Under the United Nations' Convention on the rights of the child, the child below the age of 18, is considered by its own right an individual human being, unless stated otherwise in the law applicable to the child. By its own right a child should be recognized for the full and harmonious development of their personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding brought up in the spirit of the ideals proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations. What are these ideals? When does the right of the Parents end and when the right of the child begin?
It is clear in Article 2 that the family is important to the development of the child regardless of the parents' race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national, ethnic or social origin, property, disability, birth or other status. It repeated itself clearly that the child is protected from such all forms of discrimination or punishment on the basis of the status, activities, expressed opinions, or beliefs of the child's parents, legal guardians, or family members. It continues on from Article 3 how important the child's family is regarding their well-being and development; as it is within their right whether undertaken by public or private social welfare institutions, courts of law, administrative authorities or legislative bodies.
In other words, leave the gay parents alone. They have every right to raise a child as much as any of us. In Article 5, it goes to show how serious they are about the rights and duties of the parents to be fully respected in regards to the well-being of the child. If the child is breaking the law, how does one bring the child to justice? What kind of discipline is accepted? To what extent should the government come into play the authoritative figure above the parents? Article 9 addresses the concern of these aforementioned questions. If there are any signs of abuse or neglect, the child and all interested parties shall be given an opportunity to participate in the proceedings and make their views known. As we all know, children can be melodramatic about their experiences especially when they do not get what they want when they want it.
How does one determine signs of abuse and neglect? When a parent causes irreparable harm to the child. What examples of circumstances can be used to describe such harm? To what degree corporeal punishment becomes abusive? At what point should corporeal punishment stop? My parents stopped when I was 14. My aunt stopped when my cousin was 4. There are not set examples. The development of each child is different. My husband and I decided to stop since we realized the corporeal punishment of her consequences made little to no difference in changing her insolent behavior towards rules and regulations; both private and public.
How does one measure abandonment? Is leaving your child to independently work on their own responsibilities considered a form of abandonment? How much time of supervision does a toddler need or an adolescent compared to a juvenile? I had to take a lot of responsibility at the age of 7 since I was the eldest of 4 children. Being scolded for not living up to that responsibility caused a lot of stress and deprived childhood. Being a mother of an only child is not as easy as it looks either; especially a child as stubborn as a mule.
Can any child under the age of 18 be capable of forming their own views in a perceptive and orchestrated concept of their well-being? How is maturity measured by the law? Society has made it clear that if any one does not follow the law, they are thereby tried and punished according to their age and maturity. Does the law enforce this decree? Not all the time. Many innocent people have been hung, executed or dismembered from society for life. A young boy was arrested and sent to the juvenile facility because the cops found a gun on his hand. Consequential evidence should not even exist. No one should ever gamble the life of a person regardless of their age. Sure, it was evident that the young boy is by ethnicity a black person in a bad neighborhood where gang life thrives, but the circumstance of his position at the crime scene had no bearing. No questions were asked. The young boy served his time. He was already labelled a possible criminal and a juvenile delinquent even before he could say what had happened on that day. He wrote in his journal that his friend found his father's gun and wanted to show him how to shoot it. Before he could even stop his friend, it was too late. The gun fired at the hand of his own friend. He sat there stunned. What could he possibly do? The cops were obviously racist. They did not bother calling the parents. They just arrested the young boy on the spot. Could his mother have done something about it? Yes. Why didn't she? She assumed he was dead on the streets. It was too common not to assume otherwise. How could she have known? No one notified her. By the time the news reached that her son was arrested, it was too late to do anything. The papers were filed. This young boy I am referring to, was a story based on the book The Freedom Writers Diary by teacher Erin Gruwell.
How many cases of children were taken away from their home because the authorities "assume" their parents were not fulfilling their duties? How many children suffered from bad foster homes? When will there be a better understanding of the importance of the family in the child's life? How many authoritative figures of society are married with children? Article 13 raises a lot of these questions.
My daughter certainly was allowed this right - the freedom to express her views. Were these views even true or substantially evident? Was there anything I could have done differently? For the first 3 years of her life, I showed her the concept of responsibility. The rules and regulations she had to abide by. She followed them flawlessly despite the reservation her father had with such independence and little supervision. In reality, I was there by her side 100%. As toddler, she needed that security, but as a growing and developing child she had to learn the vital importance of self-responsibility. From the first step to the first run after crawling on the floor for quite sometime. During my service in the military at the time of Operation Noble Eagle and Enduring Freedom, her father assured me he knew what he was doing. To my greatest of horror, he had left her in her dirty diapers for almost 4 hours without changing. I did the best I could to sacrifice my time to be there for my daughter as a double-rolled parent. Considering the situation I was in, I took my daughter's well-being in consideration in mind. My fatigued well-being due to the stress her father was inflicting on me was not doing her any favor. I left. Within a month or so, I took primary custody. Whether or not she felt angry, frustrated, unforgiving about what had happened during the divorce, the circumstance of it all gave us little to no chance of expressing our views freely. There were legal procedures that had to be followed.
Now faced with the dilemma of her uncontrolled behavior of unforgiving nomenclature of her desire for wanting everything under the sun, has left us impaled with the bravado of a spoiled brat. I did not raise her to believe that she could have everything under the sun by whatever means necessary. I raised her to be grateful for what she has. She was far more privileged as a child than I was. I never had a TV in my room. Let alone a gaming console and a video player. I had a radio, but not a sound system. Yet, with all these things, she managed to render these devices nonfunctional. I had that radio until college. I already told her that comparing my life to hers and vice-verse is rudimentary unfair by any circumstances.
No matter how much we tried to convince her that her behavior will lead her to an unpleasant journey in the long run, she managed to find herself in the hands of the social authority, we have no control over. Awaiting her return home would only lead to one question: What does she really want in her life?
Article 15 and 16 also raises a concern. She associates herself with other children who inflict, cohere and impose pain, threat and suffering on other children; peers and/or younger. Yet in conflicted aspects of herself when she is treated the same way. She understands the logical thought of her actions, yet compels herself to defy this logic. To what degree can a parent do to act upon such a destructive behavior? Her school authorities expressed their concern regarding her behavior. We have considered their suggestions. We worked together to get her to understand the concept of acceptable social mannerisms. We are now at the mercy of the government. The ruling of such a minor of continuous defiance against authority is left to questioning her rather than the parents. How does she really feel about all this? How much does she place worth to her life?
I am in due part to Article 18. As a parent, I have the right to make sure the well-being of my child is considered. Her basic needs are met. Her development has been catered to follow the rules and regulations at home, school and public places. Whatever it is she feels at this moment, does not meet her need. Whatever those needs are, have been proven to be dangerous, destructive and causes much for concern. We, as parents, have done our duties to provide, guide, discipline and instruct the importance of a responsible citizen of society in part to her well-being and development as an individual child. Until this point, we are rendered accountable to her now defiant nature to society regardless of our positive reinforcement of encouragement, self-esteem, self-worth and self-responsibility. We do not understand the nature of her ideals. Her ideals as expressed, "Life is not fair because I'm not get what I want when I want it." In part to this statement, she has beguiled anyone and everyone she deserves to acquire, express, culminate such desires in her undertaking and control without labor, earnings or being rewarded appropriately for such aforementioned needs.
There is no evidence of such abuse or neglect as stated in Article 19, 33 or 34 at our home. She treats her stepfather as her own. She spends more time with him than she does with me. I have taken every opportunity to spend most of my time with her. I let her read beside me while I knit. I take her to school every morning. I even took my time to get out of bed to make sure she takes her breakfast and packs a full meal. She was given all this freedom well over 2 years ago; if not more than that said period. She seems to believe that if she gives enough people into difficult situations to a point of surrender, she can get away with doing whatever it is she wants with everything, which includes lying, stealing, and cheating. If it does get to a point where she has violated the public rules and safety of society, my only hope is that Article 40 is in part and consideration in the constitution and bills of rights in the US state government.
This is an interesting revelation that a juvenile with such a mentality could exist among good-nature adults in society. What social authority as stated in Article 20 provide such a protection of a child such as this? As a parent of this said child, I have every right to exercise my freedom of expression to the aforementioned social authority in regards to the well-being of my child. Regardless of what they evaluate and observe, I would have a better grasp of the home environment than my child; not because I am the parent, but because I am the involving party of the family - not the aforementioned authority. Are they going to require a law that would allow such an authority to invade the privacy of the home?
As we all know, the U.S. government is run by national corporations, thereby rendering Article 23 a threat to their economy. It would be nice to be provided services to my child for free - if she is found evidently mentally disabled. I never would thought my childhood considered a mental health issue until now. I am a partially dyslexic pyromaniac with historical hereditary of depression, anxiety disorder, dementia and Munchausen syndrome both from maternal and paternal parents dating back to my great-great-grand parents. My parents seem to have managed us well without other parties outside the family involved. Have we succumbed to the social normality that medicine is the only cure to childhood exploration and experience?
It is my right as a parent to ensure that all these articles written in this convention be revised with caution. The family of each individual child is and cannot be fashioned into one standard ruling. Every home has it's purpose and function for each individual child. I cannot speak for all parents. I speak for my right. My right as a parent of my daughter is to make sure that she understands her place at home, at school and in public. Regardless of her defiance towards authority, she would have to realize that on her own time; as stated in the aforementioned convention. As a parent, it is my right to be provided the services rendered without cause of financial and social grief and stress my daughter has already bestowed upon us in regards to her development and well-being. I've been charged to pay at least, if not more than $14700.00 of medical fees all because she wants to attract attention that she's not getting what she wants when she wants it via stealing, lying and cheating. If anything, there should be at least some breathing room for parents to be given a choice if they do not have the financial and health insurance means to do so whether or not their child should be in custody of such institutions.
I do hope that the psychologist is wise enough to recognize the manipulation power of this child and be forgiven such a debt on the service that was never necessary to begin with. As a parent, it is also my right to ensure that if this is a medical concern, that my child be taken care of and funded by family to whom we see suitable to our family's needs based on my child's development and well-being. I do hope in part of all of this bravado, lessons will be learned and mistakes not be repeated.
In conclusion, the Rights of the parents end when there is complete and full investigated evidence of abuse and neglect and the Rights of the child begins when such an event happens. In my case, this is not applicable to my child or my family's concern of my child's development and well-being. Just because a child is exercising its right to explore the world to experience it without supervision, doesn't mean bad parenting is involved. It's just an act that she is being a spoiled brat even though there is no evidence of such upbringing at our home.
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