Two children rescued from abuse

As reported in this article, two children - a boy and a girl - who were bound with plastic zip ties, and gagged with masking tape by their step-mother, were rescued by police in Bonney Lake, a suburb in Pierce County, who then arrested the step-mother, and later the childrens father. Why were the children bound with zip ties - commonly used to hold bundles of cables together - and gagged with masking tape? Because they were "unruly", as later updated reports stated.

Unruly? Unruly? And for that, they get bound and gagged, and put out in a garage in 40 and 50 degree temperatures, the boy only wearing underwear, and the girl only wearing a thin dress?! That's outrageous!

Let me clue you all in to one important fact of life. Children will be unruly - that's their job! The parents job is to not only channel the energy that children have into positive outlets, but to allow them to be children!

A parents job is not to stifle a child's "unruliness", but to encourage the child to find ways of expressing themselves as a child. Do I mean that there should be little to no structure imposed by the parents on a child? Certainly not, as pure chaos would ensue, which would be detrimental to both the parents and the child. There absolutely needs to be structure in a childs life, but at the same time, I feel that the child needs to be free within that structure to be a child.

Too many adults these days are unable to cope with the day to day stresses of every day life, and when you throw a child into the mix, they become overwhelmed, and can see only one solution - control the one element in their life that has posed the most complications, and that is the child, or children. And to do that, they often resort to abuse, taking their frustrations in life out on the most vulnerable, the child.

I don't know what was going on in this couples life before they were found to have been abusing these children, nor do I claim to have all the answers for the problems they faced. However, I do know that the solution to their problems does not lie in abusing their children. I hope they get the book thrown at them.