Abuse?...

[MomoJA]

I was at the doctor's office yesterday. It's an old people's doctor, so there were no children there. A woman walked in with an 11-month-old. She had a young man with her and he was holding the child. The child was fussy. The woman kept telling the child to shut up. She said, "You see, this is why I can't keep children." She told the child she was getting on her "last nerve."

Then, to try to satisfy the child, she poured her diet coke into a baby bottle and gave it to the child. "Ah, shut up!" she kept saying. Her phone would ring and she would curse and say things like, "Now why're they calling me? F***"

I sat there thinking that the poor child didn't have a chance in the world. I wondered if I should do anything and what I could possibly do.

We had to wait for over an hour for our doctors. She was sitting right next to me, and when the young man left for a while, she started talking to me. The baby was her youngest daughter's child. She had prayed for the lord to give her baby a baby. The child was born 4 months premature and had a few handicaps but she was doing really well, the woman said.

She said the child was rotten because the mother and aunt spoiled her. She said that she couldn't put her in a daycare because they'd beat her, she was so bad. There was pride in her voice as she spoke about the child. She laughed and told me to look at the baby's teeth. She had four teeth and her grandmother thought that was the funniest thing.

The grandmother was just coming out of treatment for breast cancer. She was bald and weak, but she was keeping this active 11 month old because she wanted to protect the child from daycare. She continued telling the child to shut up and that she was bad. She continued giving the child diet coke to drink, but she obviously loved that child.

Would you call that abuse?

 

[bssage]

IDK

I usually relate "abuse" as neglect or some sort of physical/mental harm. So while I think its obviously not a ideal. Not sure it crosses the line. I also wonder the meds grandma is on and it doesn't have some effect on grandma's behavior that afternoon. Some of those cancer meds are butt kickers. I know at times they made my mom a temporary nut case.

It is not good but hard to judge with such a little snapshot.

 

[Xero]

Well, I'm definitely not a big fan. >:[ The whole thing makes me mad, frankly. That is just extremely trashy and inappropriate behavior towards a child, and I can't even begin to talk about how awful it is to put soda in a baby bottle - ugh!!! No, I wouldn't say it's technically abusive, like I don't think CPS would take the baby away or anything, but that seriously pisses me off and she's obviously not an ideal caregiver. In my eyes it's abusive, but there's probably nothing anyone can do about it.

 

[DFWRusty]

I kind of agree with the other posters. It's deffinetly not going to get her any votes for granny of the year, but it's not necessarily abusive. I am not a fan of soda with children that young, my sister used to do that. I think it starts bad habbits at a young age. I also feel that cursing and other verbal negativity is not right for a child so young. The baby is just starting to learn emotions, and I dont think that it's good to be learning to "shut up" just yet!

 

[mom2many]

I always think that if it is question, whether or not it is abuse, then it probably isn't and just falls under poor parenting.

Poor kiddo though, what a horrible situation.

 

[Xero]

Other than bad habbits and poor nutrition, there is caffeine in diet coke, you might as well be drugging your kids up IMO.

 

[parentastic]

The child was born 4 months premature and had a few handicaps but she was doing really well, the woman said.

The child was born 4 <I>months</I> premature?

One of my closest friend has a baby that was born 3 months premature, and it was an incredible battle against all odds to get the baby to survive.

Maybe she meant 4 weeks?

 

[Xero]

I didn't even notice that Parentastic lol. Four months is insane. Most hospitals as far as I know wont even try to treat a baby that is under 22 weeks gestational age (it is considered a miscarriage). Four months premature would make the baby around 21 weeks gestational age, technically speaking, although they could have been generalizing since they didn't specify exact weeks. Anyway most babies that early don't make it, sadly. The crazy thing though is that if that baby were actually four months premature, that would make his adjusted age (which you should always go by with preemies) 7 months old.

 

[IADad]

the other part of the puzzle might have something to do with how they calculated a due date....given the picture painted I can't believe there would have been any planning and not much if any pre-natal care...so maybe a due date was engineered for some purpose (like to peg fatherhood on a specific individual or something) and the pregnancy was actually farth along than believed...something like that.

As for the OP, I don't know it's tough. I don't think CPS would have done anything if you reported it, stories like that do make you want to help, but how?

 

[MomoJA]

The child was born 4 <I>months</I> premature?

One of my closest friend has a baby that was born 3 months premature, and it was an incredible battle against all odds to get the baby to survive.

Maybe she meant 4 weeks?

No. She meant 4 months. That doesn't mean her math was correct. She turned out to be a very nice person, but she was completely ignorant. She said the baby was born four months premature, so that made her really like 5 months old, so obviously numbers were not her strength. Someone else said, no, that makes her really like 7 months, and she counted on her fingers and agreed.

The baby definitely was extremely premature. She was blind in one eye and there were obvious physical limitations in one side of her body. I quickly did the math myself and at first thought that 4 months was impossible, but then I remembered babies are born at 5 months and survive. I always thought they would have more limitations than this baby seemed to have, though, so I just assumed she was exaggerating a bit or was off in her numbers. But seven months didn't seem far off because the baby had 4 teeth and there were other things that made me think she was really about that age.

It could also be like IADad said. The mother might have been a month off in her recallections of conception and they stuck with her dates regardless of what the doctor told them. Or, what is probably quite likely, they rounded up in either case. The baby was due on December 1st say, but was born on August 31th, for example. August to December is 4 months, but August 30th to December 1st is really only 3 months.

 

[MomoJA]

While I was still horrified at the way she spoke to the baby, and I cringed every time I heard it, I realized that it was, in part, due to her embarrassment that the baby was disturbing the other patients. I also know that my students grew up in homes where that was the language used. I can't count the number of times one of my students has told me he/she would be much more apt to stop talking out of turn if I would just tell him/her to "Shut the F**k up" rather than ask him/her to be quiet or get back on task, etc. And I remember an Australian friend telling me about a little girl at her school who thought her name was "Shut up, Mary."

Anyway, I decided it was not abuse. But it got me thinking. What if something similar had happened and the person really meant the disdain her words implied. What could you do about it? I don't think there is much you could.

 

[superman]

That person is messed up, as are most people on this planet. Unfortunately u can't tell people how to be a parent, its sad.. but that's life.

 

[Sallyskidshop]

It's not abuse in the ture sense of the word. It is inappropriate giving a little one diet coke which is worse than normal because of the sweetner used in it. I shudder to think about the little one's teeth. Our granddaughter had 14 holes in 10 teeth when she came to us because her mother (my daughter) continually gave her chocolate milk.

This poor woman is obviously under a lot of stress &amp; maybe in the need of outside help so that she can cope.

 

[superman]

It's not abuse in the ture sense of the word. It is inappropriate giving a little one diet coke which is worse than normal because of the sweetner used in it. I shudder to think about the little one's teeth. Our granddaughter had 14 holes in 10 teeth when she came to us because her mother (my daughter) continually gave her chocolate milk.

This poor woman is obviously under a lot of stress &amp; maybe in the need of outside help so that she can cope.

Um.. caffeine for a child is extremely bad but ok

 

[Sallyskidshop]

Of course caffeine is bad for a child. No disagreement with that.

 

[sandra holmes]

I agree, it is not necessarily Abuse.