Parenting

I sometimes wonder why people even bother to have children. My daughter agreed to babysit for a friend's seven-year-old son on Saturday. At first it was just supposed to be for a few hours, then it became overnight. This was fine. The kid is a handful according to his mother, but he's never been a problem with either my daughter or with me.

The thing is his mother seems to regard him as a nuisance that has to be handled somehow. Most of the time she simply turns on the TV or puts him in a room by himself with a gaming console and some of the most violent games out there with no regard for their suitability for a seven-year-old child. It is a given among her friends that she will never return when she promises when they agree to watch him.

Just recently she was admonished by his school and threatened with being reported for child neglect unless she began such things as feeding him a decent diet regularly, seeing to it that he does his homework, and ensuring he has a reasonable bedtime. Even more recently she was called to the school because her son reported he had been sexually molested by the mother's partner. This turned out not to be true, but apparently the kid knows how much the partner hates him (and says so in front of him) and he didn't like the idea that he and his mother were moving into the same apartment.

The child's father claims the child has numerous allergies. The mother has never asked to see the medical report to ensure this is true and feeds the child anything she wants without bothering to see if he is actually allergic. Her argument is that it doesn't make him sick so he can't be allergic to it.

My question is simply why would a woman such as this even bother to have children? She doesn't really care about him. I asked him over the weekend what kind of books his mother reads to him, thinking of maybe getting him a book for Christmas. He looked at me as if I had taken leave of my senses. This isn't a bad kid, but it is definitely a neglected child.

Yesterday morning I discovered a nasty mass growing inside my daughter's dog's mouth that required the dog to go to an emergency vet immediately. Susan called the boy's mother and told her she had to come and get him and told her why. She was really put out by the fact she had to get her own son. I won't babysit for the child; not because I don't like him but because I've done my babysitting in the past and don't care to do it any more now. This annoys the boy's mother who seemed to have marked me as a babysitter when she was told I had retired.

So I repeat...if you don't want to take the time to raise a child, why have one? Why not surrender custody to the boy's father since she obviously isn't willing to actually interact with him any more than she absolutely has to? This really bothers me.