Update, Eaven Is Found

Thank the Gods! Eaven Reisen was found safe! Apparently, she rode her bike to a friend's house, played all day there, ate dinner with the family, and spent the night! Only no one phoned home to let Mom and Dad know...........................I wish every missing kid case could end this happily.

While it wasn't the most attentive thing a parent could do, no parent is perfect, and Kansas parents all over the state are just as permissive with their children as Eaven's parents were yesterday. You can argue with me all you want........I have gone to the trouble of collecting data. Now; social services has taken the  unusual and perhaps overly punitive step of removing Eaven from her parents' home over this! I cannot help but wonder if this is overkill. Is this what foster care is truly for? Do Eaven's parents need an attorney now? How often do children go missing from foster care? (ahem......remember Adam Herrman?)
When almost all parents and foster parents in Kansas parent this way, just what is the state hoping to accomplish by removing this child from her home? Can the government parent better than parents can can parent?

I sincerely hope that Kansas has done a better job of vetting Eaven's new foster parents than they did with Adam Herrman's foster/adoptive parents.

Eaven Is Still Missing

Eaven Reisen has not been found yet; I was hoping to check the news and discover otherwise this morning. More information has been shared, however. Her name is pronounced "Evan", and she is about four feet tall. There is also a color picture of her, which I will run in this post.

I just want to say something to all the good folk of Kansas........and I mean that, most of you are good people. But a lot of you have a tendency to feel that certain dangers do not exist within your communities and that things like murder, terrorism, and crimes against children "do not happen here". As a result, you allow anyone and everyone access to the insides of your schools, you do not even ask visitors to your schools to sign in anywhere, so that you actually know who is visiting your school. You allow any adult who claims a connection to any child to pick said child up from school. When the children are home from school, you allow them to play, blocks and blocks from home, unsupervised........and it does not matter how old or young they are, either. As long as they are potty trained, they can go to the park without you.

I do enjoy living here in Kansas, for the most part. I like not having to drive in Washington DC or Houston's rush hour traffic. I like being able to ride my bicycle almost anywhere I want to go in my small town without going up and down West Virginia's hills. I like being able to let my children walk to school and ride their bicycles. And I enjoy co-existing with most of you, even though you are often stuck-up for reasons I have yet to determine and not as friendly as people are in most of the other places I have lived. A lot of you enjoy gardening, and that is a passion many of you and I share. Especially when you share cuttings of plants with me that have done well in your yards.......that's so cool. But please.........don't tell me that there is something wrong with wanting to know where all of my children are at ALL times. And don't ever tell me that your community is somehow immune to tragedy. It isn't. We all share the same planet, and no place on it is immune to the choices made by ourselves and others. And the advent of motor vehicles and mass ownership of motor vehicles made the world one big community long before the internet, but now that we also have the internet, the world is one big communicating community. That means that while you can facebook all your friends, anyone who wants to grab a child of Eaven's age can quietly and easily communicate with any co-conspirator who can read the same language. Think about it. That, alone, should make you want to keep a closer eye on your children.

A couple of years ago, I had to put the smackdown on the people who run my childrens' school because they honestly felt that it would be appropriate to drop children off by themselves four miles south of town for cross country practice. No cell phone, no supervision. If a child had gotton hurt there would have been no help; if someone with a weapon had grabbed them, or in this case, her; we never would have found out what happened. As a result, my daughter no longer participates in cross country, since I was shouted down by the good, Christian Kansans who felt that supervising children under these circumstances would have ruined our "small town environment". No kidding, folks......the coach who did this still works at the school, too. Nowhere else in the country would he be able to get a job working with children after that incident, but Kansas is unconcerned about child safety.

Wake up, people in Kansas! Stop trying to tell me that "these things don't happen here." They do, just like they happen anywhere. The sun shines here, it rains here, (sometimes) the law gravity applies here, we pay taxes here, and anything that can happen to a kid in New York can also happen to a kid here under the right circumstances. It is irresponsible to allow children to play, blocks and blocks away from you home, where you cannot see them, with no supervision.

I hope and pray that Eaven Reisen is found unharmed. It is my opinion that if she simply got lost or injured, she would have been found by this time. Here is more information about her. Please, copy a few pics of her, make others aware of this, if they are not already, put a couple of pictures up where people can see them, and look for her wherever you go today.

I truly hope that the next time I post about Eaven, it will be to annouce that she has been found and is safe at home.

Eaven Reisen Missing From Topeka

An eight year old girl is missing from Topeka Kansas. Her name is Eaven Reisen, and she was last seen between 10 and 11 this morning. There isn't an Amber Alert, since we do not know how  she got lost, and an Amber Alert deals only with known kidnappings involving motor vehicles. If you see her, dial 911, and ask that the Topeka police department be contacted. Here's more info.