WHEN DO WE CARE ABOUT KIDS?

If you want to learn more about how a 6-year-old boy came to shoot and kill
his 6-year-old first-grade classmate, follow the news out of Mount Morris
Township, Mich. That's where a horrible tragedy occurred this week.

But if you are wondering how a young boy ends up living in a rundown crack
house without even a bed to sleep on; how a kid goes to sleep each night in
a house where loaded guns and drugs are present; how a child too young to
cross an avenue by himself is left to make it through life without his
mother, who has a record of drug abuse, and his father, who's in jail on a
parole violation, then you don't have to study the Michigan case for answers.

That kind of inquiry can begin right here at home.

There are neighborhoods in this city - and in many other American
communities - that are as caught up in the drug culture as that which grips
and grinds down that 6-year-old boy's Mount Morris Township community.

There are homes right here in the District that are as chaotic as that in
which the 6-year-old and his 8-year-old brother spent their nights.

There's a child welfare system right here in the nation's capital that
fails neglected, abused, vulnerable children just as surely as Michigan's
child welfare system failed that youngster.

The questions now being posed about the circumstances governing the
6-year-old's life resemble the foraging for answers that we go through in
this city every time a child commits an adult-sized crime, or when death
comes too soon to the innocent--as it did to 6-year-old Kayla Rolland at
the Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Michigan.

I explored some of those concerns with Evelyn Moore, executive director of
the National Black Child Development Institute in Washington, and the
institute's director of public policy, Andrea Young. I wanted to know how a
whole host of players--family members, school officials and the child
welfare system - responded to an obviously troubled little boy before he
happened to come across a loaded .32-caliber semiautomatic handgun.

Here's a 6-year-old whose difficulties in school already had earned him
three suspensions - two for fighting and one for sticking another kid with
a pencil. His school should have sought special help for him after his
troubles in class, or at least asked child welfare services to take a close
look into his home life - especially when the child started using a sharp
object on someone else to discharge his feelings.

That didn't happen.

His disciplinary problems were as good a reason as any for the school
social worker to take a look at his files and conduct a home visit.

That didn't happen.

Had a social worker stopped by, he or she might have found the two little
brothers in a dilapidated house where the windows are shaded with old
blankets and the broken panes are patched with blue tarp. A visitor might
have discovered that these kids were living in a house filled with noise,
stolen weapons, a 19-year-old fugitive sought on drug charges and a
21-year-old uncle who was wanted on an outstanding felony warrant.

But that didn't happen.

When the mother fell under the influence of drugs and was kicked out of her
house, social services could have offered her drug treatment, or helped her
try to find housing or set up a program to monitor the children. Answers
about drug treatment and housing assistance for the mother aren't
available. But this much is known: No one was monitoring those kids.

If family members or authorities had bothered to check on the boys after
the father went off to jail or after the mother's drug use became apparent,
they would have learned that they had been passed from house to house.

Neighbors also saw them living in a crack house. They should have called
child welfare services. But they didn't.

Nobody had time to find out how the two little boys were living.

Worst of all, the two people who brought them into this world were the
least involved. Those boys could have used two loving, drug-free,
child-centered parents. That, Lord knows, hasn't happened.

Ah, but Mount Morris Township isn't the only place in America where
children who are poor get short shrift.

How many of us, teachers, neighbors, family members, clergy, fail to
recognize - no, that's not right - just choose to ignore the warning signs.
How many of the kids sitting right there in class or playing down the
street are just like that 6-year-old--minus the revolver.

Speaking of which: With thousands of Americans, including many in the next
generation, being shot dead each year, how many of us still don't lift a
finger to help those who are working their butts off trying to get control
of those infernal handguns?

Whoa, now I've stopped preachin' and gone to meddlin'.

So what if kids are abandoned by their parents, stuck in a rundown house
and forced to live unsupervised in the midst of drug-abusing, gun-selling
grown-ups?

So what if they are left to feed on a daily diet of aggression and made to
feel absolutely worthless?

So what if the deck is stacked against these kids virtually from birth?

That doesn't seem to faze most of us.

But should it matter only when a child gets his hands on a gun--and puts a
classmate to death?

Should it matter to us only then?