Day 31 - Everyone has their own "normal"

On April 16 one of the family's whose kids were my responsibility as their CASA were allowed to move back in with the parents on a monitored return which means CPS and I will continue to drop in and see who things are going with the kids and parents.  So I dropped by today and what a mess!  There wasn't a place to step for toys and pillows and who knows what on the living room floor.  I stayed for an hour asking questions of the father who was at home with the children about what they feed the kids for meals and snacks, when they put them to bed at night and for naps, why they have their important papers in the floor for the kids to walk on and write on, why the "candy box" which is a large diaper box is on the table where the kids can get into it any time they want and on and on.  These parents are living for the first time alone with their children and have zero parenting skills obviously since they let the kids go to bed at 10:00 p.m. or whenever (ages 1, 2, 3) and when I would tell him something, he would say, "They didn't tell us that in parenting classes."  And obviously they have had no modeling done for them by their own parents.  So, I have decided to just be the teacher of parenting to these two young kids who instead of learning on their first child how to set up schedules, feed nutritious food, and make the kids learn to put their toys up, are now having to learn it with 3 children underfoot--which makes it triply harder.  I have less than six months to teach them and see a change or the state may get the kids back.  This scenario in a nutshell is what is wrong with our society today!  But I won't give up on them--they are going to learn a new normal--it may not be my normal but hopefully it will be better than their current normal!