People who fuck up their kids.

The BBQ Pit
1

One of my son’s friends has had a really fucked up life at the ripe, old age of 11.

When the kid was 5, his parents got a divorce because the mother would no longer tolerate the father’s drug addiction. The mother got custody of the kid and he lived a happy, peaceful life for about a year. Then his mother was killed in a car accident.

By that time, his father had kicked the drugs, so he got custody of the boy and they moved somewhere else. About a year later they moved back to town. His father had remarried and bought a trailer in, what is well known as a really crappy neighborhood.

My son and this boy became good friends again and the little boy wanted to join in my son’s youth group. His father OK’d it, as long as I agreed to give the boy a ride to and from every week, because his father works a lot.

The first time the father had to go, to fill out the paperwork and permission slips. This guy couldn’t remember what year his son was born or his own phone number. It reached a point where I helped him with the paperwork. The father thanked me for driving his son every week and told me that although his wife is a SAHM she can not drive him because she has to take care of her daughter. Her daughter is a married, twenty six year old woman.

Four weeks have gone by, the boy loves being a part of this group, he takes a lot of pride in it. He’s worked hard to memorize the things he’s supposed to learn and to march correctly.

His parents never come to see what he’s doing and I’ve only seen them yell at him for doing things that you’d expect little boys to do. What I mean by that is, he gets yelled at for asking to come and play at our house or if my son can play at his. His step-mother flat out told me that since he is not her child, she doesn’t see any reason that she should be bothered with him.

This morning, I called to to relay the message that our meeting was cancelled this week, but we would be meeting next week. His mother told me that she was thinking of pulling him out of the group. I asked why ? She said that she was tired of the boy’s demands on her. Like what ? It seems that this morning really pissed her off becase the boy asked her if she had washed his uniform, she told him no and he asked her to wash it today so he could have a clean uniform for his meeting.

I feel really sorry for this boy. His father doesn’t seem to care if his wife isn’t nice to the little boy. All he says is “She’s raising him, I’ve gotta work.”

This week, both this boy and my son got in trouble at school for talking during an assembly. Yes, they weren’t supposed to, but it’s not a major problem. They both had to write essays about following rules and they did. But the other kid’s parents did nothing but bitch at me about how awful the boy is. He’s a loser, a troublemaker, he’s stupid and he’s going to wind up in jail if he keeps this up.

I wish I could do something to help this boy.

2

That sucks. I don’t know your situation but it would be great if you could offer to raise the kid. The parents sound enough like lowlifes to agree.

3

Just by being friends with this boy you’re having a positive impact on his life. You’re letting him know, by the example you set, that his family’s way of doing things isn’t the only one. By taking the time to care about him you’re showing him that he is worthy of regard. Hopefully your relationship with him will continue. Good job to you.

4

My wife believes people should have a license to breed, I tend to agree. We understand that enforced reversible sterilization is not something that would fly in America, but I sometimes have trouble understanding why it would be unethical.

Sure, there’s a gray area where people may or may not make competent parents, but it would certainly help to prevent the real dickheads from making someone they can fuck up. I hope this kid’s mental constitution is strong enough that he can recognize his guardians are idiots *before *they make him into piece of trash.

5

I don’t know if a call to CPS is in order, might even make things worse. Thats a bad situation to be in though. I can’t imagine how grown adults can rationalize treating a kid that way…don’t they know how this will affect him as he becomes an adult? Or maybe they just don’t care.

6

Did the dead mother have any siblings who might be willing to take him in?

7

WTF? You’re kidding, of course, right?

And as for the advice to think about calling CPS, don’t. There’s nothing to report. Most CPS offices investigate abuse, not lazy, fucked up parents. There’s no law that says you have to be a good parent.

If he shows up at school with bruises or talks of sexual abuse, or that his step mom is driving drunk with him in the car-that’s when you call CPS. Otherwise it’s just crying wolf and the one time there actually IS proof of abuse, they won’t take it terribly seriously due to previously unfounded reports.

Just my experience…take it FWIW.

Sam

8

No, it would not work. If it did, then in places where they screen foster parents, the foster parents would not abuse the children in their care. As we see all too often on the news, foster parents do abuse and even kill the children in their care. In some cases, award winning foster parents. We don’t know how to screen for good parenting skills, we don’t know who is going to make a good parent, we don’t even seem to be able to train people to be good parents, and we can’t even reliably tell who is currently being a good parent.

Licensing parents would prevent some people from becoming bad parents, but it would also prevent some others from becoming good parents. It may also create a new second class of citizens who are unauthorized parents, people who may be afraid to avail themselves of public services for fear of losing their children.
dragongirl the best you can to is encourage this boy, encourage your son in his friendship, and do your best to be a solid adult in his life.

9

Nanotechnology is coming, and I hope it’s put to good use.

10

I ran into a similar situation a few years ago.

One of my neighbours was an extremely creepy Australian guy who had a string of “instant” Asian wives. His current wife came with kids intact but had no time for his son from a previous marriage and used to treat him really badly. He took to running away from home and sleeping rough in the bush. Luckily, I caught him breaking into our home one day (just looking for shelter) and found out what was going on.

We told his parents that whenever he couldn’t handle things at home he could stay with us which he did fairly often. So even though his step-mother knew that we knew how he was being treated, she never let up.

Eventually we tracked down his real mother and he moved in with her and her new husband. It was very gratifying to see how he looked 6 months later.

If we hadn’t found his mother I’m sure he would have ended up living with us, 2 doors from home…and I would have been perfectly happy with that, no one deserves the crap he was putting up with.

11

I had a piano student of mine who always came in early, and would hang around after his lesson. Since I had students before and after him, I couldn’t really ‘stretch out’ the 30 minutes/week I spent with him, but one day we were making small talk while I was waiting for the student before him to show up, and I learned that the kid (9 years old) was in the middle of a really nasty divorce, didn’t have any friends, had the classic Evil Stepparents, etc. :frowning:

This really yanked on my heartstrings, my parents were divorced, albeit when I was older than this child, but just the same I could totally relate to how desperate he was to have some means of escaping that family hell. I really wish I could have done more for him (parents flaked out on tuition, and I had to cancel his lessons. I felt bad about it. :frowning: )

12

Great…now I have a vision of a microscopic robot goon squad patrolling my testes and beating up sperm. :eek:

13

Just make sure he knows that you’re there for him. I had a similiar situation with my best friend in high school-her parents drank, stayed out all hours at the local bars, and my friend pretty much had to fend for herself. My mother ALWAYS made sure that my friend knew if she needed something, she could come to our place.

Sometimes, that’s all you can do.

14

No shit.

My family and I are very upset about a similiar issue, only the child in question is older. My niece is 17 years old, soon to be 18. Her mother (who I’ll call J) and my brother were divorced when niece was about 2, primarily because J is a crazy good for nothing drug addict and alcoholic. Over the years she’s supposedly cleaned up, only to relapse over and over again. My brother, L, has consistently been the one who does the hard work parenting. He pays the bills, takes his daughter on trips, makes sure she has a good home, etc. Hell, the guy didn’t even have a girlfriend for 15 years because he put his daughter first.

Meanwhile, J shows up in my niece’s life whenever she wants, promises my niece things, then doesn’t come through. When niece was in elementary school and middle school, it was pretty common for J to “forget” to pick her up when she was supposed to, and niece learned early on to call other relatives to get her. J has been caught, over and over, lying to my niece, BY my niece. Still, the girl is young, and she desperately wants her mother to be someone she can look up to, someone she can trust.

Fast forward to now. We all thought J was out of the picture this summer when she took a job as a school counselor ( :rolleyes: ) in a small Native American village in the middle of nowhere, very very far away from where we live. Finally, we all thought, niece would be out of her mother’s influence and she could settle down for her final year of high school. But no, that is not to be. J has convinced my niece to move to the small town where she now lives, and graduate from that school. This is an incredibly depressed town, no paved streets, and almost all Native Americans (she’ll be the only non-NA in the school). She’ll be leaving halfway through her senior year of high school, to live with her drug addicted alcoholic mother, thousands of miles away from her father, her grandparents, and several sets of aunts and uncles. Even J’s own brother strongly feels that J is not anywhere near qualified to take care of her own daughter. But nevertheless, niece is old enough that she can legally make her own decisions, and J has filled her with stories about how she’ll be the most popular girl in the school, validictorian of her class, and everything is going to be just perfect.

The rest of us are sick. I’m incredible pissed at J for manipulating her daughter into doing this. I myself question whether she’ll graduate from high school - high schools have different requirements much like colleges, I can’t see how all her classes will transfer without problems.

Note that I mention Native Americans not as a slur or because I feel that it’s somehow a horrible place, it’s more that I don’t think that my niece is at all prepared about the realities of living with a group of people of a different culture and race. Even worse, from talking to her it’s apparant that she thinks that because she’s blond and white they’ll be falling over themselves to be her best friend. More crap her mother put into her head, I’m sure.

15

If you really want to help this boy, there are plenty of ways to do it. Start by having him at your house as much as possible. Call his mom and do the asking yourself, if he gets in trouble for doing it. Let her know that since you have to wash your son’s uniform anyway, it’s no trouble to wash her son’s, and since you drive him to the group anyway, it only makes sense to have him come to your house after school that day, and for him to keep his uniform at your house.

Let the boy know that, in effect, your house is his house and he can come there anytime he likes. Make sure you answer any parent inquiries with very breezy “Oh, it’s no problem for him to be here, we don’t mind” etc. The odds are these parents will be quite happy to just hand over default parenting to you.

Now, of course, that means, in effect, taking on another child, and one that may have some problems to boot. But you can help him if you wish.