Seeking help for children who are emotionally abused and neglected, mentally challenged and out of control often leads to a dead end.
When a young girl is constantly exposed to parents fighting and drinking, and seeing the physical abuse that occurs, how do they cope? Who do they turn to for advice and the attention that is lacking in their lives?
One particular child I'm quite familiar with is living in the midst of just such a situation. She and her brother had to take care of themselves since they were toddlers. Nobody dressed them each day; they found their own clothes and put them on. Nobody fed them at meal time; they helped themselves to dry cereal out of the box, cookies, ice cream and anything else they found that didn't need preparation. They were not left alone to do these things. Their mom was there. Sleeping. Usually recovering from a hang-over, she would sleep all day to sober up because she worked nights. The children were left to fend for themselves most of the day.
The dad worked long hours at his day job. Life at home was in such turmoil that he took on a second job just so he wouldn't have to come home and face the problems. Life continued on with the mom drinking herself into a stupor, and the dad working as much as possible in order to escape responsibility.
As the years pass, the girl learns to play on the sympathies of her dad. He will give her just about anything to keep her happy and out of his hair. She has not been taught to share in household chores. She is allowed to go anywhere she wants, whenever she wants. She misses school so often that she constantly fails, but is promoted anyway. She has become a problem in school as well as at home. And finally, she is brought to the attention of social services and they provide a mentor for her.
By the age of 15 she is a cutter. She is involved with drugs. She is having sex with several boys. She has been in mental health facilities numerous times. Each time she is released after three or four days. Her parents, although no longer together attend counseling sessions at these facilities and gloss over the facts. They admit she is difficult, but they hide most of the facts and the problems continue to worsen. She has attempted suicide three times. She recently became pregnant and miscarried. She is presently in a facility and is due to be released after only five days.
When she returns home, she is going to have to attend a daycare facility to ensure that she has some schooling and some counseling. Of course, she will be back in the environment that allows her to have "friends" stay overnight in her room. She is allowed to miss school because nobody wants to upset her. She has been in the habit of leaving the house around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and be gone until it is too late to go to school. And, none of this is ever reported.
There is little chance of her following the orders of the facility which have been set up in order for her to go home. The dad has a live-in girlfriend who is actually the housekeeper, baby sitter with fringe benefits. The kids don't like her, and she barely tolerates them. Her stand is she didn't raise them, they are not her kids, and she is not responsible for them. They are rude, abusive and have no manners. She steadfastly refuses to transport them anywhere, including to school. She is constantly told by the dad to just ignore the kids. He fails to realize that his daughter is on a mission to get rid of the girlfriend.
With the history the daughter has, the thought of "getting rid of the girlfriend" takes on a scary connotation. She has been diagnosed as bi-polar, and is not only a threat to herself but to others. And yet, this 15 year old child is going to be allowed to go back home to the same environment that resulted in the problems she now has.
It has been strongly suggested by family members that the dad take this matter to court and have the daughter declared incompetent, or at least an incorrigible. He should turn custody over to the court and have them place her somewhere that will ultimately address her problems and be a safe environment where she will learn and thrive. Long term medication would probably be of benefit to controlling her highs and lows, but the medications she has had are never refilled when they run out. Therefore, she is sometimes medicated, often not. And again, nobody seems to care.
Her dad resists taking these drastic steps on her behalf because he sees her as his little girl and cannot do that to her. The fact that she has no compunction about cussing him, tearing up his house, disrupting all family activities and regularly attempting suicide seems not to matter to him.
To add to this merry-go-round, the dad has had two previous marriages, each of which resulted in divorce and one child each, both sons. He did not participate in raising either of these two boys. The dad was a high school dropout at age 16 in order to work and care for his first wife and son. He never pursued further education as he was much too busy working to survive. Thus, his lack of education lead to jobs that demanded long hours just to gain enough money to survive. Work became his goal in life, and his family(s) took a back seat and were left to fend for themselves with very little guidance.
The reality of this story is it will feed on itself and perpetrate a future generation of yet another dysfunctional family. The extremely poor example of family life will continue because of a lack of education. Failure to teach responsibility, failure to instill self-esteem, failure to learn parenting skills all contribute to this broken family and the tragic circumstance of this girl's life. Where are the resources that we all think of as the authority that will step in and take your kids away if you abuse them? For this is clearly a case of abuse. Perhaps not physical abuse, but none the less, neglect and ignorance is abuse of this child.
