Editor’s note: As letter writers (and those who read the guidelines in the gray box below) are well aware, we nearly always require writers to identify themselves for publication on The New Era’s opinion page. However, given the situation described below and the fact that identifying this writer could further complicate an already diffcult situation, we have decided not to identify him, except to say he is a local resident with whom we are familiar. Also, what he describes are concerns we’ve heard voiced by others in our community, certainly not unique to this writer alone.
By Grandpa
I woke up today not the same person I was three years ago.
Then, I believed in our society’s ability to function for the people.
In 2020, at the age of 71 years, I had a lifetime of trusting in our system. I believed in our country. I believed in the public agencies established to protect and guide us.
I believed in our police and our courts. Our society and its agencies valued our youth as its most precious asset.
Today, alongside the life of my 13 year-old granddaughter, my old beliefs are shattered.The message read: “I will only come home if you promise to let me do anything I want to!”
This text message appeared on my daughter’s phone around the middle of September. At this time, my granddaughter had been gone from home for about two weeks. This was not the first time she had run away from home, and it would not be the last.
She had already spent a significant part of the year on the streets. Sometimes staying with friends, and sometimes fending for herself, alone and zoned out on drugs, alcohol, or both.
My daughter asked me, “How can a mother respond to that?”
My granddaughter’s demands were extraordinary and not of the sort that a mother could agree to.
I didn’t know how to answer her question. To be clear, we are talking about a 13-year-old girl. Should we promise her anything just to get her home? Should we trick her? Should we say we want her home, but not under those conditions?
A week later following that text message, my granddaughter said she was coming home, but she never showed.
Instead, she posted a picture of $105 cash. Both my mind and my heart don’t want to go into that dark place where I imagine where the money came from.
Trying to make sense of this, I looked back in time to March 12, 2020, when Gov. Kate Brown announced the closing of all public schools, due to the rising concern over COVID-19.
Many could foretell and did voice concern over the storm clouds on the horizon, but no one could forecast the collateral damage the storm would inflict. We now can see that the damage has not only been to our local communities, but to the entire world.
Suddenly, thousands of families faced an unprecedented situation. Their children were home 24/7. This not only created havoc and anxiety for young people and school aged children, but working parents now had to ensure their children were keeping up with their schoolwork while trying to manage their own changing work environments and expectations. Not surprisingly, schools were caught unprepared for a pandemic and were as confused as parents.
There was not much support from the school system which was figuring it out in real time – just like the rest of us. Suddenly, students ages 4 to 18 were mostly on their own to keep up with their schoolwork and to manage and complete assignments. Overnight, social interaction among peers was non-existent and was replaced by a previously and largely unexperienced type f boredom. It was a soul-sucking boredom that dominated the life of our children.
At the same time my granddaughter was trying to make sense of this, her mom was working, trying to provide a living for the two of them. It was a situation ripe for personal torment – a 13 year-old girl alone at home, with no supervision and newly changing hormones.
To add to this surging storm, my granddaughter found out her father was going to jail for three years. In a drug- and alcohol-fueled episode, her father took to the streets near his home in a Eugene suburb and proceeded to shoot up the neighborhood, hitting houses and cars. He and my daughter went their separate ways when my granddaughter was about 3½ years of age.
Around Christmastime 2021, even though he is her biological father, he began telling her that he really wasn’t her dad.
It was an emotionally and psychologically disruptive narrative, and regardless of its lack of origin in truth, it was not the thing that my granddaughter needed to repeatedly hear from the only father she had ever known.
Beginning in early 2022, and continuing to the present time, my granddaughter’s behavior has alarmed all who love and care for her. In this time span her mother and family witnessed her exhibit many extreme mood swings and behaviors. Depression, antisocial behavior, talk of suicide, cutting and acts of violence were some of the telltale signs of a disturbed and struggling young girl.
In April of this year, my granddaughter ran away and began spending weeks away from home. During this time, she lived on the streets, sometimes alone and sometimes with her new “friends.” A timeline of some of her misadventures include:
April: Caught shoplifting $90 worth of cosmetics from a major chain store in Eugene. The store made this problem go away by giving my daughter the option to pay a store fine of $200, plus the cost of the merchandise, to avoid involving the police.
July and August: Arrested twice for trespassing in the early morning hours. On one occasion, after issuing my granddaughter a citation, the police released her, a 13-year-old child, into her own protection. My daughter was not contacted about this incident.
One night, when my granddaughter had already been gone for a couple of weeks, my daughter and her fiancé found her in a park. My granddaughter refused to talk and bolted, fearing for her safety, my daughter tackled her in an attempt to keep her from running off.
My granddaughter then pulled a knife. During the struggle, she gave her mother a black eye. The police were called.
The police offered my daughter two options: (1) They could take my granddaughter to juvenile detention, where she could only be held for 15 minutes; (2) they could take her to the hospital where she would be examined only if she asked for an examination.
My daughter chose the hospital.
My granddaughter eventually had a court hearing on the trespassing charges. She was sentenced to eight hours of community service. She again ran away and failed to complete or even show up for her community service.
September: On the 26th of September, she showed up at a Eugene high school and proceeded to beat up a female studentThe victim’s parents filed charges resulting in the arrest of my granddaughter.
At that point she was taken to juvenile detention and held – for longer than 15 minutes. Three weeks later she is still there. This is not where I imagine any family would want to see their children, but as a family we have discovered this is where we feel she is safest.
How did we get to this point?
Looking back to April, I can see where my previous understanding of how our protective systems work and my trust in them began to unravel.
My granddaughter’s choices clearly placed her and others in danger; so much so that my daughter needed the assistance and support of her city’s helping agencies. It has been startling to learn just how little assistance was initially provided.
I am relieved and grateful to share that now that my granddaughter is being held in a detention program, she is receiving counseling and has the guidance of a parole officer. But I can’t help but wonder what might have been averted if more active help had been provided back in April. It was disheartening to learn that police cited my 13-year-old granddaughter in a city park in thevery early hours of the morning and did not contact her mother and bring her home.
There were other times that my daughter reported my granddaughter as a runaway.
On one occasion the police responded hours later banging on the door at 10:30 p.m. and on another occasion at 3:30 in the morning. When my granddaughter failed to show up for her assigned community service, there was no follow up by the court system.
There were a few counseling sessions but once my granddaughter decided it wasn’t helping that was that – there were no means to make her go.
The courts don’t seem to be exercising their authority. And for youths who are making poor life choices this can have devastating consequences.
Holding young people accountable to the legal consequences of their actions is in itself an act of accountability to society as a whole.
With the courts seemingly unable to act responsibly it is even more disheartening to see that parents have no real authority to get the help they need. The children know they can operate as they wish in a system that is too busy, lacks resources, or just doesn’t care enough to hold them accountable and to ask more of them as individuals.
They have no reason and zero incentive to change their ways.It required a violent incident, but at last we are seeing some positive action by the authorities.
On Oct. 7, my granddaughter went before a judge. We have had the opportunity to speak with several counselors who are curious and interested to understand the situation and to determine the best means to get my granddaughter some of the help and counselling she desperately needs.
We are still on the long road, but positive and hopeful things are happening. And we are grateful for the help.
There will be opinions. I have just shared how my own opinions have been shaped by recent experience. If one wants to, there are many places to point fingers: parents, grandparents, police, caseworkers (or lack of), and my granddaughter.
I don’t want to do that. I want to start a conversation because if this happened to us and to our precious daughter, grandchild, niece and cousin, it means it is happening to others.
Why has it been, in our experience, next to impossible to get more active help sooner than we did? Why were my daughter’s hands tied? How does one exercise parental authority over a young teenager and receive support from the community?
How can we receive and provide the support needed for our children when the choices they make are endangering their lives?