An Open Letter to the Blogger on Scary Mommy Who Got Arrested for Disciplining Her Child

This is an open letter to the author of this post on Scary Mommy  – The Time I Got Arrested for Disciplining My Child. I do not know when it was written/posted, so it might be a year old. But I saw it for the first time today.

Dear Samara,

You do not know me, and we will likely never meet. But I want to introduce myself. Like you, I am a mother doing the best I can. I am not perfect, far from it. And honestly most of my mistakes come around discipline. It is certainly the area where C and I are most likely to disagree.

I am not a single mother. Nor am I raising a child who in a few years will likely be bigger and stronger than me. I do not pretend to know anything about your life, but I can tell from your writing how much you love your son. And for that, you have my respect.

However, while I am not a single mother, I am a foster mother. I know something about how the police and social services (in general, every locality is slightly different) work. As a person who has gotten the call at 4pm on a Friday saying “we have a child who was abandoned sitting here who needs a place to sleep, just for the weekend”, I would like to help you let go of your anger toward the police and social services. Because honestly, I am very glad you were arrested. I am very glad there was a social services investigation. I am even more glad that there were no charges and no findings. But as a person who has worked to help children rebuild after years of neglect and abandonment, I am always happy when the child welfare folks are actually checking in on a child’s welfare.

You say you are glad that people were actually concerned about your son’s welfare,

But anyone who knows me knows that being the best parent I can be is the focus of my life. Once the police were told my kid was not abandoned, but actually being disciplined, they should have butt their asses out.

First, I do not think it is a stretch to say the police do NOT know you. So they cannot know that being the best parent you can is the focus of your life. At the same time, no bio-parent I have ever met did not love their children. Most of them are, in fact, doing the best they can. Many of them would say something very similar about their focus on being good parents.

And really, once you told them this was your form of discipline, they should have just left? What if you saw someone hitting a kid with a belt? If they told you they were just disciplining their child, would that make it ok? Should you at that point just butt out?

You kicked your kid out of the car and drove off. You did not go park in the parking lot where he could see you. You did not tell him, or anyone else around him, that you would be back in less than 10 minutes. You kicked an 11 year old out of a car and drove off.

Yes, someone called the police. And the police called social services. And yes, once that process is started, they have a job to do. They have a responsibility to make sure this is not a pattern. They have a responsibility to YOUR CHILD, not to you, to make sure he is safe, that he is not abandoned on a regular basis, that he is not neglected.

You believe you are a good parent. I do not doubt you love your son, but every child I have ever had the privilege to foster parent was loved by their biological family. And yes, because of the way some people abuse their children, the police and social services do have a responsibility to make sure your son is safe. This is NOT the same as assuming you are a “crack-addled whore who pushed her kid out the car so she could give a john a quick blow jay.” Their response was not about you. It was about your son.

I understand you are angry. I do. But I am asking you to try and step back a moment and look at this from another point of view. No charges were pressed against you. Social services had no findings. But what about the kid whose mom is not you, where the first time the system notices him is when mom had a really bad day, and she kicks him out of the car, but it turns out this was not the first time she left him alone, only 10 minutes at the mall, but for days at home? If it turns out that at home, since she cannot leave him behind, her way of disciplining is to kick the shit out of him?

Social services would never be able to help that child, and he deserves our help, if the second Mom showed back up at the corner and said “Oh, I left him behind because he talked back to me. This was just an object lesson”, the police decided to butt the hell out.