I have to admit, this post wasn't on my "To Do" list for today. But, I've had a couple of weeks of being overwhelmed by what's going on in the world.
Do you ever get that way? You watch and read and hear all of the horrible happenings in the world and it starts to get you down? You feel it pressing down on you and pressing down on you until you feel like you can no longer breathe? And, you want to do something to change what's going on but you just end up getting overwhelmed and feeling hopeless and wondering what's going to be left for our young people?
That's where I've been.
So, when I got up this morning and saw the headline "Special education teacher puts student in trash can" it was just... enough.
Apparently a special education teacher in Georgia was annoyed when an autistic student was upset about coming in from outside. According to MyFoxAtlanta.com:
The warrant says the child was 'screaming and wouldn't calm down.' Police say Mary Katherine Pursley, who wasn't assigned to ASP, came inside and told the boy about Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street.
The warrant states she told the boy 'if he had trashy behavior like Oscar, he'd go to the trash can.'
She then allegedly picked up the child, held him upside down, and put him into the trash can (head first) to his shoulders -- like she was going to throw him away -- all the while the child was crying and begging for her to stop.
Wow.
Take a moment and let that sink in -- a woman who works with special needs kids was so annoyed when a child displayed special needs behavior -- or behavior of many little kids who wouldn't want to stop playing -- that she put him in the trash. How confusing was that for the child? How scary? How will this effect the kid in his future?
And then, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, this popped up on my Facebook page:
"The man who found [the boy] in the dumpster Wednesday said he was cleaning out his car when he heard a noise. 'I went and looked on the inside the dumpster and I seen a little hand with an empty water bottle moving,' said the man who didn't want to be identified."
You guys, someone threw away an 11 month old little boy. Literally. In the trash. They gave this baby a bottled water and placed him inside of a dumpster where we put banana peels, empty beer cans and used sanitary napkins. This child was no more important than yesterday's used newspapers and some leftover fast food french fries.
So, this is what we've come to in our lives today -- stuffing unhappy kids in a trash can to shut them up and disposing of a toddler in a dumpster?
I wish I had a nice little bow to tie up this post -- some profound moment or insight that would make everything better, but I don't. We're throwing children away like trash and there's nothing that I can say to change that fact.
Shame on us.
A version of this post appeared on PrimeParentsClub.com. Follow Prime Parents Club on Twitter and Facebook.