We must act to protect kids
We have a dilemma so dire and daunting that its very weight collapses hopes for solutions. So we shuffle paper, rearrange leadership, tweak the process and pray the problem won’t persist.
In the back of our mind, we know it isn’t enough. We know this, because we have avoided the dark heart of the problem. It makes us uncomfortable; it says things about us that we’d rather not hear. Then a tragedy strikes that is so shocking that it snaps us out of our numbing denial. Or should.
Two babies died of starvation recently in their Kent, Wash., home. When police arrived, they found their 2-year-old brother foraging for food. They also found 307 empty beer cans strewn about the apartment and the mother passed out on the couch. Once again, it was a case where children were kept with a parent despite multiple reports of abuse or neglect.
Washington state investigated nearly 40,000 complaints of child abuse in 2003, but many more children are being terrorized in their own homes every day. The weapons are physical and mental, and the wounds aren’t always fatal. But their enemies are so close we feel we can’t stop them. Instead, we wait for an overt tragedy, and then cast an angry glare at the government agents to whom we’ve outsourced the problem.
We could do more. We could spend more. But first we have to get past the uncomfortable hurdle of intruding into other people’s lives. We don’t hesitate to intervene when a stranger is exiting a neighbor’s window with a TV. But if we hear little voices crying out, we turn up our own TVs.
We Americans are proudly independent, but that can make us poor protectors of the dependent people among us. Washington state lawmakers have erected one of the highest thresholds in the nation for removing children from their homes.
The state’s Department of Social and Health Services can do a better job, and its new leader seems willing to institute serious reforms. But as long as society’s default position is keeping children close to their enemies, the dark heart of the problem will keep beating.
When the state Legislature convenes in January, one of its first tasks should be to challenge the notion that children in questionable circumstances are better off with their parents. Society needs to support that effort by changing its attitudes about intervention.
It won’t be easy. Many parents’ first instinct when challenged from outside is to say, “It’s none of your business.” Parents and governmental authorities need to get to a point where they say “thanks” to those with the courage and compassion to act — even if the intervention is a false alarm.
We can’t save children without getting between them and their enemies.