Faith keeps Mom, 10 kids hopeful (Where's the daddy? A national disgrace!)

Naples Daily News ^ | 3/16/2006 | Jeremy Cox

[KosmicKitty]

She sounds like she is seriously deficient in the common sense department.

Having an open flame (burning candle) in a house full of kids doesn't imply a good grounding in common sense either!

[Tax-chick]

So her kids burned the house down while she was home, and it was her 13 yr old son who got everyone out.

Maybe she was sleeping. I'm exhausted with only eight children!

The candle in the bathroom was definitely poor thinking, under the circumstances, though.

[mlc9852]

“He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;"
"Apparently he maketh her lie down in a lot of other places too."

ROFL

[FerdieMurphy]

...we all have done dumb things. ?

If this "nurse's" IQ even approached room temperature, I'd be amazed.

Since the Bible has been her only book she could have spent more time memorizing the Ten Commandments.

I don't believe it. She probably lays around with the kids watching Jerry Springer where, on occasion, she might see someone even worse off than herself.

[WV Mountain Mama]

Really, here is a bus schedule for her, I am sure the $15 monthly pass is cheaper than gas for her.

http://www.colliergov.net/transadmin/atm/operations/cat/index.htm

I find it hard to believe that in the blue hair capital of the world, there wouldn't be good public transportaion or lots of opportunities to make very good money in nursing. When a woman makes 10 babies and chooses to not be with the father, then she better do all she can to provide for them.

[Tax-chick]

R.N.'s in my area earn an excellent salary, and there are always advertisements in the paper from hospitals and medical practices looking for more nurses. I strongly considered nursing school when my husband was unemployed a few years ago, but he found a new job before the-baby-at-the-time was old enough for me to look for work or more training.

[maggief]

Kerren Laitaille, holding her baby Samuel Brown, 5 months, stands with some of her children during breakfast in their room at Hawthorn Suites in Naples.



“I lost everything,” said Kerren Laitaille, top right, holding her 5-month-old baby, Samuel Brown, after her home burned down on Monday. She is spending the week living in a hotel room at Hawthorn Suites with nine of her 10 children. The family has nowhere to go once the Red Cross stops paying for the room on Friday.

[The Brush]

I deal with faith filled unmarried baby making machines daily as I ask them to pay their student loans for things like their nursing educations. They quickly mention the amount of children they have as a reason why they can't pay. I am always quick to ask if the government assigned the children to them or if they played some part in their arrival.
Whenever I hear about their faith that God will pay their bill, I remind them that if they really had faith they'd make a payment on their loan and trust God to find the funds for the rent. That's usually when Satan shows up and I get a nonstop collection of obscenities thrown my way.
Of course these people blame Bush for not doing enough to help the poor.
Our contract also requires us to call on Sunday and people demand to know why I'm calling on the Lord's Day. When I ask them why they haven't returned message throughout the week or why they're not in church I get the obscenities again. That's when I advise them to go to church, sit up close, take notes and try not to swear. Living your life like you don't know God while talking about your deep faith is hypocritical. Christians are known by their works rather than their words.

This "mother" gives every non-believer another reason to run from God. IMHO

[Dont_Tread_On_Me_888]

In the meantime, her children, who range in age from 5 months to 15 years, have been watching television and playing video games to pass the time. Those who are old enough to go to school can’t because they don’t have a change of clothes.

Bull.

The Salvation Army or Goodwill or some other social welfare agency would have clothes for the kids in a heartbeat.

Slut! I have no sympathy for her, just hatred. I do have sympathy for taxpayers who have to slop the hogs because of our government's encouragement to freeloaders to keep being freeloaders through social welfare programs.

[maggief]

The family has nowhere to go once the Red Cross stops paying for the room on Friday.


Nassau, Bahamas



73 °F / 23 °C
Mostly Cloudy

[WV Mountain Mama]

*snicker*

[Shimmer128]

We who don't like this situation ar trying to mention some choices that could be made. So maybe there is not public transportation. (there's not, I just checked)
But there are CHOICES she could have made and could be making that we wouldn't have to pay for by force. I for one would help her out, if I knew her, as a fellow Christian. One of those ways I would LIKE to counsel her about is sleeping with men and bearing their children without benefit of marriage.
Another would be about personal responsibility.
That being said, she's doing well with her children, it sounds like. She's not a worthless mom that doesn't care, like so many. I would like to help her, but not just to hand over money, but to give her a leg up and help her find self sufficiency.

[HungarianGypsy]

I still don't understand how anyone could live on welfare. My family had to be on it for a little bit. It's amazing how the case workers seem confused when you tell them that you plan on being out of the situation in a few months.
Anyhow, the food stamps are worth a lot. There is the medical. The cash for two adults was 200 dollars a month. They do not help with utilities or rent unless it is at the eviction or turn off stage.
This was three years ago.
I remember a year later when one of my children needed to see the doctor for some reason my mother-in-law asked why we didn't check into the state insurance for our children. I told her that we now made too much money to qualify and there was no way I was going to deal with the government again.

[FerdieMurphy]

I'd hate to be the one checking into that suite after these folks were finished with it.

[Shalom Israel]

So you worked your way through college on $10 an hour.

Roughly. My pay ranged from $8 through $12 an hour, depending what I could arrange with agencies and per-diem work. I did have a full merit scholarship at Brown, which helped, and I had some student loans, which I finished paying off last year.

Did you pay childcare and other expenses for ten kids on that?

Nix on the childcare; Laitaille's oldest is 15, which is plenty old enough for baby-sitting duties. If she works on staff, and even for some agencies, she can get medical coverage in that way. Clothes she can get from the goodwill, just like I did when I was a kid.

So the single biggest expense for the kids is food. I'll bet you $1,000 that their typical meal isn't (1) oatmeal, (2) brown beans, or (3) rice-based. That's what I grew up eating, and you'd be surprised how cheaply you can get beans for eleven people.

But were you really trying to say that it's impossible for the woman to survive at all?

[SuziQ]

Also how can someone be a nurse in the USA and be unemployed?

Her youngest is 5 months old. She may still be on maternity leave. THough it sounds like she's spent much of the last 15 years on maternity leave!

[sandbar]

10 kids??? I am disgusted. This woman needs to be given the stupidity of the decade award for having 10 FREAKING KIDS!?! I feel sorry they lost everything in a fire, I have had that happen and it sucks, but not that she is trying to figure out how to take care of 10 kids. With no 'baby daddy' around either?

[Shalom Israel]

So ready to jump to conclusions without knowing all the facts....

You misunderstood me. I'm not the one who flatly declared that she should take a bus. I mentioned at least four possibilities: public transport; carpooling; bumming rides off co-workers; and walking. There are many, many more possibilities: she could get a loan to fix her vehicle; get a loan and replace her vehicle; go through a string of cheap clunkers; hitchhike; pay a friend a couple bucks a week for a ride; etc. So my point wasn't that "she should take the bus"; my point was, "where there's a will, there's a way."

That isn't jumping to conclusions. That's heaping scorn on people's willingness to declare themselves utterly helpless.

I grew up in a Connecticut suburb where there was NO public transportation. My dad sometimes walked and sometimes hitchhiked, but usually he drove a clunker we got for $100 or so and rode into the ground. I can't count the times that I've been stranded by the side of the road; when I was seven I was made to ride in a car we were towing with a rope, so I could push the brakes whenever I saw brake-lights. When I was five I knew what to do about a flooded carb, a stuck valve or a bad starter motor. I can't remember when I first learned to start a standard by popping the clutch--I could barely reach the pedals. Yet my dad made it to work--usually to two or three jobs.

[Shalom Israel]

I still don't understand how anyone could live on welfare. My family had to be on it for a little bit. It's amazing how the case workers seem confused when you tell them that you plan on being out of the situation in a few months.

Tell me about it! I wasn't on it myself, but a sister in my church signed up for assistance for her children, when her deadbeat husband decided to move for the umpteenth time and she refused to uproot the kids yet again... the case worker was flabbergasted that she didn't plan on divorcing him, and urged her to reconsider. He pointed out the great welfare benefits that she could only get if she had no husband. It's a disease.

Anyhow, the food stamps are worth a lot. There is the medical. The cash for two adults was 200 dollars a month. They do not help with utilities or rent unless it is at the eviction or turn off stage.

There is subsidized housing, of course. I knew an older fellow in upstate NY who got somewhere in the neighborhood of $600/mo in food stamps alone. He was living with a woman, also on welfare, and they refused to marry because it would cut their benefits. (I don't remember if $600 was their combined total, or only his share.) He ate much better than I ever did, I can tell you that.