I’m a tough mom. In this day and age, whether you’re a single parent or not, you have to be. I make no bones about the fact that if Finge and Ladybug act a fool, I will get in that ass. Yet, there is no doubt that I do what i do because I want them to be well mannered and successful. My kids will be the first to tell you that I don’t play. To be frank, if that keeps them out of trouble until they have reached the maturity to see the much bigger picture of the whys and wherefores, I’ll take it. I’m not going to be one of those parents whose inaction leads to them seeing their child in a jail cell or worse.
HOWEVER, children were made to be loved. Before a person makes the decision to be a parent, there are some questions they really must ask themselves. Renee Bowman did not ask those questions.
Her seven year-old adopted daughter was found roaming her Lusby, Maryland neighborhood, after having escaped her home through a second floor window. According to a neighbor, she was bruised from head to toe. According the the authorities, Bowman herself admitted to beating her with a hard heeled shoe. As though this were not horriffic enough, a search of Bowman’s home yielded the discovery of the bodies of two other children in a freezer. Bowman said the bodies of the dead girls had been there since February.
Bowman adopted the girls from the District, then lived in Rockville before moving to Lusby, which is in Calvert County. There was no record of the girls being enrolled in school in Rockville’s Montgomery County, or Calvert County. A neighbor reported the girls as missing, and was given some variation timeless speech when one expresses concern about a child to an over-burdened system, “We’ll look into it.”
Now, two girls have to thaw before the coroner can even determine what happened to them. The surviving girl will have to undergo YEARS of intense therapy, lest this cycle of violence be repeated. I dare not mention her being at risk for the spectrum of self abuse that she may engage in because she did not receive the requisite nurturing desperately needed by a young girl her age.
Bowman wasn’t some hard luck story that suddenly found herself coping with three children. She deliberately brought these children into her home, under the guise of providing a better life for them. The young girl was found with lesions, restraint marks, and open sores all over her body. This is not the action of a woman who snapped. Not even the action of discipline gone too far. (There is NO reason for restraints to be used when disciplining a child.)
I have a seven year-old daughter, and the horror that she would have to experience to get the gumption to jump from a second story window turns my stomach. I become sad when I even have to fuss at Bug.
I don’t know what people expect when they walk the road of parenting. it is WORK. HARD WORK. There are days when being a mother, a sane mother, is one of the hardest things I have ever done. But, people, that’s the job. Parenting goes beyond creating a mini-you and putting them in cute clothes. It goes beyond furthering your legacy. It is incumbent upon every parent to mold someone who can be a powerful and positive force in this world.
Our future can’t be allowed to slip through the cracks.
