You are simply assuming that wasn't already tried. What we are seeing here is almost certainly the result of long trouble, not out of the blue.
You are making the assumption that there has been a lot of 'trouble' with this 6 year old child. I'm not making that assumption.
Bullshit. Hauling a 6 year old into court is landing really really really hard with both feet clad in steel toed boots.
It is NORMAL for children to pick flowers. It is NORMAL for children to pick flowers without asking permission, especially under 12. Hell, I've had to speak to COLLEGE AGED kids who thought it was acceptable to pick my neighbor's...tulips. I did not call the police.
And I'm sure they didn't either, the first time.
Again, you are making an assumption.
They weren't doing their job as parents, now they pay the consequences.
Because their child PICKED A TULIP????????????
You seem to think this is an isolated incident.
We have no idea of whether this was the first time a tulip was picked by any child or by this child. You are making assumptions.
Sure, kids make mistakes. The problem comes when the parents won't teach their kids not to do wrong.
The problem also comes when we treat all offenses, however minor, as requiring the intervention of law enforcement and the legal system.
Again; 6 year olds are impulsive and not necessarily able to discern the difference between picking a clover and picking a tulip, or what is theirs and what isn't theirs to pick.
My parents would have told the child not to pick the flowers and then politely told the child's parents what had happened. Almost certainly, the parents would have spoken to their child and in those days, 9 times out of 10, the kid probably would have been spanked--which is not what my parents would have wanted unless it was an entire flowerbed and the 3rd or 4th time it had happened.
And when the child's parents don't do anything what do you do?
In this case? I would have either invited the child to help me garden so that they could learn about plants, flowers, how to make things grow, etc.
Or: I would have planted roses with lots of thorns where those tulips were. Or cleome. Something with a lot of stickers or thorns.
That you invoke racism doesn't surprise me one iota. You are still fixated on the notion that this was an isolated incident but I find that very unlikely. I think it is much more likely that this is the result of a long period of yard damage.
You are still fixated on the idea that you know what has happened in that person's yard. If it had been a long period of yard damage, then the 6 year old could hardly have been the offender. In fact, tulips are among the first to bloom. If this were a long standing problem, it is unlikely that a 6 year old is the culprit.
But you are right: I should have left race out of it. Unfortunately, police are often called on black children for simply being black. You know, like the person who called the police on children selling lemonade or bottles of water or whateve?
I am extremely curious about what happened to those kids next door to you. Any idea of what became of them? Any idea whether their parents were drunks or drug abusers?
I was not aware of any drink/drug issues in the parents. I do not think it was parents who didn't care, but rather parents that categorically would not believe their kids did wrong unless they witnessed the wrongdoing. Once the cops got involved when I supposedly stole an expensive belt buckle. They called the cops, the cop had no problem figuring out I couldn't have stolen it--they had attacked me, I disarmed them of the belt and flung it into vines where it would take a ladder to retrieve. When it was retrieved the buckle was gone. (Turns out that in the throw I must have cracked the whip with it--we found the corroded remains of the buckle in a planter in our back yard two years later--I couldn't have thrown it that far even if I had been trying to.) The cop came over, confirmed my side of things and said that if we found it to return it but since my actions were legitimate self defense we didn't owe them anything. That's some pretty extreme blindness on their part.
Last I knew (pretty old data by now) they had spent the majority of their adult life behind bars.
I've also known a lot of parenting situations that I considered....bad. Most of those kids, including kids whose father murdered their mother in front of police and then hung himself in jail turned out pretty well. One kid who was terribly abused ended up in prison, predictably and tragically. He was intelligent, a talented athlete, a nice looking kid and probably the angriest kid I ever knew. I think he's out now. A couple of my kids' friends were raised in part or entirely by grandparents because the parents had serious problems with drugs and alcohol. A couple of others were raised by parents who had various addictions, including alcohol and gambling. Almost all of them ended up doing well, although a couple went through some rough patches. Most completed their university degrees. One or two struggled/struggle with substance abuse and others have completely eschewed all use of any type of drug or alcohol. I even know people who were raised by loving, caring parents who ended up with serious substance abuse problems and who ended up doing time in jail and/or prison because of their criminal activity in service of their addictions and a few DUIs.
I'm not saying that it's a crap shoot and that parenting doesn't make huge difference. I'm just saying that horrible parenting can still produce some really fine adults. Occasionally, excellent parenting is not enough.
My parents grew up during the depression. Each was raised by a parent who, by necessity, worked long hours to support the children and the other parent who was seriously disabled by chronic, debilitating illness. Both my parents lost the parent who had been ill when they were 10 years old. Even if all the parents had been able bodied, the families still would have been poor. There was very little in the way of social network to help prop these families up. My grandparents loved their children very much but had not much time in order to supervise or reinforce family expectations. Discipline was harsh--today, such discipline would get you on the CPS list for home visits, at a minimum. Parents have been dragged to court and jail for providing much, much more supervision than my grandparents were able to provide for their children.
My parents were very good people. No arrests or close to it. No substance abuse. Hard working, thrifty by inclination and by necessity. I was once alarmed when we were waiting for my mother to come out of the drug store and a county police officer leaned in the car window and chatted with my dad, briefly. After he left, my dad chuckled and recounted the time he had beaten him up, I was....horrified and scared. It didn't dawn on me until later that my dad was talking about their school days. Dad frequently got into schoolyard scuffles-started them, in fact. His grades varied from Ds and Fs to As, depending entirely on what point he wanted to prove to his teachers. His father did not care about his grades at all and wanted him to drop out because he needed him on the farm. My dad stayed in school out of sheer cussedness and defiance of his father. And as he got into high school, my dad made the decision to steer away from the boys who drank or tried dope. My parents married at 19.
And raised a family of A honor roll students who never broke (strict and early) curfew, never got into even a tiny scrape with the law. My sister hid the fact that she got her ears pierced while at college ,at age 20 because my dad disapproved of pierced ears. I worried if I got an A- on my report card--I mean, really worried. I didn't want to get yelled at, made to justify why I only got a 95 instead of 100. But mostly, I didn't want to disappoint my parents. I dutifully stopped seeing a boy they disapproved of because his hair touched his shirt collar and he owned a motorcycle. Never mind that he was also an A student, and one of the kindest, funniest boys I knew. I figured it wasn't worth the hassle as I would be going off to college in another year so why start fights? It was that kind of strict.
Among my family members (not siblings) are those whose kids battled substance abuse and did varying amounts of jail or prison time. One family member, who has serious problems with mental health and substance abuse and a criminal record raised a son who is intelligent, kind, hard working, an excellent father--and still maintains as much of a relationship as possible with his addict father and worse mother.
I've learned not to be quick to make assumptions. I've seen CPS and courts be very quick to intervene--and to fail to intervene when intervention was more than warranted. I've seen law enforcement get very involved over trivial matters.
You've made assumptions that the police involvement was the last resort. I've made assumptions that police intervention skipped steps because the child is black--because there is a well documented history of children of color being punished much more harshly than their white peers.
Neither of us know anything beyond what we've read.
