I am a single mom and it is only my son and I living together. That means that, unless he is in school or at camp, wherever I go, he goes, too—even when I have to go to the hospital.
blems and when I end up in the hospital, it’s not always during school hours. There are lots of reasons why I would need to bring my son with me to the hospital, such as if I’m having seizures or sudden severe pain, and these things do not happen on a schedule.
Being scared of the child welfare system has an impact on almost everything I do. Every move I make has to be given careful thought—what doctors I go to and what I tell a doctor or therapist.
The child welfare system needs to have a policy to fight false allegations, and their workers need to be trained to detect them. Right now, false reports are simply tools for perpetrators to continue controlling their victims even when those victims have succeeded in going on with their lives. ACS becomes puppets of our abusers and our children suffer.
My son was in several daycare centers starting when he was 6 weeks old. I checked them all out carefully and, in all of them, my son was almost always happy when I picked him up. I felt secure. My worries started when I moved him to a daycare that was close to our home. From the beginning, I was alarmed when I’d come to pick up my son. The kids were screaming and running around. Then my son started telling me daily about different kids hitting him.
There came a time when there’d been four incidents in seven days! I felt hopeless and angry. I thought of a time when a foster parent had told me that I wasn’t allowed to sit on the couch because it was only for their children, not foster children. I felt like I always felt as a child in the system: that no one cared. I felt like no one was there to support me or my child. But I also wanted to grow from being that foster child to a successful parenting adult. So that night I decided to email the director.
My story is about how my son’s school came into my life and changed it in a way that I don’t know if I can ever be who I was before.
It’s about how I got arrested. Lost my job. Have sleepless nights.
A part of me has been stolen.
If I had the power, I would let the system know that child protective services needs to do proper investigations. Don’t label me without knowing me.
I live in the South Bronx. In my neighborhood, there are a lot of investigations. If I lived elsewhere and my son went to a different school, I think this would have never, ever happened.
