sxycherrypie said:
The child doesn't need to be raised with someone constantly hovering over the mothers shoulders. After the mother gets help and she doesn't improve iam sure there is a good mother out there that will take this child in.I thought the dad said on Dr phil that he came up with the hot sauce idea and that he filmed it all.
My mother was a Juvenal probation officer for 38 years. For the last 10 or 12 years of that time she was in charge of both foster care and group home placement for our county. Most of the kids on her caseload were 12-15 years old, but there were some as young as 8 or 9.
I remember after dinner one night, when I was about 12 years old, a conversation my mother had with my father. What I remember most vividly was the distress my mother seemed to be in as she explained the circumstances of an eight year old boy she was going to have to place. The child's mother was psychotic in spells, and had more bad days than good. A condition today, that would probably be diagnosed as bipolar disorder. The child had been running away and in and out of the Juvenal hall since he was six.
My mother had been assigned to his case and had been working with the mother and courts for over a year I think. One of the abusive acts the mother was pron to, was beating the boy with a section of hot wheels track. The final straw that had forced my mother to recommend placement in a foster home was the boy's mother burning him in numerous places with a lite cigarette.
What I remember most of all about that night was how bewildered I was at my mothers apparent misgivings about having this child put in a foster home. She explained that placement in foster care or a group home was always the last thing one should do. If a relative or anyone who already had a relationship with the child could be found that would take custody it was not so bad. But it was her belief that the trauma of removing a child of that age was often as bad or worse than the abuse they suffered at home.
That in its self sounds crazy, but you have to think about the bond that exist between mother and child, even an abusive mother. It is easy as a grown adult to understand how much better off the kid would be, in even the often sub standard care, of a foster parent. But the emotional maturity of a young child is much different than the understanding of an adult.
The point I am trying to make, is that the situations depicted on the Dr. Phill show and others like it are very simplified. Although 100% true stories, they are scripted to fit in an hour or a half hour long T.V. show, and to emotionally pull at our heart strings.
Any one not feeling sympathy, and compassion for a child in a situation such as this, would be as crazy as the mother. But things are often much more complicated than what can be put in the space of one Dr. Phill show. And If there is some hope that the mother can be fixed, or some other family member can step in, it is most surely better than removing the child from his home.
Also being sure there is a good mother out there that will take in a kid in this instances, I think might be overly hopeful.
nurture and propagate kindness and expose and refuse to tolerate that which is not kind.
sirwanksabit.
