Well, to be honest it did take a lot of convincing from me to whomever I was speaking with. She told me that although everything I was saying was concerning, the only thing I had said that would allow them to investigate was the fact that the children were running around unsupervised (they were all between 2-6 years old). It was super frustrating to hear that me telling her these kids were coming over to my house asking me for food wasn’t enough.

Those poor kids...theyd come over and ask me if I had any food, I was a broke student so I didn’t have much. I remember giving them a bag of baby carrots because that’s all I really had and they scarfed them down. Seeing a bunch of kids super excited to eat carrots was the nail in the coffin for me and resulted in me falling CPS. Unfortunately I’m not sure what CPS found but it wasn’t enough because the kids all stayed there.

After that they would come to me for help with homework, and one time the three year old stepped on a board with a rusty nail that went right through her little foot. I took her to her house and her parents were so drunk they didn’t give a fuck. I took her back to my house and cleaned up her foot the best I could. I’ll never forget trying to get those parents attention and asking if she had her tetanus shot and them just not even registering I was in their house holding their three year old. And then they let me, someone they didn’t even know, take their child to my house to do god knows what (I obviously just cleaned and bandaged her foot but they didn’t know that!!).

I was so glad CPS came and really frustrated when they couldn’t do anything further. I know the standard for abuse is high and really the last thing CPS wants to do is take kids away from their mother because it could always be worse somewhere else (like a foster home), but damn.