Wow. I don't know whether to be super angry or just really really sad. We had a situation over here tonight with "the neighbor kid who never goes home", who I have mentioned on here a few times. I will just call him Kid because I don't want to say his name.
Well I had to drag all the kids out in the snowstorm because Holly had a girlscout Easter party and as much as I tried to convince her it was "probably" cancelled, she looked so dissapointed, that I finally gave in and said we would go see if it was still on, so we were gone for about an hour, and as we were leaving, I though I saw the kid coming down the sidewalk on his bike, but we were driving away. Okay, so maybe he'll go back home, right?
When we got back home, apparently the kid, who is 10, was locked out of his house, so he went over to OUR neighbor's house and stayed there. Locked out of his house. In a snowstorm. No coat on, forget hat and mittens. No socks on. riding his bike in a blizzard. giant holes in his pants. My SIL who lives next door to the kid and his mom called her at work and said "he's locked out, you need to come home". Well apparently the woman didn't give a crap because she said "oh he'll just hang around somewhere til I get back". So I took it upon myself to call the cops.
They send this doofus cop over who really apparently does not give a crap either, takes the kids "story", doesn't care what I have to say, and tells me to keep the kid there til his mom comes and get him. (this is not MY kid! I am not technically babysitting him!) Sooooo SIL who lives next door calls and tells me the mom got home at 5:15, why is it 7 o clock and she hasn't come over to talk to me like the good officer said she would? More phone calls proceed, in which I GET YELLED AT for sending the kid home, and the lovely cop tells me "that I'm not any better than his mother" for sending him home in a blizzard. At least I gave him a coat before I sent him back to where his mother was sitting on her ass on the couch.
I am so appalled. This is the second time actually in my life that I have reported child abuse against someone (we won't get too far into the first time, but what do you do when you are 16 yrs old and the kid you babysit for, shows her the closet where her dad locks her in when she's naughty and the belt hanging on the key rack?) And this is the second time that NO ONE HAS DONE ANYTHING!? This is more than a kid out in a snowstorm without a coat. This is a kid running around the neighborhood in the dark at 8 pm at night when he should be home eating supper, doing homework, and showering. this is a kid showing up on the doorstep at 6:45 am to see if Eric is up set, riding his bike to school when it is below zero out, eating 4-5 tacos at our house because no one ever makes him supper, showing up last sunday when it's thundering and lightning out 20 minutes before the tornado sirens go off. I don't know his mother's name, I dont even have her phone number. If something happened to him when he was at my house, hell I don't even know exactly which apartment is theirs. He will come over on a saturday and be at our house from 8 am until 9pm if you let him and NOT ONCE will she come to check on him. You can bet your ass if my kid was gone for 13 hours I would have the freaking cops combing the neighborhood looking for him. You can bet your ass if there's snow on the ground, my kid isn't even getting out of the garage without a coat on. And now I feel terrible because I can't let him come over anymore because he's not MY kid and he's not MY responsibility, and Im not going to let some stupid metro cop make me feel like he "should" be. I mean really, I have enough to worry about keeping track of my own three kids, nevertheless the gigantically preggo factor.
You try to do the right thing, and you wonder if you shouldve just stayed out of it.....
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