‘NO CHILD POVERTY’, said the keyboard warriors in response to the Herald & Northern Advocate article.
Our AngelMama T responded:
Have you ever had to choose between a deodorant or bread and milk?
I wonder if you all have electricity and running water.
I wonder if you live in fear, survival mode or unresolved trauma.
Here’s the thing: we work with good people who love their children and want the best for them. Yes, sometimes we work with some who are making poor choices – because they’re stuck in a cycle of hopelessness or just don’t know how to make different choices.
Anyone meet the family living in the cowshed? The one we gave the op shop curtains to so the teen girl could section off a part for privacy?
Has anyone met the teen mum living in a container with a butane gas cooker for heat, and she’s still trying to get her NCEA?
How many of you know the dad with terminal cancer and his disabled teen and three other kiddos? Mum keeps their garage house clean and tidy, but they can’t afford the trip to the nearest laundromat and the rain turns the whole driveway slope into a mud bath. No electricity. The only light is with the garage door open and a small side window. That’ll be awesome this weekend. Water is collected from the nearby creek sometimes because the plastic tank is cracked. Debt piled up with some bad choices a while ago.
I’ve made mistakes and had to navigate out of them too. I wonder if you have?
My privilege means my family could help when it got really bad for me.
Rent, power, and fuel clean out the weekly income. The cheapest food is the unhealthy stuff. Blaming parents for poor choices is easy and convenient…but what is the real problem? Let’s look at that before we judge.
Sometimes our mums and dads (and kids) are struggling with mental health – and they don’t even know it because it’s so ‘normal’ to feel that hopeless and anxious. They do the best they can with what they’ve got.
I have had mental health problems. I know what it’s like to be unable to function, to self-medicate to stop the pain and the noise in my head. I know how debilitating it can be when stress overwhelms you. Sometimes addiction creeps up and the fear is encompassing – both using AND contemplating not using! If you’ve been there and survived, you know.
Sometimes they’re 100% protecting their children. They’ve left an unhealthy relationship with nothing but what they have on. It’s not easy to start again from less than nothing. Try doing that whilst raising traumatised kids and living in a new town with no support network.
Sometimes they’ve been lured by unethical credit contracts with a car that is a lemon, and they can’t afford repairs whilst the interest keeps piling up. Maybe they don’t have your smart dad or cool aunty to help with that stuff. (And no car in Northland means no access to things most of us take for granted.)
Sometimes they’re both working for shonky companies who don’t have them on employment agreements (unlawfully?), so they’re on less than minimum wage with no guaranteed hours, no holiday pay, and no KS or ACC. They can’t afford rent, food, heating, shoes and fuel.
I know if you don’t see it, you don’t understand.
Maybe if you don’t understand, you could get curious instead of judging?
Maybe you could donate a blanket, a hot water bottle, a pack of new undies, gumboots or a raincoat for a kid.
We work with social services and other agencies who can give some additional advice and navigate them to other support services. They know who to give those blankets and gumboots to.