Regarding the Walls Family Children

Every child deserves a warm and caring family. These days, many children are left in abused and neglected families that affect their life afterwards. I believe it is the duty of Child Protective Services to give children the best environment in which to succeed and grow, to evaluate the situation and develop plan for the family while their parents demonstrate that they love their children, their shortcomings as parents outweigh their good intentions. In Jeannette Wall’s memoir The Glass Castle, she talks about her childhood and life, her parents Rex and Mary Walls, her two sisters, Lori and Maureen, and her brother Brian. According to her memoir, Walls family is very different from others families. They are free spirited; moving from town to town, experiencing exciting adventures, using different approaches of teaching their kids, while looking for help from others despite their rough life. The Walls family presents a difficult challenge to me, as the family dynamic is such that a case can be made both for and against the removal of the children from the parents' custody, but Rex and Rose Mary Walls have subjected their children to a host of questionable situations as they have moved about the country in a transitory lifestyle that I cannot consider permissible for the development of healthy children. As an agent of CPS I cannot in good conscience recommend that Lori, Jeanette, Brian, and Maureen Walls remain in the custody of their parents. Despite Rex and Rose Mary having demonstrated genuine care for their children, their negligent and occasionally illegal behaviors are what I ultimately use as the basis for my decision. Although Rex and Rose Mary show love and care for their kids, mostly they neglect them, showing irresponsibility and destruction which put the children in dangerous situations. The way Rex showed them his love was when he let them know that he would be always around and they don’t need to worry about anything, when he spent hours telling the kids stories and making them imagine that one day they will invent the glass castle and have a normal life. Rose Mary and Rex encouraged reading and educated the kids which helped them to be ahead of others classmates. (PAR) Rex always makes Jeannette feel special and he always has been inspiration for her. During Christmas when the Walls family did not have money for gifts, Rex presented stars. That shows how intelligent and loving father and teacher he is towards his kids. Jeannette describes the memory with admiration and respect for her father. Although she says, “we had no money at all,” the matter of her voice and lack of regret suggest the minimal effect of her family’s financial struggles as it is quickly overshadowed by this incredible moment (Walls 39). But such obvious affection is not enough to keep the kids with the parents when there are so many situations in which Rex and Rose Mary failed as parents, compromised their safety, and disregarded their needs. The Walls family first came on my radar as a result of a burn injury suffered by young Jeanette when she was just three years old, which resulted in her being, admitted to the hospital (Walls 9). This incident itself is not inherently troubling but for the burn coming as a result of a lack of proper supervision. What troubles me immediately is that Rex Walls removed his daughter from the hospital before she could be fully treated for her injuries and properly discharged. Rex neglected to monitor his daughter properly as she used the kitchen stove, denied her the full extent of her necessary medical care, and fled from town shortly thereafter (PAR)—a behavior that I regret to say is not isolated. Thus began the family's transitory lifestyle, leading eventually to a more permanent residence in Battle Mountain where the family has gone through a series of ups and downs, including the father's issues with binge drinking and gambling. Rex Walls's saving grace, while he is a man certainly not without his faults, is that he has always managed to instill in his children a hope for the future, an excited sense of wonderment, and ambition for something better. For instance, Rex has repeatedly used a dream of one day building a glass castle for his family to live in as a means of bolstering their spirits through the hardships that the family has endured. It is this contrast of poor parenting decisions and good parenting ideals that make him a difficult father to judge. The family spent a long time on the road bouncing from town to town—between Las Vegas, San Francisco, and various other nondescript, small desert towns. Moving frequently and living out of their vehicle, I do not feel as though the children were given adequate opportunity to set down social roots and invest in academics. These two issues are of grave importance to me, as these are circumstances that can stunt a child's development for the rest of his or her life. I fear that this period of time put the children at an academic disadvantage, from which they will have to play catch-up for the rest of their young lives. They need to adapt to (COLL) new dialects which would help them succeed in (COLL) understanding local people. Since, the kids had taught so well form Rex and Rose Mary to read, sometime they are ahead of others in class, trying to fit but always end up pretending they don’t know the material and getting behind. Even more disturbing, though, is that the children were unable to maintain any healthy social relationships during this period of time. Developing children need steady social interaction so that they can learn to navigate the straits and narrows of peer to peer contact; Rex and Rose Mary may have done their children a tremendous disservice by denying them adequate opportunity for this kind of interaction. The most troubling incidents surrounding the Walls family and the parents' failures are almost always issues of absence and neglect rather than active abuse. Jeanette's involvement with a young man named Billy Deel is likely the most grievous issue the family has seen in terms of its potential danger to the children, and presents the strongest case for removing the children from their parents' custody. Billy, a delinquent with a history of violence toward animals, forces Jeanette to be his girlfriend (for want of a more appropriate word when describing the relationships between children). Jeanette accepts without returning his affections until Billy tries to rape her. Jeanette manages to escape the attack only to see Billy break into her family home and assault her and her siblings with a BB gun. The incident culminates in the children retrieving their father's pistol and firing back at Billy. (Walls 81 – 88) Every aspect of this sequence of events is cause for alarm in a CPS officer, but none more so than the presence and use of the pistol. Rex and Rose Mary were not present when Billy broke into the Walls residence, and only later arrived on the scene in the custody of the local police. (Walls 88) With greater parental involvement and support, Jeanette would have been able to reject Billy's advances, which would have given her a greater chance of not being in the position where she was almost raped; had the attempted rape never occurred, it stands to reason that the incident with the pistol would also have never occurred. I cannot condone the presence of a gun in the house with four children—particularly in a manner which allows for the possibility that the children could access it; Mr. Walls needs to attend gun safety courses and must be required to adequately lock up his pistol. Furthermore, the Walls family left town before appearing before the magistrate as they had been ordered: “That night Mom and Dad spent a long time upstairs talking in low voices while we kids lay in our boxes. Finally, late in the evening, they came down, their faces still grave. 'We're going to Phoenix,' Dad said. 'When?' I asked. 'Tonight.'” (Walls 89) This disregard for the law gives me tremendous pause when considering whether or not to remove the children from their parents' custody. The decision to remove children from the care of their parents is never an easy one. As previously mentioned, the Walls parents obviously love their children, but unfortunately love alone is not enough to sway my recommendation in their favor. I realize that the bond between parent and child is one that is important to the child's development, but when the dangers present in their home outweigh the dangers or breaking that bond, CPS must step in and remove the children from their parents' custody. Rex and Rose Mary Walls have neglected their children, endangered them with their absence, and deprived them of the social and educational advantages they need to thrive. It is for these reasons that I must recommend that the children be removed from their parents' care. Furthermore, it is my recommendation that Rex and Rose Mary Walls undergo parenting classes and extensive counseling if they ever hope to regain custody of their children.