4yr old drunk'n theif

[Anaeran]

For someone who wants to experience jail so bad, the kid is certainly on the right track in wearing that dress.

I gotta admit, I really agree w/Tom in this case. It isn't even hard to have alcohol in the house out of reach of small children. I'm pretty liberal on most issues but it's tough to stay liberal when a child's safety/future is at stake. This kid is drinking beers, stealing and wearing dresses at age 4...imagine where he'll be in 10 years when puberty kicks in and his hormones are all fucked up and he has no father figure in the picture. Yikes.

edit: I don't think the kid should be taken away, but the mother is definitely at fault here and needs some sort of assistance plan.

This article could be used in support of teaching sex education in high school.

 

[Firestreak]

If anything, this mother was more vigilant than my parents are. When I grew up there was beer in the fridge, as well as those box of wines things which I used to help myself to every once in a while(not too much I was not a big fan of red wine). The door was never locked, let alone having some sort of child safety lock on it.

The difference is I didn't run around drunk or stealing. Being overprotective is not going to produce a very independent person. You could get a sweet sheltered kid who still acts like a child in college, or a total rebel who doesn't give a damn what authority thinks. Most kids I knew, including me and my sister, grew up by what some of you here call "negligent parenting."

That kid might need an alcohol free, locked house, because he's got his mind set on getting in trouble. Most kids on the other hand do not. Saying the mother should have predicted her 4-year-old wanting to break out in the middle of the night, drunk, and run around stealing is not realistic. Now that he's done it, it's time to be over protective.

 

[JP]

Saying the mother should have predicted her 4-year-old wanting to break out in the middle of the night, drunk, and run around stealing is not realistic. Now that he's done it, it's time to be over protective.

Thank you.

 

[Thelona]

Noone here is saying she should have predicted what happened, and i'm not saying she should have her kid taken away. but i still say there was negligence here, I don't believe for a second that this kid would have even had the idea to get and drink a beer if one or both his parents weren't complete alcoholics. and i know it never said it wasn't his first beer, but i said seeing as he didn't spit it out and throw it away at the first taste makes me suspect its not.


my things isn't that the mom allowed him to do this, of course she can't watch him 24/7, noone here is suggesting that. its more that, the very environment hes grown up in is obviously not a healthy environment if he knows how to do things like this already.

Maybe i was a sheltered kid, but i sure wouldn't have gotten the slightest idea of drinking a beer at four years old, my parents didn't refrain from drinking in front of me, but they CERTAINLY didn't get drunk infront of me, and they never drank on a daily basis.

I have a 4 year old nephew who's parents drink, but agian they never get DRUNK infront of him and certainly don't drink all the time, and as much as bb thinks kids are some unpredictable timebomb, i can GUARANTEE you hes not gonna grab a beer from the fridge and start drinking it, hes more worried about his lightning mcqueen jammys


this is like finding your kid torturing cats and believing that its no warning sign whatsoever, a normal kid doesn't torture animals, and a normal kid doesn't get drunk and do a B&E at the age of 4, hell I was 16 before my first B&E.

 

[Tomasello]

 

[bigbroon]

I feel sorry for you if you think this was not preventable. I can be 100% certain my kid will not be drunk off his ass outside at 1:45am wearing a dress because a) I don't keep any alcohol in my house, b) I actually lock my doors and have an alarm system that will go off if he goes downstairs to leave and c) I don't have any dresses in the house he would fit into to.

She is a HORRIBLE PARENT. She was NEGLIGENT beyond believe. If you think this is some case of, "boys, will be boys" then clearly your the one that doesn't know shit about children. Maybe we should be asking ourselves how horrible this mother is if he's this desperate to be with his jail bird loser father.

You asked how much worse off this kid would be with out this piece of shit mother raising him? He wouldn't be. ANYTHING, including a foster home, would be better than this type of negligent supervision. When are the bleeding heart liberals on this board going to stop defending the scum bag in every thread that gets posted?



Saying this woman did everything in her power to protect this child and that this is somehow some unpreventable act of god is the single most ridiculous thing I've read on QCDN in the entire time I've been on these forums.

You can feel sorry for me all you want, but I pity your child(ren). As far as I can tell from your posts, you've been a father for 3 years, unless you have other children you haven't mentioned. I have 4 children, the youngest being autistic. She has no idea what is dangerous and what is not. She is extremely intelligent, but has no sense of environmental dangers; if she sees stairs, she'll find the quickest way down them - falling. She's 8 now, but I've had to deal with this for a while. I can put locks. I can put up barriers, but at some point or another, she has to go down or up stairs on her own. She has had her accidents, and there was nothing I could have done about it. I know this, and saying anything happening to their kids is negligence is just stupid. You need to wake up and understand that parenting isn't the bed of roses you think it is. Accidents will ALWAYS happen, and it's not always the parent's fault.

I agree with JP (wtf), DW (WTF), stuff that Dowzer has said, and Hexx. All I see from you is hate-filled spew from god-knows where. Your prime interest obviously ISN'T the wellbeing of this child if you think taking him off his Mother is the best way to help him.

You should stop and think, especially at Christmas time, "There but for the grace of God go I." You should be grateful that you have a child(ren) that are healthy, happy, and have a stable family life. The sad fact of the matter, in this day and age, is that families like ours are becoming the exception to the rule, and families like this woman's are becoming the norm. It's easy to add up everything that went wrong here and tar the Mother as unfit, but it's just not the case.

 

[JP]

Noone here is saying she should have predicted what happened, and i'm not saying she should have her kid taken away. but i still say there was negligence here, I don't believe for a second that this kid would have even had the idea to get and drink a beer if one or both his parents weren't complete alcoholics.

More assumptions. Didn't say either of the parents were alcoholics and that he got the beer from the grandfather's cooler. Like I said, it could be the mother's fault some also but there's no obvious evidence that she was negligent or that either of the parents where alcoholics. From what we read, it looks like she took extra precautions for him but he had other bad influences on him that included his father figure.

I agree with JP (wtf), DW (WTF), stuff that Dowzer has said, and Hexx. All I see from you is hate-filled spew from god-knows where. Your prime interest obviously ISN'T the wellbeing of this child if you think taking him off his Mother is the best way to help him.

I think it's the Christmas spirit!

I've pretty much am not listening to Tomasello anymore because he's just spewing out shit. And of course he should not be taking away from his mother. He's already been stripped of his dad, his mother would be even worse.

 

[Tomasello]

All I see from you is hate-filled spew from god-knows where. Your prime interest obviously ISN'T the wellbeing of this child if you think taking him off his Mother is the best way to help him.

Before this gets personal, I'm going to walk away from this pissing match. There's no sense in continuing this discussing with you.

As far as I am concerned, a 4 year old who consumes enough alcohol to become intoxicated, who walks right out the front door in the middle of the night undetected, who breaks into the neighbors houses to steal and cross dress is no accident. It's negligent parenting.

Like I said to Hexx we have a difference of opinion. You have said nothing to convince me otherwise. The only person I have sympathy for is this child. The mother, as far as I'm concerned, should be arrested for child endangerment.

 

[Dancingweapon]

You're one of them people who has an opinion that cannot be changed right Tom?

 

[Littletoughguy]

Tom your a parent yourself...now think about it... would you sit there and watch your 4 year old child all night to make sure they don't break out...no you wouldn't. The childs mother did not neglect her own child.... How is it neglegance putting your child to bed and then going to bed yourslef?

 

[Raesvelg]

I long for the days when a kid managing to drink half a beer wasn't grounds to call the Poison Control hotline...

By the age of 4 I lived an entirely non-child-proofed home. With a stocked liquor cabinet. Oddly enough, I never got into the booze, nor went out wandering the streets at 1 AM. Mostly because I knew my parents would deliver a savage beating if I did either of those things, much less sneak into a neighbor's house and commit theft.

Still, not a clear case of neglect or negligence. The doors were supposedly locked, and while some folks frown upon kids having access to alcohol, I wasn't raised in a household that believed in coddling children by removing the possibility of misdeed, but rather a household that believed in letting children make choices and dealing with those choices when the time came. So long as the child is made aware that alcohol is potentially dangerous, it doesn't matter much to me whether it's where they can get at it or not.

So it's possible that this is an example of bad parenting, and it's also possible that this is simply an example of a child acting out in a fashion that he knows is wrong, but he's going through a very difficult period in his life and this, for whatever reason, is the method he has chosen to express his internal conflict.

 

[Giaganta]

I actually graduated with the mother of the child......embarrassing to say the least.

 

[bigbroon]

I long for the days when a kid managing to drink half a beer wasn't grounds to call the Poison Control hotline...

By the age of 4 I lived an entirely non-child-proofed home. With a stocked liquor cabinet. Oddly enough, I never got into the booze, nor went out wandering the streets at 1 AM. Mostly because I knew my parents would deliver a savage beating if I did either of those things, much less sneak into a neighbor's house and commit theft.

Still, not a clear case of neglect or negligence. The doors were supposedly locked, and while some folks frown upon kids having access to alcohol, I wasn't raised in a household that believed in coddling children by removing the possibility of misdeed, but rather a household that believed in letting children make choices and dealing with those choices when the time came. So long as the child is made aware that alcohol is potentially dangerous, it doesn't matter much to me whether it's where they can get at it or not.

So it's possible that this is an example of bad parenting, and it's also possible that this is simply an example of a child acting out in a fashion that he knows is wrong, but he's going through a very difficult period in his life and this, for whatever reason, is the method he has chosen to express his internal conflict.

This is so very true. We hear the cliche all the time, but parent's nowadays are wrapping their kids up in cotton wool, thinking the best way to protect children from dangers is to keep them under their watch as much as they can.

When I was a kid, during any period of vacation from school, myself and my two brothers would be outside from 30 minutes after we woke up, in for lunch (quickly), back out until dinner, scoff down our last meal then back out until 2 hours after it was dark. We would climb the trees in our garden, make dens amongst the bushes, go out on our bikes, play football (soccer), and the day was never long enough. If there was something remotely exciting or dangerous, you'd probably do it. A good example? Me and my brothers found this container with some stinking white liquid in it. Being kids, we wanted to know what it was. I poured it out, watching the viscous liquid smother the grass around us, not noticing that in the process I had covered myself and my brothers in the same stuff. We got home for dinner, and got our asses handed to us for ruining our clothes. Didn't do that again.

Children learn better from making their own mistakes, and this is the case all the way until adulthood, and beyond. If you just tell a kid not to do something because it's naughty, bad or dangerous, their obedience will be challenged by their curiosity. My parents told me what was right and wrong, what to do and what not to do, but they also told me that they couldn't always be watching me and that I'd have to learn for myself why they told me the things that they did. Sure enough, after a certain amount of lessons learned, I accepted the fact that my parents were infinitely full of wisdom you obtain from making your own mistakes and living in this world.

A 4 year-old drinking half a can of beer? If anything, he'll be put off the stuff, at worst, he'll like it. Kids in France are brought up drinking wine with their meals, and the effect of a little alcohol on children is massively over-stated. When I was young, my father (a doctor) used to let me have a sip of his beer from time to time, and my Grandfather would let me sip his wine at Christmas time. I hated both, and didn't try either again until I was about 16. Sheltering kids from dangers only increases their will to find out what it's all about - things that are forbidden are always more appealing to the young. This, of course, applies to certain things more than others. There are certain things that you can't learn from by making the mistake, as the mistake can have devastating effects (playing near railways, drugs(I'm not talking hash, I'm talking heroine, coke etc.)). None of these variables were present in this case; the child needs counseling and support, not to have his life further impacted by losing the one remaining biological parent he has left.

 

[Twinzero]

But if she went to the trouble to do this:

She says she put safety devices on all the doors so her kids couldn't get out, but Hayden was able to break the safety device off the doorknob and get outside.

Doesn't it stand to reason she would invest in a simple alarm system? If he opens the door, guess what would have happened... It would have gone off and she'd know something was up and that would constitute as watching him.

That's all I have to say, really.

 

[Raesvelg]

/shrug, as far as I'm concerned, the instant you cross over into things like alarm systems to let you know your FOUR YEAR OLD CHILDREN ARE SNEAKING OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, you've either crossed the road to full-blown paranoia, or you are grotesquely overprotective.

An alarm system to protect your home, sure. But not as a method of child monitoring, that's ridiculous.

 

[Chasym]

if someone says negligence in this case, they havent raised a kid or had much of a hand in raising one if they have one.
I know how this woman feels, because it happened to me two weeks ago.

My daughter and son took a nap, the moment they fell asleep i sat down on the couch to watch some tv, i had worked all night and hadnt had much sleep so without notice i dozed off for about an hour.
Next thing i wake up to is someone pounding on my door like they wanted to break in, i answer it and its my parents asking if i knew my 4 year old daughter snuck outside.
She apparently woke up, packed a diaper bag full of toys, and walked outside to go to my moms house about 6 houses away from me.
She stopped to talk to a neighbor when they asked what she was doing outside with no coat and no shoes in the cold. She told the neighbor she was going to her nana's house.

The Neighbor followed her to my moms to make sure she was okay and she was going somewhere that she knew someone and was safe at. She then said something to my brother about calling the cops for the incident.
My brother, being the hot head he is told her "Go ahead, its not my kid" and slammed the door in her face. So, she did.

I immediately got my coat and shoes on, had my other brother come down and watch my son who was still asleep and went to my moms.
My daughter was bawling her eyes out saying "i dont want daddy to go to jail, i just wanted to come see you nana"
Cops came and i went to talk to them, told them what happened and they said it was all fine and they just wanted to make sure she was okay.
But man, it really is some scary stuff when something like that happens. We have a chain lock high on the door just for that reason, and this was the one day i didnt chain it when her mom went to work, thats not gonna happen again.

 

[Tomasello]

if someone says negligence in this case, they havent raised a kid or had much of a hand in raising one if they have one.

No offence, I sure you're a "great" parent and all but you were negligent that day.

My daughter and son took a nap, the moment they fell asleep i sat down on the couch to watch some tv, i had worked all night and hadnt had much sleep so without notice i dozed off for about an hour.

This.

We have a chain lock high on the door just for that reason, and this was the one day i didnt chain it when her mom went to work.

And this.


If you hadn't fell asleep on your kids thereby leaving them unsupervised and left the door unlocked, they wouldn't of got out the house. You dropped the ball and your lucky nothing bad came of it. Being remorseful about it doesn't change the fact.

I'm sorry if all of you think I'm being too hard on this horrible parent who neglected her kids but you know what 99.99% of the time the kid could be ok like in chasym's case and it only takes 1 time for a parent's worst nightmare to be realized. Only 1 time. Acts of god will happen, no parent can change that but what happened to that awful mother was completely her fault and if you leave a kid with a parent like that who knows what will happen next time.

 

[bigbroon]

No offence, I sure you're a "great" parent and all but you were negligent that day.



This.



And this.


If you hadn't fell asleep on your kids thereby leaving them unsupervised and left the door unlocked, they wouldn't of got out the house. You dropped the ball and your lucky nothing bad came of it. Being remorseful about it doesn't change the fact.

I'm sorry if all of you think I'm being too hard on this horrible parent who neglected her kids but you know what 99.99% of the time the kid could be ok like in chasym's case and it only takes 1 time for a parent's worst nightmare to be realized. Only 1 time. Acts of god will happen, no parent can change that but what happened to that awful mother was completely her fault and if you leave a kid with a parent like that who knows what will happen next time.

I am extremely worried for you child. How can you say Chasym was negligent for going to sleep on his kids? You go to sleep on your kids EVERY NIGHT. The door unlocked? Kids can unlock doors, open windows, unless they're physically disabled or mentally retarded. If the lock is too high, they can move chairs. You CANNOT stop your child 100% from getting out of a house without endagering their lives.

I think you've read too many horror stories about kids being abducted, and this is coming from a parent. Your whole "it only takes 1 time" nugget is a meaningless statement. It only takes 1 drunk driver to plow into the side of your house and your kid is dead. I suppose, by your logic, it's negligence because you don't have reinforced walls to prevent such an atrocity from happening, and you didn't have steel barriers to stop any high-speed vehicle in it's tracks should it approach your garden. The majority of the time, the "1 out of 1000" tragedies are unavoidable; this woman could have done more, but she's not negligent.

Parenting is a learning experience, and I firmly believe she'll learn from this experience. If we took kids off parents for every mistake they made, we'd have to build more orphanages; a lot more orphanages. You need to start living in the real world to realise that nobody is perfect, and mistakes will happen. If my 9-year old autistic daughter (who could escape my house no matter the precautions I took) got out and got run over (heaven forbid), it would not be my fault. It would be tragic, but I would not expect to lose my other 3 kids over "negligence".

The woman will probably rid her house of all alcohol and replace the locks that are so easily broken, but it doesn't guarantee that nothing like this will ever happen again. I accept that your opinion is yours, and there's nothing I can say to change it, but it doesn't stop me (and others) from thinking that your point of view is fatally flawed and not consistent with real-world morals and implications. If you start taking kids off their parents for things like this, you create FAR more problems (for the kids if nothing else) than you solve.

 

[Tomasello]

First of all people need to stop worrying about my kids. If anything, I'm worried about all your kids because quite frankly you all seem to be very lax in your parenting.

Secondly, I'm not implying he's a bad person or parent. All I'm saying is if he didn't do those things his kid would not have left the house. It was PREVENTABLE.

Let's explore this further. Let say the situtation he described was EXACTLY the same except he came home had twelve beers. Would he be a negligent parent then? What's the difference? Everything unfolded exactly the same way except now all of you would be demonizing him.

Apparently I'm the only person here who worries about the kids all the time. Who makes sure the doors are locked every night, who doesn't keep alcohol or any other dangerous substance of that matter with in there reach, who has an alarm system not just to track them but also is an intruder decides to break in and harm them. Yes I'm a vigilent parent because you can do a millions things right but you only have to fuck up once.
THERE ARE NO SECOND CHANCES if god forbid something bad happens.

 

[Morwen]

First of all, everyone needs to settle the hell down. Jesus. It's a discussion and no one needs to start making sweeping generalizations about the wellfare of the children of any participant in this discussion. These are peoples opinions, when you start going on about "Well I feel sorry for you.." then that's bordering on Condescending Douchenozzle and nobody likes those.

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Lets examine the facts. April (mother in question) is 21 years old. Hayden is 4; making April 17 when she had him. The report said that there were child protection locks on the doors so her kids couldn't get out. Plural.

Hayden got the beer from a cooler in the back. So I'm assuming that this cooler was either in the backyard or a garage that wasn't secured at nightfall. No one said anything about the alcohol being in a fridge (that would typically make a suction noise from the air lock and jingling sound from various glass containers being jiggled in the door compartments). It was in a cooler, which I would venture to guess would be one of those easy affairs that just open and close like the kind you can get at Wal-Mart, or hell, even a styrofoam one you can get at 7-11 or Cirlce-K.

As far as a rudimentary alarm system, it would work, yes. A typical system from a home alarm company costs no less than around 300-500 dollars. That's if you get one and put it together yourself. Something from ADT or Broadview would be around 600-800 dollars and god-only-knows-what for the monthly monitoring fee. Not to mention, when you want programmable functions like inner-outer door entry logging or time-stamp logging and any other number of functions, it could either cost you more in installation price or monthly monitoring fee. I think it's pretty obvious that, if April's father's beer is in a cooler out back, she lives at home. The purchase and installation would not be up to her, it would be upt to the owners of the home, Maw and Paw Kettle. Why on earth the beer wouldn't be in the refridgerator inside (those child safe locks for the fridge my sister has give everyone trouble and are considerably taller than her 4 year old daugher) or at least in a locked garage escapes me, but I dont think we're dealing with people in this situation that think that deeply, if at all.

Obviously there are some large mistakes on this woman's part. She didn't properly explain to her child that no one will take him to jail if he misbehaves, to see Daddy. No one told him that all of this would get her and him into a huge amount of trouble. No one explained to Hayden the severity of this situation. Don't attempt to tell me that he's only 4 and he won't understand. If you do not treat your children like a baffoon and do your best to explain on their terms, the reality of a situation; they're going to understand you.

Do I think this is neglect? Not exactly. I think this is a young woman under a shitload of stress with multiple children going through the drama of an incarcerated husband whom she is attempting to divorce. There is probably a bunch of resulting drama from that (not signing the papers, being an asshole, etc.) as well. Being that she's only 21 and started motherhood at 17, especially in this market, if she has a job, I'll eat my keyboard.

So let's sum April up: Young mother of multiple children, who is going through a divorce with a husband in jail; all the while living in her parents home without an alarm system under considerably stress from childcare and divorce woes. She probably passed the fuck out in bed and didn't hear her son moving around at 1:45 in the morning.

Hayden: Confused little boy that misses his father that thought, by acting out, he would be put in jail. Was not explained the reason people go to jail other than "Bad boys go to jail", we can easily assume. Possible future escape artist or drag queen.

I see a lot of little mistakes and poor decisions that turned into a wild goose chase and one of the best deterents to never drink again, getting your stomach pumped. I, personally, do not think this to be negligence. I just see a lot of small mistakes coming together to the same end for an already stressed out and drama drowned family.

I feel sorry for everyone involved and hope that they can get around this as a stronger and more detail-oriented family. Child Protective Services saw the same thing most likely, and decided not to take the child. Doubtless they'll be checking in month to month just in case.