Blake Linton - 3 Year Old Beaten to Death

So I'm watching Nancy Grace and I can barely stand it.  This 3-year-old little boy, Blake Linton, was beaten to death in the bathtub by his mother's boyfriend.  His liver and brain were lacerated in the beating.    The boyfriend texted the mother that he "lost it this time."  The mother met with the boyfriend and checked her son's pulse, which she said she faintly felt, and yelled his name.  Then the boyfriend took the child and laid him by the side of the road to stage a hit and run car accident.

The elder daughter has had two previous broken arms and the biological father had asked for the children to be removed from the mother's care.  The preacher from her church described her as fun-loving.  The psych-in-a-box says that the mother had an attachment-disorder.

Um... duh.

This story just kills me.

Kills me.

It makes me so mad.  So many kids are put through hell and back by their own parents and it seems like nothing gets done.  It's so hard to see the signs sometimes.  We have to look closely.  We have to be so diligent.  We have to tend our relationships with our students.  We have to build trust.  When we do intervene, we have to call and call and call and call and call.  Be persistent.  Be patient.  Take notes.  Don't give up.  Ask questions.  Pay attention.

Sometimes it takes a long time for a case to be investigated and sometimes it happens so fast.

There's my kids like T.  and then there's the kids like S.  S was wetting her pants almost daily in my reading group.   It smelled like fish.  She wouldn't run around at recess and she would waddle into reading group.  The kids would say... What's that smell?  It took me a while to clue in what was going on.  S. was in another teacher's class.   We talked it over at lunch and recess and one day her teacher encouraged S. to talk with the family specialist about what was going on at home.  Apparently, grandma's boyfriend was beating up S.'s little 2-year-old brother for dropping his bottle.

WHAT THE FUCK?????

S. moved in with her other grandma last week and then they moved to a new house in a new district a few days later.  Her mom has to take classes about abuse before she can see her children again.

In the meantime, T.'s struggle goes on and on and on.  I wonder what the hell happens in her home.  I can't figure out what is the truth and what is a lie.  I don't trust anything about her mother and I just wish I knew that she was safe.

Poor Blake Linton didn't make it elementary school, so that a teacher could ever worry about him.  People have great capacities.... they can be tremendously good and tremendously evil.  I've worn rose-colored glasses for most of my life, but this profession has taught me one sad truth... real evil is out there and it walks among us, looking just the same as anyone else you know.  Always be aware.  Always be alert.  Always do the right thing.

It helps.   Especially when you are watching Nancy Grace just a little too late at night.

Dumpster Diving with Ms. Milky

I've seen some seriously messed up shit at school. On my second day on the job, one kid busted another kid's two front teeth out. Another kid had a bowel issue where he was completely unaware that he had crapped his pants. One of my favorite students was a kleptomaniac. He couldn't NOT steal. Also, he had a thing for Sharpies.

I've seen my fair share of straight up hungry-ass kids. The kind who have some pretty empty kitchens at home. This can require some tricky maneuvering depending on the intensity of the situation. Sometimes, it's just a couple of snacks in drawer and other times it becomes more invasive.

Right now, I am providing my entire class with snack everyday. If I don't, it gets too hairy and we don't learn anything, because Tawanda gets too consumed with stealing other people's food. So, instead of fending off Tawanda everyday, I just pass out snack and they all get the same thing and she is de-incentived to take from other people, thusly turning my classroom into a giant squabble-fest each day.

What I haven't seen though is the mind blowing "holy-shit-did-you-really-just-do-that???" mess that Tawanda pulled today.

The girl ate out of the trash.

She ate out of the trash IN FRONT of the other students!

She grabbed the remnants of an already day-old cupcake that had been sitting at the bottom of the trashcan all day underneath snotty tissues and glued-on paper scraps and bits of thrown out nerds. Then she shoved it into her mouth. I could see the green frosting all around her little lips. She tried to scrub the evidence off with hand sanitizer, but they were still sweet smelling and sticky.

I won't go into the other weird things that she did today. It's too much. I don't even know if I can emotionally handle the mess that this poor kid is going through, so I don't know how she is handling it. It's so clear to me that someone is hurting her and/or neglecting her. Someone who should be taking care of her.

Don't worry. I've called about it. A few other people and I have a direct number to one of the supervisors at cps. But here is what I want to know? When is somebody going to actually protect this child? Maybe I'm just a know-it-all teacher that wants to point my finger at the parent before I suggest helping the parent or maybe everything inside my body says that this kid is being abused and trying to "help" her abuser/gatekeeper/neglector is fucking ridiculous.

Let's help the abuser once he/she is in prison. For fuck's sake. FUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK!

Like I said, I've seen a lot of messed up shit. I know that there is horrible stuff that happens to kids that I will never know about, even kids that are in my class. But this is a case, where I know that a kid is being abused and neglected. She is eating out of the trash. She is doing things that I won't write about on an anonymous blog. Something is terribly wrong with the way that our government goes about "protecting" children from their own "caregivers."