The Dilemna of Conscience

My laptop is convalescing.

It was overworked, I guess. Starting to experience dementia and general tiredness and anxiety. It's okay, I'm sure the "docs" will have her up and running around in no time.

In the meanwhile I'm using the kids computer, which has been around since the dinosaurs and is about as fast-moving as a tar pit.

Blogging, email, commenting, websurfing are all incredibly difficult.

Facebook, miraculously, seems to work even on dinosaur-age browsers.

And I did manage to at least get my column in this week.

I wrote it in part in response to this story about an eight year old boy here in Newfoundland that admitted to brutally killing his nieghbour's dog.

But that's only part of the story. I also wrote it in response to the things I see everyday.

Today I called Child Protective Services. After almost two years of suspicions and occasional debates with my husband I decided that I would narc out another parent for possible neglect.

The situation was getting out of hand and two boys that we've worried about in the past had to be told that they were no longer welcome at our house. That then put the fear into me: if they aren't here, where will they go? Certainly not home as they appeared to have little to no parental supervision after school and early evenings. I've always kept an eye out for them but I also have to protect my own children.

So I called, stated my strong suspicion that these two young boys were either without supervision or were being banned from their house. I told the social worker that they were mostly well-behaved and that I didn't thing the parents were "bad" parents but that there was obviously something going on.

And yet, it doesn't feel like I did the right thing. I do feel like a snitch and a nosy parker and everything else in that category. It's so funny that in the parenting world we all seem so eager to debate and confront other parents about how they feed their children or how they let them play at the playground or what TV they're allowed to watch, but we are so reluctant to engage and challenge them on the basic neccesities of parenting.

Anyway, here's my column. Let me know what you think.