Another irresponsible parent/kids gone wild thread....

[AK-Cathy]

Well folks, I was planning one or two more days of watching (and documenting with photos) to make a case to CPS (our system is severely overloaded and often children don't get removed unless the problem is severe) and on an early errand we saw two police units in the parking lot at ten-ish yesterday morning. Then yesterday afternoon we saw the parents shuffling down the street with no kids. That baby girl couldn't have been left alone (well okay, those parents could have) but we haven't seen the boys since. I guess one of the other neighbors called first. Maybe even someone in that building. The tenant that let me in was glad that I was going to the parents with those boys because he said that they have been "trouble".

Back in the days before good birth control and other "measures" people were kind of stuck if they had kids and didn't want to be parents. The normal solution was to send them out early and bar entry on nice days if disinclined or overwhelmed.

I have a normalcy bias for this because essentially that was how I was raised or raised myself and more than occasionally, my younger siblings. I recognize a lot of what went on when I was a kid with these two urchins but fortunately we lived on a dead end suburban street with places to play relatively safely, a lot of other kids and motherly type women so there were surrogates for us. Still we were lucky that nothing bad happened to us left out on our own with our childish judgment to lead the way. It is a matter of degree however. At least our home wasn't filthy, we had sit down meals, nor were there substance abuse issues that I was aware of. My mother simply had too many kids, too close together and was overwhelmed more often than not and sent us outdoors and kept us there for most of the daylight hours. Keeping "tab" meant that you have that brand of diet soda in the fridge.

There is no excuse in this day and age for this type of thing however. I feel empathy for the children's plight but also understand the "mean" neighbors that had little tolerance for our destructive incursions into their yards. They should have read my parents the riot act, but like today, they probably wanted to keep the peace. I understood the situation as neglect but not outright abuse until all of you said the same thing.

I will keep you posted.

[germaine2626]

Thanks for the update.

I'm glad those little kids are in a safer situation.

[AK-Cathy]

Those kids are definitely gone. Very sad for them. Hopefully they land together in a decent foster home.

[Natsku]

Hope they end up in a good home. Sad but better than them staying there.

[AK-Cathy]

Well I take that back At least one of them was here this afternoon. I'll keep my eyes open.

[Natsku]

Maybe the parents are getting some help to keep their children then. Just keep your eye out and report if there are signs of neglect again but hopefully the parents got scared into sorting themselves out.