Are They Our Kids Or The States?

Some time things happen in this country that make me wonder if I went to sleep and woke up in a far away land. When I hear that we are the land of the free I have to laugh and say “we used to be, but not anymore.” Oh, we might be more of a free country compared to most others, but we have moved so far from what our Founding Fathers envisioned our country to be, that at times it actually scares me.

Recently in the news, a mother was arrested and she faces a charge of child neglect after she allowed her 7-year-old son to go to a park alone. “Honestly, I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong,” said the mother, “I was letting him go play. The officer wrote in the report that Dominic was unsupervised at the park, which is a half mile from his house and takes him 10 minutes to walk there. I’m sorry, but what kind of country do we live in, that a mother can’t let her son go to the park to play, that’s what parks are for. Now she is facing 5 years in prison.

My mother would have been sent to prison for life, if they had the mindless laws they have today. I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s, in Manhattan in New York City, on Saturdays, I would leave the house after lunch and say “Mom, I’m going out to play,” My mom would shout back, “Make sure you are home for dinner.” I would play in the street, go to the park which was a block away, or sometimes go to the Boy’s Club, which was four block from where I lived. My mother had no idea where I was all day, and I always made it home for dinner. It’s funny, that mother was arrested for letting her son go to the park, I was always told, stay off the street, go to the park.

In another story, an Ohio man says he lost his job and was arrested all because his young son wanted to go out and play rather than go to church. It seems this man’s 8-year-old son decided to skip church and wound up at a Dollar store a half mile from his house when someone called the cops because the boy was alone. The police took the boy home, “The next thing you know, he comes up to me and he says, ‘You’re under arrest,’” the father said, adding that his kids started crying during the scene. To make matters worse the police arrested him just as his other kids were getting home from church.

The one story that really enraged me was about a Russian couple in California who had their baby ripped from their arms by police and representatives from Child Protective Services. The parents took their baby, who has a heart murmur, to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when he started exhibiting flu-like symptoms. The family has undergone plenty of doctor visits in the last five months for the their son’s heart, and were unsettled by the treatment he was receiving. At one point the mother says, a nurse came in and started giving the baby, named Sammy, medicine. When she asked what it was the nurse allegedly replied, “I don’t know.”

Now I don’t know about you, but if a nurse tried to give my kid medicine and she didn’t know what the medicine was or what it was for, I would grab my kid and hightail it out of there. The parents did the responsible thing and took their baby to another hospital where they checked the baby then was released. However, it seems the first hospital got its feelings hurt because the parents wanted another opinion and called the police.

The next day when police showed up at the Nikolayev’s home with representatives from Child Protective Services the father went outside to meet them, where he says he was “pushed against the building.” When he asked if he was being placed under arrest, he said they “smacked me down onto the ground [and] yelled out, ‘I think I got the keys to the house,” seeing the scene outside, his wife set up a camera in front of her door, smart move on her part.

What happened next made my blood boil, the video shows police letting themselves in without a warrant, and taking the baby. “I’m going to grab your baby, and don’t resist, and don’t fight me okay?” one officer can be heard telling the mother in the video. When I watched that video, I remember shouting “What kind of country is this, is this still America?” “It seems like parents have no rights whatsoever,” the father said. Originally from Russia, he said the situation reminds him of a “communist regime.”

I’ll be honest, if anyone, I don’t care who they were, tried to take my child, there would have been a violent scene. A child belongs to the parents, not the state, but it seems the state thinks differently. A mother arrested and facing 5 years in prison for letting her son go to the park. A father arrested because his son skipped out on church, and a baby being ripped from his mother’s arms because she wanted a seconded opinion from another hospital, I’ll say it again, “What kind of country is this, is this still America?” The thing that concerns me the most, is that people don’t seem to care. Parents should raise their kids the way they see fit, not how the state thinks they should.

About a year ago I wrote a book titled, “What Kind Of Society Are We Leaving Our Kids?” Seems appropriate here.

This is one man’s opinion.