No child should ever be sexually abused, emotionally abused, physically abused or neglected.  Ever.  The perps should be punished and then re-educated.

And, childhood is tough.  Kids are cruel.  Things happen.  I can cite a lot of abuse.  For instance, from the start of the third grade through Christmas of the 5th grade I was left alone after school in a small house in the country on a rural gravel road with the nearest house 1/2 mile away until 9:30 PM or 10: 00 PM until my parents came home from the city.  I was bullied, fought back, got beat up.  Told my Dad, he made me go back and fight them again.  Got beat up again, not as badly.  Didn’t tell Dad, that’s for sure.

I also had enormous freedoms.  My cousin and I would take off on some acreage an uncle owned with a .22 and a box of ammunition at 8;30 AM, after breakfast, and not come back until we were absolutely starving, maybe 6:00 or 6:30 PM.  No one worried.  We’d catch crawdads in the creek, fish, shoot at most anything that was safe.  When he wasn’t there I’d go alone.

As I got older the freedoms increased, and Denny, Neal and I would wander the streets until 10:00 PM, squirt water pistols at visitors arriving at a local hospital from a balcony over the entrance, explore buildings under construction, all manner of stuff.  I became a Boy Scout, and refused to spend any night in our troops cabin, stubbornly staying outside under our really crummy shelter halves which leaked.  When the river there flooded I ran from falling tree to falling tree, always able to stay 10 or 15 feet away from the nearest branch.  No one cared.  We organized our own baseball and football games, weren’t pawns of adults in what they call Little League.  I think Little League is pure abuse of a developing mind, taking away the opportunity to grow and learn.

Today I see kids from Day One to High School graduation who are never out of sight of their parents.  Kids whose parents see pure evil lurking behind every tree and parking meter, and God forbid some kid hits another kid.  Calamity.

I look upon the world from the time I was raised and the eons before that and now.  It’s not better.  I was abused, I’ll acknowledge that, and it wasn’t personal and I’m the better for it, to be honest.  Even the bullies.  They didn’t “get” me.  We’re raising a bunch of people who have not had the opportunity to develop confidence, skills, and qualities only learned from some adversity.  A pox on all of those “do you know where your child is” posters.  Leave the poor bastards alone sometimes.

Arf