Do you love the kids you are raising?  Prove it!  I don’t mean by buying them more stuff or taking them to Disneyland, or buying the latest on-line game, or purchasing the latest trendy style of clothing or any other type of indulgence.  I am talking about a more serious investment … your time to be involved.  While this article/column is titled Back-to-School it is about parental responsibility when a child you are raising is going back to school.

Child endangerment charges have been filed against Jim and Lavonda Vickers of Bakersfield, after their 5-year old son, Patrick, missing since last week, was discovered late last night trapped inside an abandoned refrigerator, alive but missing one foot, which the boy had apparently eaten in order to stay alive.

"It was an artificial foot," said Child Protective Services spokesperson Moore La Forstonieu, "so it's not as gruesome as it sounds.”  According to La Forstonieu, new state and federal guidelines call for all non-metal parts of children’s prosthetic devices to also be edible, and for all existing devices to be fitted with tri-lingual ‘do not eat’ labels.  “So the endangerment charges actually stem from the parents' failure to affix these labels onto the boy's device, as mandated by law.  This is all clearly stipulated in the parental owner’s manuals we now distribute to all California households with young children.  By ignoring these regulations, these parents wantonly exposed their young child to a serious case of indigestion," said La Forstonieu.

Amid rising concern over a dramatic increase in the number of such incidents, the first of its kind ever reported, Child Protective Services plans to launch a media blitz early next year on the dangers of prosthetic device ingestion, and city officials are said to be considering a plan to increase from 5 to 25 the number of full-time staff in its Fridge Abandonment Reduction Team. 

Meanwhile, federal, state, regional, county and city officials are involved in separate discussions.  “Abandoned refrigerators are a serious issue, especially with all these older prosthetic devices still around,” said EPA Director Ugotta B. Kiddenme.  “The difficulty, is that these sites, what we call ‘temporary unlawful refrigerator dump sites’ are scattered all over.  Sometimes they’re found in the county, sometimes within the city limits, and sometimes on federal land.  What we need is a new layer of government oversight, in between county and regional jurisdictions.  The proposed Cooperative Refrigerator Abatement Program would provide just what its name suggests.  We expect the entire program will be supported by fines and fees, and after the first, say 10 to 15 years, it might even generate a small surplus.”