Treat your children well

I don’t mean to be a hardass about this.

Wait a minute, yes I do. I do despite the fact then sentiments I will express will fly in the face of whatever libertarian impulses I might hold. Impulses that suggest that the state should fuck off out of interfering in people’s life as much as it does.

But, I have to say this.

I think the state should seize all children living in drug-addicted or alcoholic homes in which no attempt at rehab has been undertaken.

This isn’t a new thought for me, but it is one that came back the other day when I learned that a client had lost custody of her daughter to the child’s father.

Now, Mom is a very pretty and stylish woman in her early 30s. She is bright and very articulate and looks like a model – which she has been at times. She has a little girl, and mother and daughter are thoroughly devoted to each other.

Sounds OK, no?

Except for one thing. Mom is a crackhead and has been for many years and, as is the case with drug use, her centre is beginning to fly apart. More recently the child’s father had applied for custody of the kid, citing what he regarded as an unsafe home environment.

In that, he would be right. In the home would come dope dealers. To call dope-dealers unsavoury sorts would be to state the case mildly. Yet the child lives in that home. How Mom gets the money to pay for her substance, I don’t really want to ask. Yet, the daughter lives in that house. Mom, sometimes out of it (probably oftimes out of it, since drug users are ‘always’ liars) doesn’t get out of the sack on time to get child to school. School complains. Yet the child continued to live in that house.

Until Dad and the courts intervened. They found that Mom had not been vigilant in working on herself in terms of keeping counselling appointments and she, like Amy Winehouse, categorically refused to go to rehab. Client actually didn’t even bother to get a lawyer, believing (for some remarkably idiotic reason) the court would find in her favor.

It didn’t.

I’m glad it didn’t. Maybe this will be the two-by-four to the head she needs. Maybe this will knock her out of denial. Or maybe it won’t.

I do feel bad for her because I like her. But I am also happy for the kid, because she will be away from the insanity that drug addiction invariably brings about.

So I say, if a home is a threatening situation for a child, then the child should be removed until parents can get a grip on their personal demons and take charge of their lives. Until they can take charge of their own lives, they have lost the right to be in charge of the lives of vulnerable youngsters.

In this I don’t just include drug houses, but also alcoholic houses. I grew up with an alcoholic parent. Mom was a subtle lush and never beat us or was overtly cruel. But, the inner cruelty stemmed from emotional neglect and loss of trust by children.

That causes mucho damage. My brother and I have worked diligently throughout the years, and not always successfully, to surmount the damage done. We’ve both made it, but it took a lot of work and also took a toll not only on us, but on those we loved. Bro and I have five marriages between us, and there are only two of us. It shouldn't have been like this. The third brother never has picked himself up from the emotional morass and has remained a highly dysfunctional human being throughout his life.

When I was a boy we used to drive past an orphanage on the way to my grandfather’s house. I would see the children at play on the grounds of the orphanage. They looked like they were having fun. I kind of envied them, in truth.

That kind of gives you an idea of what I mean. Children in addicted homes are cheated, and ultimately society pays the cost of that.

OK, next blog will be light-hearted, I promise.