How Unstable Parents Hurt Kids

Kansas mom Odalis Sharp this week lost permanent custody of seven of her 10 children after they leveled disturbing accusations of physical and mental abuse against her.

The kids were frightened, beaten, slapped. The sad case illustrates just how vulnerable children are to emotional and mental instability in their parents.

“A foster family will say, ‘I just can’t meet this child’s needs anymore,'” said one policy expert.

These Midwestern children will now join an over-burdened foster care system that is the recipient of more and more wounded and scarred children like them — all cared for at taxpayer expense.

“The breakdown of the traditional family leaves some parents who aren’t stable with nothing to model — nothing to aim for,” said one Boston mother of four. “Parents are working harder than ever, but can’t afford therapy or other services that might be supportive. People may laugh at an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ ideal, but you can’t say children weren’t cared for in that scenario.”

The Sharp family became notorious this past January. Known as the Sharp Family Singers, they headed west to Oregon to perform their gospel music for armed occupiers Ammon and Ryan Bundy, who were holed up in Malheur National Forest after seizing control of a federal park building.

In May, the state was given temporary custody of those Sharp children under age 18 who still lived with their mother (the other three children are over 18). The children told the judge of beatings with metal rods, and how they had to remove the family guns from the home after their mother’s cruelty to them worsened. In April, five of the Sharp children ran away, frightened by their mother’s erratic behavior.

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This week, their vivid examples of mental and physical cruelty were enough for the judge to order the kids to remain in state custody.

The mother’s instability has caused these siblings to lose their home and their sense of security — something that is all-too-commonplace in today’s fractured society. A child who is constantly vulnerable to a parent’s emotional and/or mental instability suffers problems ranging from anxiety, depression, behavioral and social problems — even learning issues.

“The intense and dramatically fluctuating moods of the emotionally unstable parent permeate and dominate the household and can overwhelm the child, particularly when the emotions the parent is expressing are destructive ones, such as hatred or suicidal despair,” psychologist Mark Hosier told Childhoodtraumarecovery.com.

“The child can be made to feel trepidatious, anxious or fearful, never knowing what to expect … A lack of control over one’s emotions is sometimes referred to as emotional dysregulation,” he continued.

Sadly, almost half a million children are in foster care in the U.S. today, and their problems are increasingly serious, mirroring the increasingly unfortunate state of many American families. In June, the Texas foster care system was so stressed that 16 displaced children had to sleep in Child Protective Service offices, according to The Dallas Morning News. There were no foster families or residential care facilities to take them in.

Related: The Hidden Risks of Foster Care

That was on the heels of the removal of children in January from several residential treatment centers run by Children’s Hope, a non-profit operating in Lubbock and Levelland, Texas, after reports of broken toilets, strong urine smells, and even injuries to children surfaced.

Texas is so dependent on each foster care residential center currently under contract that licensing officials have to think twice before shutting them down, The Morning News reported.

“Our state’s case worker turnover rate also almost tripled to 57 percent — we lost those who were our first responders,” Dimple Patel told LifeZette. He is a senior policy analyst with TexProtects, an organization working to reduce and eliminate child abuse and neglect.

“Many case workers were overwhelmed, or just realized the job is not for them. They leave behind a workload that gets re-appropriated, and the cycle continues.”

“The breakdown of the traditional family leaves some parents who have nothing to model — nothing to aim for,” said one mom.

Patel continued, “It’s not Texas’ basic and moderate kids that we’re having trouble placing — it’s our special needs kids, and we have more and more of those. By special needs, I mean those who have behavioral and emotional problems that need a more intensive level of care. We have more each year — and kids are getting worse in foster care, not better. We are looking for ways to actively help them get better. The longer they stay in care, the deeper their problems become emotionally.”

Many families just can’t take the pressure and responsibility of caring for a special needs foster child.

“A foster family may eventually say, ‘I just can’t meet this child’s needs anymore,'” said Patel. “Perhaps originally the child came in at basic level of need, but with all the original trauma of being abused or neglected combined with losing their family and perhaps even their siblings, they only worsen, emotionally. What we really like to see is more of a one-on-one family situation for the child, rather than residential treatment.”

The numbers of children needing care and placement is rising in America — not declining.

“We’ve seen more kids coming in this past year than ever,” Patel noted. “It’s hard to find a relative who is willing to take that child, and it’s hard to get that relative the support they need, as well.”

Families don’t need to be perfect — this is, of course, an impossibility. But they need to reach out for help when problems first surface.

“Healthy families are not problem-free; they just admit to problems and get the help they need to solve them,” Kay Kuzma, a child development expert, noted in Appleseeds.org, a Franciscan University website. “The longer a problem drags on without a solution, the more discouraging family life becomes. Do not allow this to happen.”