I'll take one in blue...no, make that pink, please.

I'm trying to figure out just when children became accessories.

This has sort of been bubbling around in my subconsious for a while but it came to a full boil this week when several things happened.

One, we had this student, let's call him Spin Boy (he liked to spin around which is something a tad unusual in a 13 year old, but I digress.) Spin Boy's life story reads like a really bad novel. Mom has Spin Boy, doesn't marry Dad (I'm not even sure anyone knows who Dad is, truth be told). Mom marries someone else, hence Spin Boy gets a StepDad. Mom decides that she doesn't want to be a Mom, nor a wife, and takes off, divorcing StepDad but leaving SpinBoy with him. StepDad remarries so now Spin Boy is living with StepDad, who really isn't as he's not married to SpinBoy's Mom, and StepDad's new wife. Neither of these two have any stake or biological connection to this child.

And Spin Boy can drive you insane.

He does no work. He is so desperate for attention he will do anything, and I mean anything, to get it. He will scratch until he bleeds and bleed on his desk, causing an entire class to dissolve into chaos. He will spin and spin and spin until he gets dizzy and knocks something over. He cannot/will not open his locker, insisting that he needs a key and get the teacher to do it. He gets into fights constantly. He has no anger management or coping skills. He steals food.

And none of this is remotely surprising considering that no one really wants this kid, including the woman who gave birth to him. Like an old pair of shoes, he's just been dumped into the lap of someone convenient.

Anyway. This week he crossed the line, threatened Mrs. Language and received ten days suspension. My comment to Guidance Goddess was that he better be careful or the people taking care of him may just decide that he's not worth the aggravation and either call his Mom to come get him, or turn him over to State custody.

And guess what happened? Mom got tracked down, called, and "StepMom" withdrew him from school. Apparently he will now be Mom's problem. And I sincerely doubt she's capable of dealing with this child and providing him with the kind of home and attention he needs. This kid has been so unwanted for so long I fear he's got some serious mental issues by now.

Now the 2nd reason I've decided that children are mere accessories for some people is when Mrs. Eagle and I on our Power Walk (we're trying to get 30 minutes of walking in every day) we were discussing her adult son, his fiance, and the fiance's little girl (who is an adorable, smart, wonderful 6-almost-7 year old). Mrs. Eagle was bemoaning the fact that this adorable moppet gets absolutely no attention from her parents. They watch television at night while she plays, by herself, in her room with her toys. No reading. No helping with homework. No sitting around and playing with her. On weekends, they spend a lot of time hanging out with their friends and dropping this child into the laps of whomever will watch her, usually Mrs. Eagle and her husband. So they go off, drink beer, play poker, hang out on the lake, and what this child really wants is some attention from her mother and her soon to be stepdad. Instead, she's getting what little attention she gets from the folks her mother has convinced to baby sit.

So here's the question. Why do people have children if they don't plan on raising them and spending time with them? Is it simply peer pressure? Too much booze and not a condom to be found? I remember listening to Dr. Laura shows a long time ago and how annoyed people got with her when she would tell her callers that their number one priority in life isn't themselves, it's their child. I tend to agree with her on this.

If people keep throwing their children away, what kind of future are we looking at?