Suffering Children

She listened carefully, as she was trained to do. She was hearing yet another story. There would be some permutations that might make this story slightly different from all the others, but broadly speaking, they fell into a few categories, and the individual stories themselves did not distinguish themselves all that much. A neighbour, or a teacher calling to report a suspected case of child abuse. Even an extended family member might do that. There would be an exchange of information. She would listen sympathetically, attempt to draw out details to ensure she was getting as much of a balanced report of the matter as possible. It has not been unknown for someone to report child abuse, out of personal malice, where none existed. She would offer tentative advice after asking leading questions and weighing the responses.

It was her job. It was what she was trained to do. It was, in fact, what she saw as her responsibility to society. To respond, as much as she could under the law, to protect the well-being of vulnerable children.

There were so many days when she returned home exhausted after a day of listening, allowing someone to ventilate whatever their concerns were. To draw out the essential details. And when those details emerged and occasionally constituted really dreadfully abusive situations where it was clearly imperative for a case worker like herself to visit the home, evaluate further, question the child or children involved, look around at their living conditions, speak to their care-giver - sometimes she was completely drained of emotion.

Why did people have children to begin with if they couldn’t care adequately for them? This was an absurd, unanswerable question, its only purpose to rage against the injustice of seeing those large haunted eyes of children, afraid of being ‘disciplined’, fearful of a stranger entering the home to ask confusing questions. She had to be careful with those questions. She could not ‘lead’ a child to respond fulsomely, to explain to her precisely what was occurring. For the most part the children involved did not really know what was happening. What was happening to them. They were so accustomed to being abused and neglected, they had no reason to believe normal life for them would be anything else than what they experienced.

And even young children had a kind of intuition, that if they said something that would place their guardian, their mother or their father in a dim light, there might be consequences. Consequences like further abuse after the departure of the stranger. Consequences such as being removed from their home, taken to somewhere like a prison for being bad, for making their parents or their parent dislike them and hurt them. Hurt them in so many ways, telling them that they’re worthless, they’re a millstone, their mother wishes they’d never been born. Slapping them around because they’re in the way, and irritating, annoying little pests.

There were days when she told herself she was functionally and emotionally in need of help herself, to the point where she was incapable of dealing with another familial mess. As accustomed as she was to dealing with these dysfunctional situations passing as families, she would never become hardened to the reality of the misery of a neglected, abused child.

“ I don’t quite know what to do, where to turn”, the faintly plaintive voice fed its worry into her ear. “It’s my daughter, my granddaughter, I worry about my granddaughter”.

“Your granddaughter. Why do you feel you have reason for concern?”

“It’s my daughter. She’s under stress, she always is. She’s a single mother. She’s finding it very difficult to cope.”

“How old is your granddaughter?”

“She’s thirteen, thirteen and some. She has a good mind of her own, and her mother tries to dominate her.”

“Dominate her?”

“Well, she’s very manipulative, my daughter, and controlling, and she doesn’t like it when someone opposes her, expresses other opinions, holds values she doesn’t.”

“All right, and why do you fear for your grandchild?”

“She’s a sensitive child. An intelligent, highly creative, bright child. These are characteristics she shares with her mother, actually. But her mother is exploiting her position as a mother in a very brutal way with her daughter.”

“Brutal? Is she … is she … how?”

“Our daughter is a well-paid professional, she’s had a good education, but she is also violently abusive in her language, her emotions. She has never tried to restrain herself, she spouts invective, really viciously, screams obscenities at her child. She berates her, she undermines the child’s self-confidence.”

“I see. A very strong personality. Has your grandchild complained to you? Have you witnessed any of this, these violent emotional expressions?”

“Witnessed it? Yes, we’ve been the objects of much of it ourselves, my husband and I. And even when our grandchild was much younger she was exposed to it, and had become a victim of it.”

“I see. Yet you’re particularly concerned at this juncture?”

“Yes, this is a young girl in her formative years, uncertain of herself, and her mother is involved in unsettling her, not supporting her emotionally. You can’t keep telling a child that she’s stupid without incurring long-lasting trauma!”

“I agree. I certainly agree, madam. Would you like to make this a formal complaint? We can have a case worker go out to the home and speak to your grandchild.”

“No, I don’t think… I honestly don’t know what to think. Our daughter is in a difficult position. Coping is hard for her. We’ve done our best to help, and we always have, but I’ve reached a point where I hardly know what next to do. I’m worried because she’s also abusing her daughter physically. I’m afraid that she will lose touch with reality in one of her rages.”

“She’s hitting the girl? Is she slapping her with an open hand?”

“Well yes, with an open hand. And later she tells me that it’s her daughter that’s at fault, that her daughter has become physical with her mother. Our granddaughter is taller than her mother, she’s a large girl, strong, but that doesn’t sound like the girl we know. We used to be her secondary care-givers when her mother was at work. Our granddaughter isn’t physical by nature. I used to encourage her when she was young in her early grades, to hit back if someone hit her. She refused, she was adamant, she said she couldn’t do that. So I don’t believe that she initiates physical abuse, even though our daughter claims that as fact.”

“You don’t believe her.”

“No, I know my daughter. I know my granddaughter. They do share some personality traits, but not that. Our grandchild has a natural sense of justice, she has always been that way, she just would not attack without extreme provocation - to protect herself. She has told me that her mother is relentless, just won’t stop once she’s launched herself into a rage. I recognize her descriptions of her mother out of control. Our grandchild will take to her room, her mother will just invade her there, not stopping for one instant to give the child some relief. And I know what it’s like, my husband and I have experienced the very same abusive behaviour from our daughter. She has always been controlling and abusive, from the time she was a child herself.”

“I see. Listen, if your daughter is abusing her daughter so badly, it would really be helpful if you would agree to having a caseworker go around.”

“I know what you’re saying. On the other hand, I don’t know if I can do this to my daughter.”

“But think of your granddaughter. If things are as rough for her as you say they are, they might progress to a point where she is in real danger.”

“I’ve thought of that. My imagination keeps running away with me. I’ve got a too-vivid imagination in any event, I’m always thinking up dire scenarios. I can’t even be certain that I’m not reacting too strongly to the situation I’m describing to you. But my granddaughter told me on the weekend that her mother had slapped her so hard she thought her nose was bleeding.”

“Well, that sounds pretty bad. That’s serious abuse, that and the verbal tirades you describe.”

“I envision my granddaughter leaving home, just going out the door and instead of going to school, simply disappearing. I’m fearful.”

“I hear you. There’s an element of potential in what you’ve said, it does happen. Will you give me particulars; your daughter’s name and address and telephone number?”

“I … I just can’t, not now, not yet. Can you tell me what the age of majority is?”

“It’s sixteen.”

“My grandchild has two more years to go. “

“Can you afford to put things off for that length of time knowing how seriously dysfunctional your daughter’s household is with respect to her daughter?”

“ I don’t know, I just don’t know. But if I give you the information, and you act on it … You must be aware, I know I am, that mother-daughter relations are often strained, and worse. There must be so many families where what I’ve described to you are common occurrences.”

“Yes, yes that’s true enough.”

“I also want to … you know that I know and most people think of it … well Children’s Aid hasn’t got the greatest reputation for aiding children. There are stories…”

“Yes, you’re right. There are times when things go wrong, when failure results from interventions. But those failures represent a minuscule number of cases. You can’t take those events as representative of the work we do. We’re concerned with the well-being and safety of children, and that’s our prime motivator. We’re skilled professionals in the field, capable of assessing situations and arriving at solutions.”

“Yes, of course. What would happen if our grandchild was taken from her mother? Her father is long gone, he has no interest whatever in the child. He’s never paid anything for her upkeep. He has never in the decade since his absence from her life, even made the remotest attempt to contact her, see the child.”

“I could tell you that in all likelihood you would be chosen at the closest kin to look after the child. She would be placed in your care.”

“And that would destroy my daughter.”

“You think so?”

“I’m grateful to have spoken with you. Perhaps I really needed to someone to speak with, to get some perspective. I’m glad you listened, gave me the opportunity to talk. I’m feeling … a little more … confident - about alternatives, about the future. It may not make sense to you after what I’ve said, but I think I’d better leave things there.”

“If you change your mind… If something further occurs to convince you that intervention is required, please call back.”

She may not. She may. Who really knows?

There was one bit of information that grandmother related that gave me pause. She described how the daughter accused her father of abusing her. Which the grandfather denied. And the grandmother would not believe.

She was after all, she said, always around, she knew what their child was like, growing up, how impossible she was to control. As an adolescent she suddenly arrived home from school one day and began casually throwing obscenities around. No one in their family had ever abused language and social sensibilities in that way.

It was as though the girl had suddenly turned some corner in her psychic life and become someone they hardly recognized.

When they protested at her changed behaviour and vocabulary she had laughed in their faces. “It’s not words that are harmful” she said, derisive of their middle-class shock. “It’s the way people behave, the way they treat one another.”

What could they respond to that, the woman asked rhetorically. She was right and at the same time wrong. Language needn’t be impeccable, but it should be respectful and they were mortally affronted that their daughter would confront them like that. Her siblings did not, and they were boys. Weren’t girls supposed to be more delicate in such matters, more attuned to propriety?

It’s the mother’s assertion that the daughter had no basis in bitterly charging her father with abuse that had me trying to assess what I’d heard, much later. It’s as though somehow an explanation of that now-grown daughter’s evolving behaviour has its basis in an unspoken and sinister secret that only she and her father share.

That the mother strenuously denies.

We may never hear from her again. On the other hand, if matters escalate beyond what the grandmother can handle in her perceived and ongoing maltreatment of the child, we may hear from her again.

It’s these muddled, non-specific attributions that give me a huge headache. To listen to all of this and be able to produce nothing of value to ameliorate an obviously bad situation that will without doubt result in a poor outcome makes me feel that I’m unable to make too much of a difference.

So, I ask myself yet again. Why is it that people have children?