however, she was able to have her first visit with the children on December 17, 2020. December 2020 Incident After Father dropped the children off for their December 17, 2020 visit with Mother, the children called and texted Father on their cell phones, and he tried to get them to stop and visit with Mother. However, “[a]t some point, they expressed concern” about Mother’s behavior. Father agreed to “stay up” with them “until everything kind of settle[d] down.” He called the police after the second oldest child, Grace, called him with the “highest tenure [sic] of fear and helpless[ness].” Sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. on December 18, Father called 911 and drove to Mother’s house. When the first Mansfield police officer, Cameron Sly, arrived around 2 a.m., the children came running out of Mother’s house toward his patrol car. “They were scared for dear life” and crying; however, they did not have any visible injuries. One of the children said, “Mommy is trying to kill me.” “[T]here was talk[] of a gun,” so the children were placed in the patrol car. Other Mansfield police officers responded as well. The decree also provided that the children were not to have any contact with 4 Mother’s then-boyfriend, whom she later married in 2021. We refer to him in this memorandum opinion as Husband. 6 The children told Officer Sly that they had crawled out of the window in a bedroom that they had been locked into because the door did not have a doorknob and they could not get out through it. Mother was “screaming inside the house” before officers went inside. Officer Sly testified that the house was “in complete disarray, trash everywhere, things knocked over, things broken, dirty,” and it had “a distinguished smell that no -- no -- no normal person would want to smell on a normal day.” There was also broken glass on the ground.5 Officers had to force the children’s bedroom door open. It was “immediately apparent” to Officer Sly that Mother was “heavily intoxicated by some type . . . of narcotic and/or alcohol.”6 According to Officer Sly, “any person in an intoxicated state can’t make sound judgments,” and Mother could not have safely driven her children that night if she had needed to do so. When Father arrived, the children were relieved and immediately wanted to leave with him. The police released the children to Father. When Father talked to Mother the next day, she did not explain anything but simply demanded that Father return the children to her. According to Father, at that time Mother was “slurring, very belligerent, blaming the children for the situation[, and] blaming [their] oldest son 5 Officer Sly testified, “No child should have to go through that, what those children experienced that night and being inside the residence in those conditions.” 6 At trial, Mother admitted that she had drunk alcohol in the children’s presence that night and that at one point she had passed out on the couch. 7 from stealing from her[, and she] then threatened to sue . . . for custody of the children.” Father testified at trial that having to crawl out of the window had a “[v]ery negative” effect on the children’s mental health. He thought that Mother had endangered the children. Officer Sly referred the case to CPS.7 Subsequent CPS Involvement and May 13, 2021 Incident CPS opened an investigation, during which Mother was receptive. Mother told the CPS investigator that she was sorry for what had happened, and she admitted that she had been drinking that night and had used heroin three months before that and all of the prior summer. Mother explained that she had relapsed on alcohol because she was nervous about having possession of the children. However, Mother denied having locked the children in the bedroom––according to her, the doorknob had broken––and she “denied remembering whether or not she [had] told her oldest son[, David,] to kill [then] 11-year-old, [Grace].” The investigator met with Father and the children as well. According to the investigator, “[e]ach of the children reported in 7 CPS is an acronym for Child Protective Services, a subdivision of the Department of Family and Protective Services. In re N.L., No. 02-25-00205-CV, 2025 WL 3008022, at *10 n.20 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Oct. 27, 2025, no pet.) (mem. op). We refer to both CPS and the Department in this memorandum opinion, along with some of the services provided, including Family Based Safety Services (FBSS). 8 their own way to be fearful of the mom in . . . one way or another. Mom would yell at them, was mean to them. They feared that mom was going to kill them.” The investigator found reason to believe8 for neglectful supervision and put a safety plan into place. Although another investigator who examined Mother’s home was not concerned about its condition, the investigator who met with Mother was concerned that Mother “did not want to give up alcohol completely and didn’t see a need to.” Mother also “seemed to be making some excuses still.” The investigator was concerned about Mother’s not wanting to stop drinking “[b]ecause of the gravity of danger that the kids were in when she chose to drink.” CPS put a new visitation plan with the children into place. Starting in January 2021, Mother was to have supervised visits with the children every other weekend. CPS also required Mother to drug test. An FBSS representative who began working with Mother testified that the primary concern after assessment was Mother’s drug and alcohol usage. The FBSS representative wanted Mother, Father, and the children to attend counseling, and she wanted Mother to address her mental-health concerns. Mother attended some counseling, and “[t]he counselor reported that [Mother] would After investigating allegations of child abuse or neglect, CPS will assign one of 8 five possible dispositions: (1) reason to believe (based on a preponderance of the evidence); (2) ruled out; (3) unable to complete; (4) unable to determine; or (5) administrative closure. In re K.N., No. 02-25-00438-CV, 2026 WL 478943, at *5 n.11 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth Feb. 19, 2026, pet. denied) (mem. op.). 9 probably need counseling for most of her ongoing life . . . just to battle that sobriety and the mental health issues that she had.” From February 2021 to August 2021, Mother “went in and out of detox probably three to four times.” “Her progress was . . . up and down where it looked like she would sometimes be making progress and then she would backslide and” admit to drinking. Father, on the other hand, complied with the Department’s requests and “was ensuring the children’s safety.” During the first part of 2021, the children’s safety plan initially prohibited unsupervised and overnight visits with Mother, but Mother was able to work her way up to unsupervised visits based on her counselor’s recommendation. However, when Father picked the children up after Mother’s first unsupervised visit on May 13, 2021, she was intoxicated. Mother admitted to the FBSS representative that she had drunk alcohol the day of that visit. The children “reported that [Mother] was carrying a cup around,” and “[t]hey didn’t know what the substance was inside the cup.” One of her sons, John, told the FBSS representative that Mother had put her hands around his neck at that visit. Mother denied having done so, however. The FBSS representative thought that after this May 2021 incident, the children appeared to be scared to visit with Mother. As a result of this incident, the Department modified the safety plan for Mother. Mother had to go back to two-hour-long supervised visits with the children as well as submit to regular drug and alcohol testing. She could not consume alcohol 10 within twelve hours before a visit or during a visit, and she could not attend visitation unless a Breathalyzer showed that she had no alcohol in her system. Mother’s 2021 Police Encounter A Mansfield police officer testified to a May 14, 2021 encounter that he had with Mother as the result of a 911 hangup call. The children were not present during this incident. Mother told the responding officer that Husband had struck her in the face and then taken her cell phone when she called 911. Mother also told the officer that Husband had choked her9 until she urinated on herself and lost consciousness and that her relationship with Husband involved “a pattern of abuse and coercive control.” Mother told the officer that Husband demeaned her, called her names, and controlled her access to money. Mother said that she used alcohol and methadone to deal with Husband’s abuse. Nevertheless, Mother was “extremely reluctant” to give the officer any information and appeared to be trying to protect Husband. The officer noted that Husband “had already yelled at her while [the police] were there on scene that she didn’t need to tell [him] anything, not to talk to [him], and . . . basically told her to stop providing her testimony to” him. Husband was arrested for continuous family violence and called Mother collect from the jail while Mother was still being 9 Mother provided the officer with “cell phone photographs of her neck and bruising around her neck area.” The officer also saw redness on Mother’s face. 11 interviewed at the house. The responding officer suspected that Mother was going to bail Husband out. Mother was upset that night, but it was hard for the responding officer to tell whether she was intoxicated. According to the responding officer, Mother’s house was in disarray, with multiple holes in the wall, a broken door frame, and “multiple signs of violent interactions throughout the home.” There were empty alcohol containers throughout the house, as well as trash bags with empty cans in them. Photographs of the scene were admitted into evidence. The responding officer testified that he believed––from “the level of violence and course of control . . . observed, not only in [Mother’s] injuries that day and then the photographs that she showed [him] on her cell phone but also the signs of violence in the house”––that Mother “was in continuous danger as long as she remained in a relationship with” Husband. The officer completed a protective-order packet on Mother’s behalf, but she was not receptive to getting a protective order. Mother later told the FBSS representative that she was going to lie to the court and say that she was the aggressor in this incident. This did not occur because the charges were dropped after Mother told law enforcement that Husband should not be prosecuted. FBSS Case Closed FBSS closed its case in August 2021 because Father was being appropriately protective of the children. During a pre-case-closing interview with the FBSS 12 representative, the children appeared to be nervous and anxious at the prospect of visits with Mother. John said that when he was younger, he thought he had a good mom, but that was because he did not know any better. He had since learned that moms were not supposed to act like Mother had, and he did not think that she ever would change. When the representative indicated that the case would be closing, the children expressed their belief that CPS would be back in their lives. December 2022 Incident Father and Mother entered into an amendment to the visitation schedule “with the idea of restoring full visitation rights to [Mother] as she continue[d] to provide a safe environment for the children during visits.” The amendment provided for a stair-step plan under which Mother would start with supervised visits and work her way up to unsupervised visits. To work her way up, Mother had to provide clean drug tests, and she had to blow into a Breathalyzer before and after visits. According to Father, Mother did not consistently work her way through the stair steps; she would move up and down. He did not “recall the number of times that she fell completely back down[] but that [it] was almost immediately when the plan was put in place.” Father said that the only times he denied Mother access to the children was when she failed a drug test. A couple of times, Father supervised a visit as a favor because Mother showed up without a supervisor. In August 2022, Mother provided Father with documentation that she had taken a drug test that was positive 13 solely for methadone.10 Thus, in October 2022, Mother was able to obtain unsupervised visitations again. On December 10, 2022, Mother scheduled a visit11 at a hotel off I-35 instead of at her home because, according to Father, “[s]he had mentioned [that] there may [have been] issues with [Husband’s] leaving the residence, not having a place for him to go to accommodate the visits, and that this was just going to be easier for them.”12 After dropping off the children,13 Father got a phone call from the hotel that caused him extreme concern, and he called the police when he could not get Mother to pick up a call. Father found the children outside the hotel under a street lamp carrying some of their belongings. Using the children’s key card, he went into the hotel room to get the rest of their belongings; Mother was not there. He saw a “half empty wine bottle, During discovery in this suit, Mother provided Father with a drug-test result 10 from the same lab, collected on the same date, with the same specimen number, which showed that instead of being positive solely for methadone, the test was positive for amphetamine, opiates, codeine, morphine, heroin, methadone, EDDP, and Tramadol. See Crawford v. State, 496 S.W.3d 334, 338 (Tex. App.—Fort Worth 2016, pet. ref’d) (EDDP is methadone metabolite). Father testified that he would not have let the children attend the December 2022 visit with Mother had he known about this test result. Mother admitted at trial that she had faked a clean drug test. 11 This was Mother’s second or third unsupervised visit since regaining them. At trial, Mother testified that she made this alternative arrangement because 12 she “did not want to be at the house where there was drug use.” 13 Mother testified that John was not present for this visit. 14 empty vodka bottle, jar HTC [sic] gummies that were half empty, and then a couple of bottles of medication, one [of which] was not prescribed to her.” When Father went back to the hotel’s front desk, the attendant was talking on the phone to Mother. Father took the phone, and Mother said “that she [had] really messed up” and “didn’t want to get in trouble” or “have the children taken away.” Father had to convince her to come back to the hotel. Mother told Father that she was going to get help. According to Father, the children were scared; Grace was in tears and “extraordinarily hurt and shaken.” She needed counseling after that night. A Fort Worth police officer who responded testified that Grace and Father had reported that Mother was intoxicated and threatening suicide. He talked to Grace, who “was actually the one that dealt with most of the brunt of whatever the situation was at the time being in that room.” Grace was worried about her younger siblings and Mother. The officer’s bodycam was admitted into evidence. Grace told the officer that Mother had started to act strangely––emotional and crying––and Grace asked her if she had been drinking. Grace asked Mother to take a Breathalyzer; Mother attempted to blow into it but was evasive. Mother accused Grace of finding the alcohol she had brought in her suitcase. She also hung up the phone when Grace tried to call Father. According to Grace, Mother got in her face until Grace’s brother pushed her away. Mother told Grace the dispute was all her fault and that she would kill herself, and it 15 would be Grace’s fault that the children would never see her again. However, Grace stated that she did not think that Mother would actually have committed suicide. According to the officer, when he went to the room to look for Mother, the hotel room was “in shambles [with] crap everywhere,” but he did not see any alcohol or other substances. He interviewed then fifteen-year-old David, who had been staying in a room next door; David said that he “could hear . . . the screaming and hollering from the other room.” David had asked his siblings to leave the room so as not to be exposed to what was happening with Mother and Grace, who was thirteen at the time. The officer did not see any physical injuries on the children. Mother was gone for about an hour.14 When she showed up at the hotel, Mother admitted that she had been drinking; she pleaded “to . . . get some type of alcohol or detox facility to get the help she needed.” Before Mother left, the responding officer allowed her to retrieve “the gummies that she had mentioned outside.”15 They were “within the room” and “reachable.” Mother threw the gummies out and then left with MedStar that night. A different CPS investigator investigated the December 2022 incident. The children told the investigator that Mother had threatened to commit suicide. They also 14 According to Mother’s trial testimony, she just went around the corner to hide from the children but kept an eye on them. 15 Mother referred to them as Delta-8 gummies. 16 said that Mother had “appeared to be under the influence of alcohol,” “charged at one of the children,” and told them to “leave the . . . motel room.” Mother admitted to the investigator that she had “messed up and that she took full responsibilities of her action.” She said she wanted help, so the Department offered her community resources. However, the Department closed its case because Father was able to care for the children. As the investigator explained, “When we close out a case with a protective caregiver or parent involved, the children are more than likely . . . in the care of that protective caregiver or parent and the Department leaves it to them to make sure the children remain safe.” The Department made a reason-to-believe determination for neglectful supervision by Mother. This was Mother’s last unsupervised visit with the children. Father testified that the police interaction had a negative effect on the children, but he added that, “unfortunately, they’re so familiar with interfacing with officials that that particular piece didn’t affect them as much as you would think.” Later, during play therapy, Arthur expressed that having police officers present when he visited with Mother would make him feel safe. 2023 Through February 2025 Mother testified at trial that she had last used heroin in March 2023. Father filed his petition to terminate Mother’s parental rights in May 2023. In July 2023, Mother had a drug test that was positive for amphetamine, methamphetamine, morphine, and codeine. Her August and September 2023 tests were positive for 17 methamphetamine and amphetamine. Mother’s last positive drug test was in October 2023. In December 2024, an Arlington police officer encountered Mother when responding to a welfare check for a possibly suicidal person. Mother was distraught, crying, and said she needed help. She was clearly intoxicated and said that she had been drinking because her children had been taken away from her. The officer took Mother to JPS and checked her into the emergency room. February 8, 2025 Library Incident Diana Torres, a Tarrant County Family Court Services contractor, supervised Mother’s visits with Arhtur, Greg, and Darlene from February 2024 to February 2025. Torres testified that during most of the visits, Mother was loving and attentive, and the children were happy to see her and wanted the visits to be longer. The last visit Torres supervised was at the Arlington Public Library. According to Torres, Mother’s behavior that day was different than it had been before; she was acting “weird,” and it “appeared like she couldn’t walk in a straight line.” Mother “talked to every person that she saw,” made inappropriate comments, and tried to touch other people’s children without their permission.16 Even the children asked Mother why she was acting weird. However, Torres could not smell alcohol or marijuana on Mother. Mother testified that she was “just very interactive” with the other children in 16 the library, “giving them high-fives.” 18 Torres testified about a specific odd instance of behavior: We walked outside to a little water fountain outside of the public library where she and [Greg] appeared to be discussing something that looked private. When I approached -- I was there waiting, and I asked her what they were talking about, because they were whispering and they are not allowed to do that during a supervised visit, and she did not want to tell me. And I asked her multiple times not to whisper and that they had to tell me what the conversation was about, and she started repeatedly saying suicide louder until she yelled the word suicide. And she did not go into detail about that. But I told her that whispering was not allowed or I would have to end the visit early. Mother continued to have bizarre interactions with other library patrons. She got into the fountain with her shoes and socks on. Mother was never alone with the youngest child, Darlene, but she did have one of the boys, Arthur, sit on her lap. Torres testified that she had to leave Mother and the children unsupervised in the computer section for a couple of minutes so that she could use the restroom. She considered ending the visit early, but at first she thought Mother was just being silly and trying to make the children laugh. When she realized something was very wrong, there was only about fifteen to twenty minutes left in the visit. Arthur had an emergency session with his therapist after the library visit. He was “fearful, angry, and upset.” Arthur shared . . . that while sitting on mom’s lap she was moving her hand up his leg towards his groin and he lifted himself up to get her to stop and then he sat back down in her lap where then she proceeded to move her hand up his leg again and touched his groin and he became very uncomfortable and then removed himself from mom’s lap all together. 19 Arthur told the therapist that this happened at the library near some computers. Arthur “was . . . crying a little bit.” He expressed fear that Mother “was going to come and take him.” The therapist had never seen Arthur like that. Greg shared with the therapist that Mother was acting “weird” at the library visit, and he was concerned because Mother kept asking if the children would miss her if she were gone. Darlene was confused and uncomfortable. She could see that Mother “was vaping during the visit where the supervisor couldn’t see it.” The therapist reported what Arthur had told her to CPS, but CPS made a ruled-out disposition. Notes from CPS interviews with Arthur, Greg, and Darlene were admitted into evidence; they contain the notation that the “outcry did not rise to the level of sexual abuse” and that a police detective had determined that “there was no offense.” After the library incident, Mother’s visits with the children were immediately suspended. She was able to resume visits with the youngest three children in June or July 2025, but the older two voluntarily declined to attend any more visits with Mother thereafter. At trial, Mother testified that she had lied to CPS in March 2025 when she said that she was not under the influence of any drugs or alcohol at the library visit. But she adamantly denied the allegation that she had touched Arthur inappropriately. When asked about her reaction to the allegation, Mother testified, 20 I have been with my kids their whole lives, and if I was going to do that, it would have already happened. Why would I do that in public? And why was there never any accusations? Because if someone’s got a sick mind, they’re not going to try it the first time at a supervised visit. February 2025 Police Interactions Father presented evidence from a then-Burleson police officer who encountered Mother in February 2025 when responding to a “disturbance for an intoxicated individual walking around the neighborhood.” Mother showed signs of intoxication, and the officer was concerned for her well-being. Mother mentioned several times that she was going to kill herself and at least once threatened that she would try to do it in the back of the police car. When Mother was arrested, she admitted that she had been arrested for public intoxication twice the week before. An Arlington police bodycam video from a February 14, 2025 interaction with Mother was admitted into evidence and published to the jury. Over the course of the video, Mother, who was intoxicated, became increasingly agitated and began screaming obscenities and derogatory comments at Husband and the police. As her friend Anne put it, “She was spewing stuff. . . . [I]t was not pretty.” At trial, Mother admitted that she had relapsed on alcohol in February 2025, and she attributed the relapse to her hopelessness about the case after meeting with the children’s ad litem. 21 Grace and John knew about Mother’s February 2025 public-intoxication arrests because they knew how to find that information online and had looked up Mother’s arrest records. Father denied having shown them how to do so. Mother’s Improvement Mother had ten negative drug tests between October 2023 and January 2026. She was able to start one-hour weekly supervised visits at the Tarrant County courthouse with the younger three children––Greg, Arthur, and Darlene. A courthouse visitation center employee who supervised five of the visits testified that Mother was “really good with the kids. They’re always joking around. You know, sometimes they get a little too loud and she has to tell them, like, hey, you know, keep it down, there’s more people in here. But for the most part they have good visits.” At the first visit, the children were “a little nervous, but after that they were fine.” Mother was attentive to the children, and the quality of their visits was good––the children looked happy and were smiling and laughing. The employee had no safety concerns. Mother testified that she had been sober since late February 2025 and that she had been to inpatient treatment either that February or March. She took a Breathalyzer test before each visit with the children: at 9:00 p.m. the night before, at 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. on the day of, and fifteen minutes before the visit’s start. According to Mother, this Breathalyzer program was different than the one she had been using before because it took video of her testing. She testified that she would 22 not be able to fake a negative test with it and that she could no longer fake a drug test because those results were sent directly from the lab to Father’s attorney. Overall Effect on Children The children started counseling in mid-2023. Because they were so angry and upset about Mother’s behavior, Grace and John had voluntarily stopped attending visits with Mother around October 2023. As Father explained, “It just is a repeated cycle that really has hurt the children so much that the three eldest just - - they don’t want to be hurt anymore.” After the February 2025 library incident, the younger three were sad, “but there was tremendous relief that they weren’t going to have to go back for awhile.” According to Father, Grace struggled the most with the prospect of seeing Mother: “even just mom appearing at an event would trigger her.” She sometimes avoided her siblings’ activities to avoid any kind of contact with Mother. The younger three children wanted to see Mother at their extracurricular activities,17 but only Darlene, the youngest, was excited about the prospect. All of the older children were worried at the thought. Father agreed that the litigation had been stressful for all of the children. Grace’s therapist testified that Grace “was very fearful, fearful for her life [and] her siblings’ lives,” due to Mother’s intoxicated behavior. In therapy, they had worked 17 Father testified that Mother had not been able to attend extracurricular activities since February 2025. 23 intensely on processing the two December events, and Grace needed more therapy at Christmas time. After the December 2020 visit, Grace “said that she wanted to protect [her siblings] at all costs and make sure that she could get them to safety.” Grace told her therapist that she felt she had taken on a mother role for her siblings. The therapist said that this is not age appropriate. Grace was concerned about not being there to protect her siblings from Mother in the future and “worried that history will repeat itself, [that] things will happen again, and the kids won’t be safe.” John also expressed concern about how visiting with Mother might impact his younger siblings. According to his counselor, John “doesn’t trust that she can care for them, provide comfort, and keep them safe.” When asked why he thought terminating Mother’s parent–child relationships with the children would be in their best interest, Father stated, “Because of their reaction and what’s happened to them psychologically and temporarily performance-wise as they’ve been exposed to these visits where [Mother’s] been inebriated and has said some really hurtful things that just really . . . have stuck and just replayed in their minds over and over and over.” Analysis–Endangerment We conclude that the evidence is both legally and factually sufficient to prove that Mother endangered the children by her conduct directly tied to her substance abuse. Mother’s behavior at the December 2020, May 2021, and December 2022 visits was fueled by her alcohol consumption. The children were frightened and emotionally 24 impacted by her behavior. Because of Mother’s conduct, the children were unable to have more than a few unsupervised visits with her in over five years––from October 2020 through the time of trial in early 2026. Her older three children did not want to visit with her, and the younger three were apprehensive to visit without supervision. Even Mother agreed when asked to admit that her addiction had “caused the children to be placed in dangerous situations” and that her conduct had endangered the children’s “physical safety” and “emotional well-being.” Mother argues that there was no evidence that she ever inflicted physical injuries on the children and that evidence of her almost-year-long sobriety before trial outweighed the evidence that she endangered the children in the past. But we conclude that the jury did not have to give more weight to the lack of physical injury and Mother’s pretrial improvement. See, e.g., R.R.A., 687 S.W.3d at 277 (“[T]he ordinary meaning of endangerment . . . does not require actual harm[.]”); In re J.O.A., 283 S.W