I’m sitting here at my desk trying to put this week’s column together and I keep getting interrupted by phone calls, offense reports, and more mail being piled on my desk. While wondering what topic to talk about this week, I glance and see three reports from Child Protective Services regarding abuse and neglect. I answer the phone and listen to complaints between a mother and son. There is a report of words being exchanged between a couple of inmates that needs to be addressed, and then of course we have the reports of one spouse arriving to pick up the children for visitation and being refused by the other spouse. The list goes on and on, and we deal with it day in and day out, but the question remains, “Why can’t we all just get along? If we could try to just get along a lot of our trials and tribulations would go away. Now I understand that perhaps some of you have tried and it hasn’t worked. But a large percentage of the calls could be eliminated if we just tried to be a little more humane to each other.

In the case of child abuse and neglect, you wanted children, so raise them and don’t abuse them or neglect them. Treat them as a gift from God which they truly are. It’s not the child’s fault you and your husband or wife couldn’t get along, so don’t take your hatred for your ex out on your children. Adults should honor their parents so their days shall be long on this earth. You start disrespecting your parents and troubles are bound to come your way. For those who are separated or divorced, just because you and your spouse can’t get along, don’t use the children as pawns or don’t make them part of your arguments. He’s still the father and she’s still the mother no matter what your relationship with each other happens to be. If we didn’t have to spend a good portion of our time handling these type of cases we’d be more free to work on more important cases. Life’s too short to be angry all the time. Lighten up, forgive each other, and then move on. For those of you who continue to abuse, molest, and neglect children, we have special places for people like you, away from the children so you won’t have the opportunity to harm them anymore. It’s a sad world out there, but it doesn’t have to be if we all just try to get along!