As a parent of a ten year old boy, I've done my research over the last few years as my son has gotten closer to puberty; Both through the web and through family members in many job facets and their experiences that have consistantly told me his behavior is normal. Psychologists, teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles; They all tell me that for a boy of his age, not caring about his hygiene is normal. Given my own experiences with myself and my brother, I can truthfully say that it's not just boys, it's all children. Psychologist's blogs, parental help web pages, and even published books site that it is normal for a child to go through this phase for an undetermined length of time, usually through the begining of their teenage years; However, this can start as early as 9 years old.
My family tries their best to make sure that he gets clean. He takes a bath every other day, if not every day on those days that my nose says he needs it. I do his laundry and make sure that he has clean clothes to wear. Given the chance to make the decision himself, my son would wear the same clothes day in and day out if I didn't catch him. As much as I would love to hover over my son every second of the day, I'm trying to teach him independance and good decision making skills. There are times (and more often the older he gets) where I give him the chance to choose what he wants and take the concequences. He realizes that some of his problems at school are due to his hygiene and while I point this out to him, it just seems to frustrait him all the more when 'mom is right.'
On top of this, his biological father's mother (Grandma) just died of ALS and he's started acting out. He visits his dad every summer back east and it was really hard on him to see her wasting away. So right now everything is so much more dramatic and hard to deal with.
Twice now, through what I believe to be ignorance on the part of the school and CPS, I have had a worker come to my home and tell me that she/he is there because my son is not wearing clean clothes to school and that they are too small. That afternoon my son comes home and just like every other afternoon, he usually has a few stains on clothing due to lunch or from recess, or even from some art project that the class is working on. The only piece of clothing that is too small is his favorite flannel shirt that used to belong to my fiancée. He is a boy! Grass, food, and paint stains happen. As I stated, there are times when he does where the same pants or shirt to school; And as stated before, I have been told by numerous sources that this is normal child behavior.
I had been in contact with the school since the begining of the year letting them know what was going on with his grandmother and that I know there is a hygiene problem. I asked for them to help me work with him. Instead of doing this, however, the messages never got to the proper people; In fact, the school counciler never even knew that there was a family illness nor was she informed when his grandmother died. I didn't even know there was a school councilor available because no one ever told me. However, they are the ones who called CPS. I can't even say for sure who in the school it was and of course CPS won't tell me.
To add to this, when my son was questioned at school by the worker, he told her that my fiance smokes a pipe and I am trying to quit. The workers first response to this was to ask to see the pipe and to ask if we were doing drugs. I was astonished. Not only is the pipe an obvious tabacco pipe, but the worker automatically assumed drugs where involved when a pipe is mentioned Who is the one with the problem here? The one that assumes illegal drugs are involved when 'smoking' and a 'pipe' are mentioned? Or a ten year old by who has a normal child's hygiene problem? And ridiculously enough, the worker told us to keep the pipe tobacco out of Tony's reach so he wouldn't eat it!
To add even more to this problem, my house is cluttered. We have a lot of stuff and not a lot of storage space for it, so obviously we have to put it somehwere, and that somewhere usually ends up being out in the open until we can find some new technique of packing extra things into zero space. Unfortunatly, physics has not advaced to a state where we can feasably divide by zero. On top of this, we have 3 outdoor cats. Any pet owner knows that with pets usually come smells and apparently my cats offend this worker's nose. She complained quite a bit about the smell, which is quite odd considering our friends that visit every now and again never say anything. And when asked for honesty, all they say is that it smells like we have pets. Nothing more. You could claim that they are lying to save us the heartbreak, but at this point, they know my son's residance is on the line and they wouldn't do that to us.
So my question to you all, after that long winded explanation, is what can I do? Short of giving half of my posessions to Goodwill due to lack of storage space and giving away my family's beloved animals, I'm at a loss. What had started out as my son having a normal hygiene issue has become a family/friend wide rampage through my house on a cleaning spree because the state demands it.