Not exactly a sterling display of parenting

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/07/2009 (5959 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We should all be grateful you don’t have to be a Mensa member to be a parent.

But that must give particular comfort to the man at the centre of a CFS custody hearing, a charmless fellow who believes his rights were trampled when his children were seized because he and his ex-wife held white supremacist beliefs.

To say he is as dumb as a sack of hammers is an insult to hammers everywhere.

A kinder person would note that he is dyslexic and suffers from attention deficit disorder; everyone in the courtroom Tuesday afternoon noted he was unable to come up with the ages of the children he is so determined to raise.

His little boy?

"Three or four, I think," he said, brow furrowed. His stepdaughter, the one sent to school with white supremacist markings inked on her body? "She’s eight I think."

We’re talking about two children, not the entire Jon and Kate brood. This shouldn’t be a skill-testing question.

"I’m bad with numbers and stuff," he added.

That much is obvious, as is the fact that this young man seems to wander through life in a fog, unable to reflect on his own upbringing, the tragic events in his life, the effects of the drugs and alcohol he started consuming when he was 12 or even the impact that being set on fire in a schoolyard as a child might have had on him.

"It didn’t bother me too much," he said. "I honestly never thought of it again."

This being the same person who, when asked about his childhood by a psychologist summed things up neatly:

"School sucked. Life sucked. Did drugs."

Tolstoy he’s not.

He had flashes of brilliance, though. When a lawyer questioned him about a website he frequented and referred to it as "www.skinheads.net" he smartly stepped up and corrected him on the web address.

Some things he’s able to remember.

He’s not sure how his stepdaughter was able to tell a social worker the exact address of the website, alternately proposing she was coached or that "she’s very smart."

Takes after the other side of the family, it seems.

He squinted as the lawyer presented him with copies of writings he allegedly posted on the Internet, hateful rants about minorities and the conviction that he is a member of a superior race.

He denied writing some and, in a refrain that was both sad and monotonous, said he couldn’t remember much of the rest.

"It’s too long for me to write," he said of one posting. "I don’t think I ever wrote anything that long in my life."

He had another point:

"If the spelling’s perfect, then I didn’t write it."

If he regains custody of his children, the man has said he’d return to his parents’ home and have them help with the task. This, despite the fact that his own father has testified that neither the young man or his ex-wife are capable of taking care of a cat, never mind children.

Despite being bullied repeatedly as a child, despite being passed from one grade to the next because teachers didn’t want to cope with him, despite the years of alcohol and drug use, he has had no formal counselling.

Not back then and not now when he’s in the fight of his life for the custody of his children.

There were two stints at a drug rehab facility. The first ended when he was kicked out. The second? Well, he says he left after the methadone did its work. His drinking was never addressed.

Because he was at one point a homeless squeegee kid living out of a backpack, he can’t produce the paperwork to prove he was ever at the clinic.

Plenty of people have overcome tragic pasts to lead productive, fulfilling lives. They hold jobs, learn from their mistakes and vow to give their kids better lives.

Plenty more are lousy or indifferent parents and we don’t seize their kids for just that reason.

But if it happened, if the authorities stepped in and took your kids, you think you’d be as prepared as possible to win them back.

Remembering their ages might have been a good start.

lindor.reynolds@freepress.mb.ca