'Incorrigible' 10-year-old arrested at mom's insistence(Florida)

St Pete Times ^ | 07/06/2006 | Mallory Simon

[AgThorn]

I was going to ask 'was his name Cartman?' But you beat me to it!! ;-)

[TexasCajun]

The "Village" has let this poor mother & child down.

Where was the "Village" support?

[blueminnesota]

But was he from a single parent household???

/s

[coconutt2000]

I shudder to think what the kid will learn and who he'll meet in a juvenile detention center.

It would've been better to send the kid to work on a plantation in Cuba.

[Zeppelin]

haha...duly noted...

you will respect my authoritah!

[madprof98]

Children need a mother AND a father.

I haven't read the posts following this, but the ones that came before already branded this viewpoint insensitive or worse. It's perfectly all right--even on a "conservative" forum--to blame children's problems on mental illness, but it's absolutely forbidden to hint that poor parenting (or no parenting at all) might really be to blame.

[NinoFan]

She has failed to discipline him and let this escalate now the nanny state is expected to do the job!

Where does it say she failed to discipline him? I imagine she's done all of the usual - time outs, butt whoopings, etc., but what do you do once your kid becomes a criminal? You call the police, no?

[ahayes]

If he's really sociopathic, that won't help.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Older sister Rhoda has already been removed from the home: ('The Bad Seed' cult classic in case you don't know.)

[GovernmentShrinker]

I think she did a smart thing. She literally couldn't keep him from doing serious harm to others, or from stealing and vandalizing all over the neighborhood, without doing things that would get her arrested and result in BOTH her kids ending up in foster care. Used to be that parents could keep kids like this locked up 24/7 if need be, and give them good sound whuppings too. Can't do that anymore.

A few years back there was a family (two parents) in New Jersey who had begged the juvenile justice system and mental health system to take their son and lock him up, because they just couldn't handle him. He was about 12 IIRC, and his behavior had gone sour after he'd been molested by an adult man. But the authorities refused to take the kid. Of course AFTER he murdered a much younger boy, THEN the authorities took him.

This mother wants to avoid that. Good for her. This kid may be hopelessly mentally ill, but if there's any hope for him, he urgently needs to learn that he cannot be part of a family or free community if he behaves the way he has been.

[GovernmentShrinker]

But apparently the other kid, just one year older, is doing okay.

[TheDon]

see post 36

[TheDon]

see post 36

[Niteranger68]

Police were originally uneasy about arresting the boy, who will be a fourth-grader this year. But New Port Richey Lt. Jeffrey Harrington said the mother insisted. They charged him with armed burglary.

WTF???

[mtbopfuyn]

This won't be the last we see of him in some form of government detention.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.

[Froufrou]

And she's right to protect herself since she has another son depending on her. She has to show sequence of events and that she's made every attempt to do the right thing. I just worry about the boy being placed in foster care or going home after his month is up. Either way, I'd be surprised if he suddenly stops acting out.

[NinoFan]

My thoughts exactly. This isn't the first time the kid has participated in a crime either. No one would press charges then.

[JavaTheHutt]

To be honest, I'm in amazement at a lot of the comments on here. A large portion of these comments are berating this woman for being a single parent. The article doesn't mention the father, so we can all be pretty safe in assuming that she IS a single parent, but we don't know the circumstances behind it.

Everyone here making comments about her being a single parent and using your little /sarcasm tag need to chill out. We don't know, maybe her husband was abusive, and she had to leave him. Maybe he was abusive to the kids. Maybe he was a perfect husband and father, who happened to be killed by a drunk driver while out shopping for Christmas presents for his family.

I wish all these judgemental people would share with the rest of us the extra information they have which enables them to pass judgement on this woman the way they are doing.

[technochick99]

If the boy is a sociopath or psychotic, it wouldn't matter how good a mother the woman is.

Bears repeating.

[rintense]

I wish all these judgemental people would share with the rest of us the extra information they have which enables them to pass judgement on this woman the way they are doing.

You haven't been around FR very long, have you? Threads like these draw the usual suspects, all ready to draw conclusions without having relevant info.