Teenager Dumping

Becks has pointed me to a marvelous article in the Times from a week ago, which got over looked with electoral college votes and Neiman Marcus spending sprees.

Nebraska has a law that parents can leave their babies at hospitals without any paperwork or legal prosecution. The law was designed to stop "dumpster babies" or babies who discarded by freaked out teenage moms. However, when they wrote the law, they didn’t specify an actual age of the child. So, people are leaving their older kids, sometimes teenagers, at hospitals and taking off.

The abandonments began on Sept. 1, when a mother left her 14-year-old son in a police station here.

By Sept. 23, two more boys and one girl, ages 11 to 14, had been
abandoned in hospitals in Omaha and Lincoln. Then a 15-year-old boy and
an 11-year-old girl were left.

The biggest shock to public officials came last week, when a single
father walked into an Omaha hospital and surrendered nine of his 10
children, ages 1 to 17, saying that his wife had died and he could no
longer cope with the burden of raising them.

In total last month, 15 older children in Nebraska were
dropped off by a beleaguered parent or custodial aunt or grandmother
who said the children were unmanageable.

Yes, it
would be good if we could get rid of those teenagers who have lost
their cute — acne, fu manchu mustaches, braces, body odor. Who wants
those awkward kids on their Christmas cards? And then they start
dipping into the family booze and sleeping till noon. If word gets out
about this Nebraska law, there’s going to be a lot more
teenager-dumping going on.

Actually, this story tells about the real desperation of some
parents. Too many mouths, not enough help in the community. Many of the
kids who had been dumped had emotional problems. This story tells us
that there is not enough support for families with kids with emotional
problems. Those kids are now too big to be restrained by their parents.
These kids may need full time professional care. This story is about
the thankless role that extended families have to play in taking care
of the kids, when their parents are unable. We expect the grandparents
to step in to help, but we don’t help them out.

It’s a really sad tale, but this loophole does flush out some serious problems.