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Mine too.
I had to try and wrangle 4 at once when I ran into my boss at a mall. He's telling me about a meeting I didn't know about and then he started in about a client of mine and 4 kids can run 4 directions. They knew better. I could go places and people told me how good they were. I think it was a consipacy, because they drove me nuts. That was just the first 4 I had 6.
I do believe in spanking. I'd swat a behind to get attention, because beating would wear me out. Turning and walking usually worked, but not always and when you have one under a clothes display turning it and yelling weeeeeeeee, and people staring at you while you try to stop it, you can better believe the kid I grabbed and who said I'm calling a cop got a swat on the butt! And yes a huge woman that looked like she would have eatten one of my kids got a cop and security guard there because I swatted her once. Not hard, just a swat.
I got people standing all over watching and when they told her they didn't look abused and that there is no law against a spanking if it's not extensive and there are no marks, she argued and they told her she needed to be quiet and move on. And the people standing around clapped. Heck the ones that had been in the store probably wanted to spank her.
I don't have a dime to my name now, but I did then and it seems if you have money people don't like you and if you have no money they don't like you. Ya can't win.
The kids in cars? OMG it breaks my heart. Those poor babies. No one is perfect and yes in this rushed world, they do forget. One man rushed to work years ago. His wife usually drove the baby to daycare, but had to be at work early. Dad got him in the car and got on the freeway. Traffic, on his way to work, things diverting him and he went to work and later got a call asking why he didn't get the baby to the sitter. He ran out and found his son. That man was devistated while the news showed him going handcuffed into the cop car and sobbing about losing his son and knowing he did it.
Or the grandmother that went to unlock her door, so she could carry her grandchild and groceries inside. She had a seazure and passed out. The 2 or 3 year old died by the time someone noticed her laying on her porch and the car door open. They gave that woman 4 years and she had another siezure and died before they could take her out of the courtroom.
I'm sure there are people who never look away from their kids and keep them under lock and key so they don't get hurt. My kids played and no I didn't stare at them every waking hour. They all grew up to be some pretty awesome people. If anything they're over achievers, so I hope that doesn't make them some lower form of life.
When agencies get calls on people who just aren't paying attention or getting red in the face mad at a 12 year old that should know to stand there and not act up in a store, no matter if the parents aren't centering their attention on him, but yet not clobbering him, they don't have time to save the ones that need them. Like a little boy near where we used to live. They got 10+ calls about the dad beating him. Bruises and they didn't take him. The mother calls from Southern Cal and says she's on her way, can they go pick up her son. She had gotten phone calls from people warning her he wasn't be treated well. They told her there was no evidence. By the time her and her mother got to town she was having to go to the hospital and look at her beaten son, who was there because he got the wrong letters wrong one too many times for his dad. He was 4. He didn't live long enough to see his mommy. The only reason he was with his dad was because a judge said he could have him for 3 months out of the year. His stepmother went to jail too, because while he was being chocked and slammed by his feet while the day slammed his head int othe wall, she just sat and watched.
They didn't save a baby girl who showed up on my husbands shift because every bone and major organ in her body was broken or ruptured. My husband made the papers on that one. It took 7 Sheriffs, security guards and doctors to pull him out of the cop car and off the dad. He did a year. He was released because he told them he was on drugs and didn't know what he was doing.
So much for just agreeing. sorry I was on a roll.
There are so many kids removed from families by agencies that for years have been corrupt. Search the web. Fifty years and they haven't gotten any better. They take the wrong ones and leave the ones who need help. Sometimes the wrong ones and even the ones that should be in the system disappear or are really abused or killed. People think those are few and far between, but they aren't. It happens all the time and when someone rushes to a phone because someone else isn't as perfect a parent as them, the kids pay for it.
We fostered for Denver Social Services for 10 years. I believe DW said we had around 67 kids come through our home. There were a couple out of those that didn't really need to be removed. Minor drug issues. Not dealing or heavy drugs. Just something like pulled over with a little and the kids were put in protective custody. Parents weren't DUI or anything. Kids were placed with us till the parents were investigated and the kids were given back. Traumatic for the kids for sure. The parents do get to visit them and if the parents actually love the kids it is very hard on them too. Fortunately it's a rare occurrence. 98% of the time they are saving the kids.
I can't tell you how many times kids were given up by their parents because drugs and alcohol were a higher priority or they beat their kids. We had a 2 year old that had been kept in her mothers closet for most of her life strapped in a car seat while the mother went to work. Her back was curved and the hair was worn off of her scalp in back. Her grandmother took custody after a couple months after background investigations were complete. We inquired about her a year later when we had the same case worker for a different child. The child was back in foster care for neglect again.
Child services is a very important part of child protection. Many people think of their children as property and that they can treat them however they like. Unfortunately on the very rare occasion that a foster family abuses a child in their care it makes bigger headlines than the father that swings his 12 month old baby around and slams him into the wall a few times because he wouldn't stop crying. Yet, social services is the first place the city cuts when the budget gets tight. Then everyone wants to know why the case workers can't handle shuffling 100 cases a month because half the staff has been cut and the other half is given unpaid time off 6 or 7 times a year. Naturally they work anyway because they can't afford to stay home. They actually care about the kids entrusted to them.
When you foster kids it gives you a real look at how some people treat kids. Physical neglect is usually associated with poverty and drugs. Physical abuse knows no social barriers.
Did anyone see the episode of CSI where this couple had a baby that died of some very rare disease. They had another baby that they thought for some reason had the same disease. The first baby died a horrible death. So the parents gave the new baby an overdose of benadryl and left him in a hot car in Vegas to save it the torment of dying from this disease. Then of course they found out the baby didn't actually have the disease. That was a really hard episode to watch.
All too true, Dunkopf..
