Love. Listen/Observe/Read. Act. Repeat.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

They shoot coyotes, don't they?

I've been holding my powder on the death of Gerren Isgrigg, the 6-year-old boy with both a developmental disability and medical needs, and who was left to die in a field by Lake Lavon by his grandmother.

I wondered how long it would take before the political shoe would drop.

And with an unimpressive thud, it did:

Let's broaden our Baby Moses law to include children up to age 10. Parents and caregivers can abandon a child at a fire station or hospital without fear of recrimination.

Really, Texas, really? Is that all you've got?

Let's just keep passing the problems around. Law enforcement is already chasing down Gerren's mother. Apparently, they want to know whether she unlawfully passed the burden of his care onto her own mother, Gerren's grandmother. From the news reports, it appears that Gerren's father walked away from the responsibility three years ago.

This rant is not about blaming parents for failing to step up. I am not the first, last, or only parent who, in her darkest, weakest moments, nearly headed out the door. Many days, I wasn't certain I was going to make it through the next ten minutes, let alone to the end of the day or week. And my child does not require skilled or semi-skilled medical care. I know families with such burdens. The burden for those families is mammoth.

You cannot fathom the depth of our trenches until you've been fox-holed there for five or ten years.

Texas Parent-to-Parent matches experienced -- and trained -- parents with less experienced parents in similar situations. As a young parent, I got incomparable emotional support from someone who had walked in the same cruel shoes in the same darkness and somehow found her way into the light.

But emotional support is not caring for the caregiver. It's not respite. It's not case management, or additional in-home care, or supplemental training.

You want that support in Texas? Good luck.

This is Texas, home of the Corpus Christi fight club, where the governor shoots coyotes.


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