Wildly, Inconceivably Dysfunctional

It is difficult for a reasonable person to strain one's imagination harder to visualize a more horrendous failure to give impressionable young children the opportunity to learn positive, civilized behaviour.  This is a drama that has been unfolding for some time.  Long enough for two irresponsible, dysfunctional people - with their own sad and telling stories of failure in socialization and responsibility behind them as children themselves - to bear four children of their own.

And having brought them into this world, having no idea whatever what it takes for parents to render love and protection and give those children the practical necessities of life and support them emotionally, imbuing them with the skills they will need to face an independent future.  The fourth child born to this pair of societal outcasts had previously been taken into custody by the Children's Aid Society and made a permanent ward. 

After her birth the Society had closely supervised the family.

At age two the little girl was finally removed from her parents, a year ago.  Leaving with the parents three older siblings, aged four to seven.  And they too have finally been taken from their biological parents to be placed for adoption.  It's hard to believe it has taken so long for the Children's Aid Society to remove these vulnerable children from the incapable and miserable hands of their parents.  No life skills have been imparted to these children, they have simply been neglected.

The four year old boy was incapable of communicating other than through grunts.  Their five-year-old had been suspended twice from school as a result of his inability to play with other children, due to his temper tantrums.  It's hard to argue for family life when these children lived in a garbage strewn home, where everything that could be useful was broken, and there were holes punched in all the walls.

There was no attempt at cleanliness or personal hygiene.  Feces were smeared on a wall, and not cleaned away.  The children seldom bathed, a disturbing odour emanated from them, they lived with lice, and dried mucous was not washed from their faces.  Underwear was seldom changed, the children had no idea of regular mealtimes and wholesome foods.

The behaviour they displayed was described as "wild, destructive and uncontrollable".  State wardship of the remaining three children, two boys and a girl of this sad and dreadful family situation was achieved early in the year.  Superior Court Justice Catherine Aitken ruled that the children be placed with adoptive homes where they could receive the support they need.

"Having considered all the evidence, I conclude that the best interests of the children can only be served by an order of wardship.  The (Children's Aid) Society and numerous community services have done everything in their power to assist first (the mother) and (the father), and more recently (the father) on his own, to maintain the family unit.
"These services have failed to bring (the father's) parenting and household management capabilities to the point where he can adequately meet the children's needs.  One cannot help but feel very badly for both (the mother and father) for having tried as hard as they have.  Society let them down when they were children.  Now the court is permanently removing the children from their care.  I hope that both (mother and father) will come to understand that this step is necessary to ensure that we do not let their children down the way they were let down as children."

When the Children's Aid Society took the children from their parents they immediately took them to McDonald's, and then they were taken to a foster home in Ottawa.  The imagination boggles; it was seen as appropriate to take these children to McDonald's; on the way to introducing them to values other than what they have absorbed with their parents?

From there, to the prospective foster home where they removed their shoes revealing an "overpowering" stink.  And the children ran amok in the foster home, pulling curtains, ripping blinds, smashing anything they came across, and tormenting the family's dog.  That initial introduction revealed the extent of their failed socialization, demonstrating just how obviously in need of remediation these children were.

With the help of foster parents, their behaviour since January has been ameliorated.  Three Ottawa families who have stepped forward with a willingness to adopt the children have been approved by the Children's Aid Society.  As a side-note, their inept and psychologically frail father was said to have suffered dreadful abuse with foster parents from infancy until ten years of age.

He had been reduced to living on the streets of Ottawa as a petty criminal and drug addict when he met his wife, at age 19.  She became pregnant while they were still homeless.  They lived afterward in a public-housing project and were evicted, then they were placed in emergency shelter in a motel room.  Then came a family shelter, and finally the apartment from which the children were seized.

It is a tragic commentary on the human condition that these young parents had experienced such a dreadfully lacking existence, finding comfort at last with one another, but not the understanding that they would raise children as abused and needy as they themselves have been, without taking precautions against pregnancy.

And it is sad beyond words to contemplate even briefly the misery of their dislocated and empty-of-value lives.  As little as they were able to comprehend the level of their responsibility to vulnerable young children, failing them in the process, they are, for all practical means, themselves vulnerable young children, maturity having failed them, leaving them sad dregs of society.