Stranger Danger

So yesterday while sitting in the school line waiting to pick up my boys, my husband and I got into a discussion. These days instead of pulling up to a school and the children being dismissed and running out to find their parents car, children are dismissed a couple at a time to parents who are stuck waiting in a line for almost an hour moving slowly. So why this ridiculous measure? Because to keep children safe we must not allow them any freedom at all!! Let me tell you what's wrong with this picture.

Every 40 seconds in the USA a child is kidnapped. That's right, in the time you've been reading this a child has been kidnapped. Sad right? Well we haven't even gotten to the sad part yet, but we will. One in every 10,000 children kidnapped will die.

So you ask, "Why would you have a problem with protecting our children as much as possible in light of these statistics?" and to that I tell you we are protecting them from the wrong people.

Out of all the children kidnapped only 1.4% are kidnapped by a stranger. Let me make sure you read correct, that's ONE POINT FOUR PERCENT. See this is my point. 98.6% of children kidnapped are kidnapped either by a relative or family friend NOT STRANGERS!

Every year approximately 800,000 children will be kidnapped. Out of that only a little over 11,000 will be taken by strangers.
Each year there are 6 million reports of child abuse. Out of all the children sexually abused, over 90% are by someone they know.

So are we really doing anything to help our children by teaching them stranger danger? Are we hurting them by not teaching them to we aware of their own family and friends? It seems we put a whole lot of effort into the wrong cause.

The Broken System

Today while sitting in the waiting room at the hospital ER  with one of my children I saw and heard something that seriously bothered me. It gave me a little reminder about how sad the foster care system really is. A not so friendly reminder that we in the USA only pretend to care about the children who are left abused.

I saw a woman with a child of about 10. He was obviously not feeling well and was sitting very quietly. The woman on the other hand was the kind of person who talks way too much to people she knows far too little. She came in right after us, and when my son finally got called back she was still running her mouth. The kind of person who talks to anyone who gets within listening range.

See this kind of people have always struck me as people who must be lacking something in their lives. Being friendly is one thing, but simply not shutting up is another. Certainly to be like this, one must be either missing something in the head or have something that has caused them to be this way.
So I had no choice but to listen to this woman go on and on. In an hour and a half I could tell you her life story. Worse is I could tell you everything about that poor boy sitting in that chair next to her.
She went on and on about how nothing in her life ever went right, about how this boy never listens, always gets in trouble at school, always gets sick, and how he just couldn't seem to get anything right.

Then the shocker came. The woman sitting next to this lady, who was stuck listening to this crap, suddenly said "yes, but we have to love our children no matter what" and the loud mouth replied "Oh he's not my child he's just our foster kid"


You're fucking kidding me right?!?!?!?!?!




This woman is sitting here in a hospital ER bitching and moaning about how horrible this child is and he is a FOSTER CHILD! This is what makes me sick. We shouldn't have foster parents like this! We should have families that actually care about the children that come into their homes. We should have some way of weeding out foster parents like this who just don't give a fuck! This woman spent an hour and a half talking down about a foster child that has been through hell already. What has our system come to and will it ever get fixed? Will we ever really care about the children? Will they just keep being a political prop? A feel good for those who need an easy charity? Will someone not stand up and do what is right?


I went through 32 foster homes. Looking back on that now, maybe 5 were of quality to have children in their homes. I saw everything. I saw the foster dad's who needed a young girl around to entertain them, moms who needed a maid, grandmas who needed an older foster child to help take care of all the little foster children, pill heads who sold our stuff for a fix. You name it I saw it. Nothing has changed since I left the system. We praise politicians we vote for like they really do some good.

Newsflash: We have over 500,000 foster children in this country! Do you really think your government is taking care of them?!?