October 2005

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Write to me

I was going to write something fun tonight, about some friends and the two new pets in their household. But that will wait.

Instead, I'm going to write about something that has happened to one of my neighbors. M. is a single mother, and from what I see she's doing a fine job with her children. I know her mainly from shared bus rides, and we've stopped to chat a few times.

One day about a month ago we'd had a cloudburst, and as I got off the bus I saw M. and her children, along with some other people, having a wonderful time jumping in a puddle. This was a shallow puddle, several inches deep, but quite enough of a puddle to make really good splashes. I waved at the group, then told M. that had I not been dressed in my working clothes and shoes, I would have jumped in the puddle myself.

But that puddle-jumping was one of the prime complaints one of the other neighbors lodged against M. with the county Department of Social Services a few days later. The other complaint centered around M.'s son, H., having been what the complainant said was left in dirty diapers for a prolonged period.

So DSS duly investigated, and threatened M. with loss of her children. As it happens, the complaint about the diapers was based on the neighbor's having seen that H. had a rash. For which M. had taken him to the doctor several days earlier, and which was determined to be an infection probably acquired at preschool.

The puddle-jumping complaint was that the children were unsupervised. Umm, no, there were plenty of adults there with their children, all of whom were quite happy to tell DSS all about it.

M. and H. saw me getting off the bus tonight and M. stopped me to tell me about the DSS investigation, just because I had said I thought the puddle-jumping looked like so much fun.

Poor woman is looking for any and all allies, and while she certainly doesn't think DSS is doing anything wrong, she really would like to yell at the person who complained, for having said that the children were unsupervised. The other part of the complaint she understood, and was happy to provide the doctor's name for verification.

And that's why I'm writing about it. It is a truly good and righteous thing to call in the authorities if a parent is neglecting or abusing a child. But to lie in a complaint? Is wrong. It wastes the DSS's time and resources, it at the very least embarrasses the parents, and at the worst (if the parents can't prove their side) can lead to removal of children from really good homes.

While I definitely think it takes a village to raise a child, we all need to beware of the village's mean-spirited idiots.