Has anyone else seen this story about the five-year-old driving his drunk mother and 3-year-old brother home?
This absolutely boggles my mind, although it’s not that surprising. This is just another in the handful of terrible parenting stories that pop up on the national news from time to time. The last one I remember was the video of the family (I don’t remember whether it was a mother or siblings, possibly both) that thought it would be a good idea to give acid to their small child.
This women took vodka and Percocet (she admitted this was not for medical reasons; she took the pills when her children acted up) and was too impaired to drive home, so her five-year-old son did the driving. The ironic thing is that the five-year-old probably could drive better than she could at the time, although that’s hardly the point. She even told police not to worry because he was a good driver. She might be right- who knows how many times this has happened without being caught, and how much practice he has actually had.
Sometimes I have to remind myself that stories like these are the exception to the rule, and not the norm, because I begin to believe that human extinction will soon be upon us when these children grow up having never had decent parents around. When our society relies on them, we are doomed. All I need to do is look around my neighborhood on a daily basis to see children with no discipline at best, and no parental involvement at worst. I shouldn’t have to hear parents screaming and cursing at their five-year-old kids, if only because it’s 11-o’clock at night and those five-year-old kids shouldn’t even be awake at 11-o’clock at night. Or when I have to drop my car to a slow crawl when I turn the corner because I know a toddler is sure to be playing in the parking lot with no parental supervision anywhere in sight (and never to enter sight).
The number of selfish, immature people with children who depend on them is shocking and sickening. I don’t care if you didn’t plan on having a kid. Even semi-responsible parents don’t seem to understand that once you have a child, your life as-you-knew-it is over. Everything changes, and your life largely revolves around that child. Every time I see someone with a recently-born baby out for a night on the town, I realize that there is yet again another parent who just doesn’t get it.
Find me a thug, criminal, or problem personality, and I’ll show you someone who probably had at least one parent who didn’t get it, who didn’t play the role of parent.
I guess I’ll just cling to what I make myself believe: This is only the minority. Our world can’t really be that doomed.
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College football weekend wrap-up to come tomorrow…
