King Briar, on 03 September 2015 - 03:25 AM, said:
Tsundoku, on 03 September 2015 - 02:55 AM, said:
This so much. I saw this on CNN today and broke into tears. Anything involving kids usually do but this was horrible to see on TV
I can't take this anymore. I get mad every headline I see talking about "migrants". As if they were wandering vagrants hopping from country to country for the hell of it. They're refugees, or I don't know what else they are. If freaking ISIS was taking over the town next to yours, would you stay and watch your children be killed or would you pick everything up and run? What else are they supposed to do? This is life or death and all us comfortable Westerners can talk about is "strain on economy/infrastructure". As if any of us are actually in danger of starving to death if we take in some refugees. People are dying on those boats.
I dunno. I mean, maybe I'm just some bleeding heart. Or maybe I have a certain perspective because of where my family came from. I'm Chinese and almost everyone I know in my Chinese circle of friends, including myself, has some story about how their family ended up in Canada, and it usually involves running away from the Japanese during WW2. There's the rare person who had a great-great grandfather who worked the railroad, but mostly, it's running from the Japanese, who, coincidentally, were also pretty famous for torturing, butchering, and enslaving people wherever they went. I have some friends whose families were unfortunate enough to run to Vietnam, then have to run again when war broke out there the next generation. They're as Canadian as anybody else and I will punch anybody who says differently. So many of the people I went to school with, various ethnic backgrounds, left some really crappy situations in the old country, and more often than not, a war. Or some ongoing situation where you just never really know if the house next door is going to get blown up by terrorists or the police/government are so corrupt you never know if they are going to murder you in your sleep or "disappeared", so there might as well be a war. I don't buy the argument that these people come from too alien a culture and will never be able to integrate. People integrate to the extent that they feel accepted. If we're as superior as we like to imply that we are, then we're big enough to do something. Personally, I think we're not superior, just lucky. I'm lucky my grandparents got out alive. Somehow, I feel the need to pay it forward?
And what else is messing with me today? Got a young mother in the office. Her 4 year old just told her that a family member has been touching her inappropriately. I spent the better part of the afternoon on the phone back and forth with Child Protective Services. I felt slightly bad for any other patients I had booked for that day, because honestly, I was just doing the bare minimum to get them helped and kick them out of the office so I could get back to dealing with this. Then 5pm rolled around and I couldn't get in touch with the referral services I wanted. I'm going to have to go back and try again tomorrow. I was told that a local social worker is going to be following up with us in the next day or so. Need to get some exams arranged and paperwork organized and then get the police involved. I've actually never done this before. Fortunately, child abuse of this kind isn't something I see much of. I do see survivors, as adults, but I don't get it much when it is actually happening. I'm so glad I'm not a social worker. I don't think I could deal with this day in and day out.
I can't do anything about the children dying in war and I wish I could. I feel so helpless. But maybe I can help this little girl right now. It's awful that this has happened to her, but I'm trying to take some comfort in the idea that THIS STOPS NOW. CPS is on the case. I'm going to get her in with the pediatricians and child psychologists who know how to deal with this stuff. Gonna get the RCMP involved and we are all going to make sure she's safe from here on in.